Hi, Internet People. It’s been over a year since my last update to this website and by now I assume most of you think that I’ve taken my millions in Sock Puppets From Hell royalty money and am living large on an island somewhere.
Or, alternatively, that I’m dead.
Neither of those things is true, though I am much closer to being dead than I am to being rich. Apparently there isn’t a lot of money in writing books about Sock Puppets and I wish someone had told me this before I spent a year of my life writing the damn thing.
In any event, I wanted to let you know that I plan to be much more active on this website, with the Sock Puppet Newsletter and on the socials in 2018. And considering I didn’t post shit in 2017, I’m already off to a fantastic start!
So what can you expect from Dan Cheek in 2018? Here’s a few of the things on my Sock Puppet To-Do List…
Post some mother fuckin’ videos up on this website. Because it’s 2018 and I’m told that Internet videos are now popular and shit.
Greatly expand the website to include more information on the Sock Puppet characters and information on their Universe.
Set up and maintain a Sock Puppets From Hell Instagram account. Again, I’m told this is a thing that’s popular with the cool kids.
Release a special edition PRINT version of The Sock Puppets From Hell. I’m not sure exactly when this’ll happen, but it’ll be sometime this year for sure. Probably. I think. Maybe.
This is all I have for right now. I’ll be back with more updates shortly and until then, BUY MY BOOK! Because I need money and I honestly don’t even care if you read it or whatever but BUY MY BOOK!
Also, I’m not dead. Or wealthy. Or a very good author.
Buy my book using NO MONEY for the next five days!
Hi, everyone. It’s been a few weeks since I last posted here. I’ve been busy with stuff and drinking whiskey and other important things like that. But I’m here today with a special, time-sensitive announcement. PAY ATTENTION!
Yes. This means that if you have been delaying picking up a copy of the book because you don’t have the cash or because you feel uncomfortable spending money on a book about Sock Puppets written by a shady drunk person, now is the perfect time to get it! FOR FREE!
Shit, you can gift a bunch of copies to all of your friends, family, co-workers or people you don’t even like or know. Because at the price of $0.00, The Sock Puppets From Hell is worth it.
Now, some of you may have already purchased the book at its regular price of $4.99 and are pissed about this. To all of you people, I say this: Tough shit. I spent all of the money you gave me on cheap beer and gas-station sushi so there will be no refunds.
Go get a copy of my book on Amazon right now. The Sock Puppets From Hell is fucking FREE for the next five days and if I can’t convince you to read my FREE novel then you are an asshole and we shan’t be friends any longer. BUY MY BOOK! FOR FREE!
Finally, if you aren’t already subscribed to The Sock Puppet Newsletter or following The Sock Puppets From Hell on Twitter and Facebook…you should be. All of those things are also free.
Because reading obscure Sock Puppet facts makes you cool! And sad…
How well do you know the Sock Puppets From Hell? Probably not as well as I do! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! *looks around the room for someone to high-five and then remembers he is alone in a dark room that smells like pee and Doritos*
To help make you a better person, I’ve compiled a list of five things that you maybe didn’t know about the Sock Puppets From Hell. Use these fascinating facts to impress your family and make them love you again.
Because they hate you. You knew that, yes?
Anyway…
The Sock Puppets From Hell were created in South Korea. While serving in the US Army, I was stationed at Camp Casey, South Korea and lived in a barracks with an insane roommate named Miguel. After a few months, a combination of severe depression and alcoholism led me to make four Sock Puppets; Bob, Lost Cause, Doctor Sanity and Goblin. The Puppets lived in our room and sort of became our friends because we really were that drunk and lonely and unhinged.
The first Sock Puppets From Hell thing that I wrote was actually a movie script. When I got home from Korea, I had trouble adapting to being a civilian and not spending my days training to kill or invade foreign countries. So I wrote a script for a movie about the Sock Puppets. And while the script was totally different from the book, a few elements did carry over.
Doctor Sanity, the mad scientist Sock Puppet, actually has no physical brain. Instead, his head is filled with electricity and strange dark matter. This is the source of his horrifying genius. If you read the book, you know that. Unless I forgot to write that part in. Which now that I think about it, maybe I did. Damnit.
If you search around the Internet long enough, you might find some old videos that I made with my friends (Rob, Rob, Cory and George) many years ago. At one point, we had grand plans of turning my Sock Puppets From Hell script into a homemade movie, so we made a bunch of trailers for it and then got so drunk that we forgot to actually make the movie. DAMNIT!
In my mind, Lost Cause has the same voice as Corey Feldman.
So that’s it. You are now a smarter than you were before you read all of that and probably also more sexually attractive. And maybe you smell nicer.
In a little over a week from now, The Sock Puppets From Hell novel will make its terrible debut. I hope you’re all ready.
As for me, the days leading up to the book’s release are pretty crazy. Most of my time has been spent making last second edits and tweaks (yes, I’m still doing that) and making sure that the final product is something that won’t suck too much. And then there’s maintaining this website, doing some marketing shit and attending to all sorts of other nonsense.
And in addition to all of that, I’m planning out a bunch of stuff to do on October 31st to help raise awareness for The Sock Puppets From Hell. My hope is that if I do all of these things that enough of you will buy the book to allow me to retire from my day job and spend the rest of my life living off royalties and wandering the streets while naked, unbathed and horrifyingly drunk.
Do you think that’s something the Make A Wish Foundation would be able to help me with?
I should also probably mention that this will probably be the first book in a series of Sock Puppets From Hell novels. You can’t imagine how much that last sentence terrifies me. FUCK!
Writing this book has taken up over a year of my life, has cost me untold numbers of aneurysms and ulcers and I’m beyond ready to just kick back and maybe not spend my early mornings and late evenings hunched over a laptop pounding out chapters for a book that very few people will even actually ever read.
But…there’s more to The Sock Puppets From Hell story than I can neatly fit into a single book. And if I don’t get that story into the pages of a book, it will continue to rattle around inside my head. Trust me when I tell you that it’s not good for your mental health to wake up thinking about Sock Puppets.
And now I’m getting ahead of myself. Right now, everyone, even you goddamnit, needs to be focused on Halloween 2016 and the unveiling of the Sock Puppets From Hell novel.
Less than a month away from launching my first book, I didn’t have a cover and didn’t really have a clue as to what I wanted to do. I’d been drawing and sketching so many different designs that I was now just burt out and frustrated from the process.
So I went out and got a case of beer, a six pack of different beer and some whiskey. I retreated with these items back into my lair/basement bar and was prepared to just draw a bunch of stick figures in crayon, say fuck it and use that as the cover.
And then I drank a whole bunch.
While doing this, I started messing around with some scraps of paper and cardstock and scissors. Still just messing around, I made what you see above. As I looked at it, I realized that I had just unintentionally made a fairly decent looking cover for The Sock Puppets From Hell.
I used my phone to snap a picture of my drunken masterpiece and called it a night. And, really, that’s perfect. A drunken idiot goofing around with some scrap arts and craft supplies, not thinking it would turn into anything.
Because that’s exactly how I came up with the Sock Puppets From Hell back in 2003 while living in an Army barracks in South Korea. But that’s a story for another time.
What are your thoughts on the Sock Puppets From Hell book cover? Share your words in the little comments box below and I’m sure I’ll read it at some point.
I’ve been doing a fair amount of research on things that authors should do when writing and self-publishing books. Apparently, books need covers. With art and words on them and shit like that.
Therefore, I have decided that The Sock Puppets From Hell novel will have a cover.
After a lot of thinking and sketching and weeping on the toilet, I think I’ve come up with a cover design that I’m gonna go with. I don’t have it finalized yet, but I’m hoping to have that bit of work completed sometime this weekend or maybe early next week.
And when I do have it finished…I will show it to you. I’d post some of the rough sketches that I’ve done here, but they are mostly just stick figures and pictures of my hand that I traced with a magic marker. And most of them smell like pee and gin and I don’t wanna put them on my scanner. Because pee and gin.
In all honesty, my scanner sort of smells like pee and gin, too. My life is in shambles!
Once I do have the final Sock Puppets From Hell cover art all finalized and everything, you will be the first to know. I’ll be posting it all over this website. And the SPFH Facebook and Twitter profiles.
As a special bonus for those of you who were stupid enough HAHAHA I can’t believe you actually did that nice enough to sign up for the Sock Puppet Newsletter, maybe I’ll include some snapshots and pictures of some of the smelly cover sketches and some of the designs that didn’t make the cut in the next installment of the newsletter.
I have to run along now. The Sock Puppets From Hell comes out on Halloween. BUY MY BOOK!
I spent the last year working on The Sock Puppets From Hell novel and that literary masterpiece will be released on Halloween of this year. And while this is my first book of any sort, I’ve actually been writing Sock Puppet stories for over a decade. I had a few of them up online briefly, but for the most part, very few people have ever read any of them.
What follows is one of those stories, Horrible Squirrel Ball of Doom. I wrote in back in 2006 and, like the rest of my writing, it’s terrible and reading it will actually cause several of your brain cells to suicide themselves.
But it does provide a brief introduction to some of the Sock Puppets From Hell characters. Read it if you want.
Horrible Squirrel Ball of Doom
Sam sat at the kitchen table, sipping his coffee and enjoying the momentary calm. It had been exactly three hours since any of the four Sock Puppets — Bob, Lost Cause, Doctor Sanity and Goblin — destroyed something or killed someone.
“Sam, I made something for you,” Doctor Sanity announced from behind him. Sam didn’t want to turn around. He knew that Doctor Sanity, the mad genius of the Sock Puppets, was probably about to show him something horrible. The last time Sanity had told Sam that he had made something for him, it turned out that the Doctor had found a way to make an electric toothbrush out of a chainsaw and an old broom.
Not only did it remove plaque, it could also cut through walls. Like most of his other inventions, Sam buried it in the backyard.
“Sam, look! Look at what I’ve done,” Doctor Sanity said, now standing right along side his chair. Sam, still in his robe, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, muttered an old curse he had learned from his grandfather and then exhaled. He opened his eyes and looked down. Doctor Sanity was standing next to….a basketball.
“You invented a basketball,” Sam asked hopefully. “Please tell me that’s just a basketball.”
Doctor Sanity smiled. “Not quite, Sam. I’ve invented an inescapable prison for that damn squirrel that’s been running amok.”
It took a few seconds for Sam to catch up with what Doctor Sanity was saying. “You think that basketball,” Sam said slowly, “Is going to hold a squirrel?”
Doctor Sanity nodded. “And not just any squirrel, Sam,” he said in a cheery voice, “That rogue villain of a rodent that’s been using our trees like his own personal jungle-gym. I’ve found a way to contain his madness.”
“So let me get this straight,” Sam said, “You’ve decided that you’re going to put a squirrel inside that basketball and you’re going to do this because you think the squirrel is insane and needs to be stopped.”
Doctor Sanity nodded again. “Absolutely. Only you should stop speaking hypothetically. I’ve already captured the beast.” He glanced over at the basketball, sitting beside him.
The noise that came out of Sam was a combination hiss and scream. He recoiled in shock. “Are you saying you’ve already put the squirrel into that ball,” Sam asked, not really wanting to know.
“Indeed,” Doctor Sanity said proudly, “That son of a bitch is trapped in here but something good. This world is now a safer place for all of us.”
Sam went a little pale as a few more years were removed from his lifespan. “How, exactly,” he said slowly, “Did you go about capturing a squirrel and then trapping him inside of that ball?”
“Good question,” Doctor Sanity answered, “It wasn’t easy. And the garbage man was horribly maimed in the process. We should probably send him a card.”
Sam’s shoulders dropped a little and he could feel an aneurism starting to form in his head. “What did you do to the garbage man?”
“The answer to that question will upset you, Sam,” the Doctor announced. “You’ll probably sleep better at night not knowing. Just understand that it was an unfortunate, yet entirely preventable tragedy that everyone involved feels horribly about.”
“I see,” Sam said. His eyes were now closed and he was struggling to give in to the urge to kick Doctor Sanity across the room. “Humor me and give me a clue?”
“Okay. Before the unfortunate accident occurred, the garbage man had two legs. But now he has none. Also most of his fingers are gone. And I confiscated his wallet and cellphone.” He looked up at Sam.
Sam was sitting there, holding his head in his hands with both eyes closed. In his mind, he was trying to block it all out. The squirrel, the crazy little Sock Puppet who he was talking to, and whatever Sanity had done to the garbage man, who was a really nice guy.
The Sock Puppets did senseless, incredibly destructive things like this all the time. This time it was Doctor Sanity. But they were all equally bad. Sam hated all of them and if he could figure out a way to kill them, he certainly would.
“And whatever you do,” Doctor Sanity continued, “Never, not even ever, bounce the ball more than once.”
Sam allowed himself to resume breathing. “Why?”
“Because the explosives arm on the first bounce and go off on the second.”
Sam looked over at Doctor Sanity and the basketball. Fear-sweat began to stream down his face. “Explosives?”
“Yup,” Doctor Sanity said proudly, “It’s what makes the prison so effective. If any of his little squirrel friends try to come and spring him free, they’ll no doubt activate the explosive trigger. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“Oh Dear God,” Sam muttered. “Doc, get away from the ball. Come sit with me out on the couch. I need to think.”
“Okay, I like thinking,” Sanity said as he followed Sam out into the living room. Sam plopped down on the couch and Doctor Sanity hopped up alongside him.
“Is there anyway to disarm it,” Sam asked nervously in a low voice.
“Nope. Why would you want to disarm explosives? That’s like taking the blades off a lawnmower. You WANT the explosives to explode.”
The sweat coming off Sam’s head now was a steady river. “What are our options,” Sam asked, his voice now just a shade above a whisper.
“I could paint the ball green. That would be neat, eh?”
Sam stopped breathing and shook his head. “Stop talking.”
“Cool,” Lost Cause called out from the kitchen, “A new basketball!”
Sam and Doctor Sanity looked at each other. Sam’s face was twisted in terror and a stream a urine was running down his right leg. Doctor Sanity was smiling like a child on Christmas morning.
They heard the ball bounce once. “Goblin is gonna love this!” The ball bounced again.
Then all the downstairs windows blew out and thick, black smoke came billowing out of the kitchen. The shockwave knocked both Doctor Sanity and Sam off of the couch. Car alarms could be heard going off up and down the street.
From the kitchen, Lost Cause managed to eek out two pain-filled sentences. “Sam, I need you to come in here, man. Bring all the band-aids you can find.”
Do it. Or I’ll hire a clown to tickle your feet while you sleep.
It’s been several days since I last posted something here. I’d like to say it was because I had finally gathered the courage to live my dream of forsaking all my worldly possessions and am now spending my days living under a bridge and passing time by throwing cuss words and trash at passing traffic.
But, sadly, I’ve just been busy with adult-type shit.
Anyway, I wanted to command remind all of you that I maintain a Sock Puppet Newsletter and encourage you to subscribe to it. Because if you don’t…the terrorists win. And when you do subscribe, it allows me to send you filthy things directly into your email inbox.
I’ve already sent out a few editions of the Sock Puppet Newsletter and if you weren’t a subscriber, you fucking missed all of them. And you’ll NEVER see that shit EVER! I do my best to send a new one every weekend.
Some of you may be wondering why you should take time out of your life and trust a drunken maniac like myself with your email address. Fine. Here’s why I think you should…
Sock Puppet Newsletter subscribers receive exclusive content such as hand-drawn Sock Puppet sketches (which I draw while drunk) and short Sock Puppets From Hell themed stories written by me.
Updates on all of the projects that I’m working on.
All of the emails smell like rotting onions. That isn’t really a selling point, but it’s important for you to know up front.
When I inevitably have my nervous breakdown, I’ll be using the Sock Puppet Newsletter to send my cries for help.
If I ever open a Sock Puppet store, subscribers to the email list will probably receive valuable discount codes and shit like that.
Yup. It’s officially official, now. I’ll be releasing The Sock Puppets From Hell novel on October 31st. That’s Halloween for those of you who don’t keep track of such things.
Debuting the book on Halloween is something that just makes sense. Halloween is a spooky holiday. The Sock Puppets are kind of spooky. And the book is full of witches and demons. And murdered sheep. Lots of explosions.
Basically, all of things that make Halloween such a good time.
As of right now, I plan on releasing the book via Amazon in a digital-only format. Eventually, maybe, I might have a printed version released. But paper and ink cost money and shit. So I need to save up my pennies before I can consider doing something like that.
This strategy should also help me hold on to the few strands of sanity that I’ve been clinging to throughout all of this. Because if I had to walk around a house full of books that aren’t selling and that I had cost me my personal fortune to print…I would probably develop an arson hobby to compliment my binge whiskey drinking hobby.
And nobody needs that.
Having a real-life release date for The Sock Puppets From Hell also allows me the opportunity to daydream about what kind of book release party I might have. In all probability, this “party” will probably be me sitting on my porch, alone, guzzling beer and screaming at God and the neighbors.
The author of The Sock Puppets From Hell interviews himself.
I’ve been reading lots of blog posts and articles about how to promote a book. Most of these things recommend doing an interview with a blogger, radio host, newspaper or whatever. I don’t have time for that shit.
So I’m gonna interview myself.
Dan Cheek: WHO ARE YOU?!?
Dan Cheek: My name is Dan and I’m the author of the upcoming self-published novel The Sock Puppets From Hell. It’s a pretty fucked up story about four Sock Puppets who escape from Hell and move in with a guy named Sam. Things go bad very quickly for everyone involved.
Dan Cheek: Fascinating. If you had to assign this literary masterwork to a specific genre of fiction, what would that be?
Dan Cheek: Uh. It’s kind of like a dark-comedy/horror/fantasy/sci-fi/thriller genre. Is that even a thing?
Dan Cheek: (checking Amazon) No. You just spouted off like five of the most general genres in existence. You’re a fucking idiot.
Dan Cheek: Okay.
Dan Cheek: When will The Sock Puppets From Hell be released to the masses?
Dan Cheek: I’m still working on finalizing an exact release date, but it’s looking like Halloween, October 31st, is gonna be when it hits.
Dan Cheek: What were some of your inspirations while you were writing the book?
Dan Cheek: Mostly beer. And scotch. ALF. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. Maya Angelou. Scat porn. And Nickelback.
Dan Cheek: How many pages is the book?
Dan Cheek: Mind your own fucking business, nosey!
Dan Cheek: Should children under the age of 18 years old be allowed to read this book?
Dan Cheek: Yes. In fact, parents of small children should read it to them in its entirety every day. And then make them recite it back like scripture. And then beat them if they fuck up.
Dan Cheek: You already mentioned the four Sock Puppets and Sam. Who are some other characters that will be in the book?
Dan Cheek: A witch named Vicki. A demon named Jeff. Julius, who is a sheep. Bernie, who’s kind of like a homicidal crazy person/agent of Satan. And a few other witches and demons.
Dan Cheek: How many copies of The Sock Puppets From Hell are you expecting to sell?
Dan Cheek: I spent over a year of my life writing it and suffered some pretty severe mental breakdowns along the way, so if I can maybe sell like nine copies I’d say that would pretty make it all worth it.
Dan Cheek: Has anyone aside from you read the book yet?
Dan Cheek: Nope. And I actually haven’t read it, yet. I mean I started to read it, but then some shit came up and I just haven’t gotten around to picking it back up. I actually think I may have lost it.
Dan Cheek: You lost your un-published first book?
Dan Cheek: Maybe. I really haven’t looked hard.
Dan Cheek: Is there anything else you want people to know about The Sock Puppets From Hell?
Dan Cheek: Just that if they find it, let me know so I can finish reading it. And so I can publish it and shit.
For all of the latest updates on The Sock Puppets From Hell, be sure to stay tuned to this website. And if you are a real blogger or journalist and want to interview Dan Cheek for your website or publication, send him an email at dan@sockpuppetsfromhell.com and ask. He’ll probably do it.
Leave your hurtful and probably stupid and misspelled thoughts in the little comments box below so that I can completely ignore them.
