- CRYPTID QUARTERLY AUTHOR OF THE YEAR 2025 -

Imagine moving into your dream home just after a divorce. A quiet estate on the edge of the woods. Open fields. Fewer neighbors. A chance to start over with your teenage son and leave the noise of the city behind.

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Now imagine slowly realizing you’re not alone out there.
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At first, it’s easy to dismiss. Footprints that don’t match anything familiar. Strange sounds drifting through the trees at night. Objects left where they shouldn’t be. The sense of being watched from beyond the fence line.

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Then you see one.

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A Dogman.

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Over seven feet tall. Covered in dark hair. A shape that looks like a wolf twisted with a hyena, wrong in ways your mind struggles to process. Large canines visible even with its mouth closed.

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It isn’t hiding.

It wants you to know it’s there.

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Cryptids were never on Tess’s radar. She’d never given them real thought. They weren’t something that belonged in her world. But denial doesn’t survive a moment like that.

In Sycamore Run Estates, survival depends on boundaries no one explains. Don’t go outside at night. Don’t challenge what lives in the dark. Don’t give it a reason to notice you.

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But the longer Tess Kearney and her son Justin live there, the clearer it becomes that the balance is shifting. The Dogmen are no longer content with the shadows. They learn routines. They test limits. They push closer.

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Across three escalating books, Don’t Go Outside At Night follows one family forced to decide how far they’re willing to go to protect their home… and whether staying is worth the cost.

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Because sometimes survival isn’t just about staying alive.

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It’s whether to abandon your dream… or stand and fight for it.

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Released: 16 March 2026