Weekend 2 #summerofzombie #zombie authors

Here are the weekend 2 posts for Summer of Zombie! 

* See full posts at the DyingDaysZombie blog.
 Excerpts will be posted here as they go up.

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(Scroll down for my interview under Saturday - Girl or Ghoul?)

Friday June 12

Mike Evans Guest Post

By Your Side

Mike Evans (Author of The Orphans Vol II: Surviving the Turned)

Who do you expect to stand by your side in the start of the zombie apocalypse, when it all starts when hell is unleashed on society, when the crazy starts the anarchy rises? I know until recently my thought process has been on what I see in the mirror. What I see when I go to work, and I feel guilty about it, making assumptions about people, about a large portion of America. As a writer it’s my job to think outside of the box, but going off of mainstream media whether it be television or books bother elated to zombies I have not been as original as I might have needed to be to say that I am really pushing things to the limit, to the brink of sanity. What am I talking about? I am talking about the handicapped, the wounded, those with special needs. Read the rest…


** Bonus: Dave Lund talks past and future of zombies at Books, Beer & Blogsh*t  **

Shawn Chesser Guest Post

Author of the Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Series
  Including Ghosts: Surviving the Z ombie Apocalypse

 

Seven Stages of a Chesser Novel

Stage 1: Oh Crap! I promised what, to whom, when?

Like one of those well-dressed Sunday morning callers bearing flimsy paper pamphlets, this gut-clenching realization comes a’ knocking the moment my book release party is over and I’m shutting the laptop—“For a month, honey. I promise”—and pushing away from the office desk. It’s at that moment, fingernails making half-moons in the wooden desk top, that I realize that I have just promised to my readers a follow-up novel with a working title and, inexplicably—as if I had fallen victim to some kind of Jedi mind trick—the EXACT month I hope to publish said follow-up. So … now that I’ve gone and saddled myself with a self-imposed deadline—which is hands down the last thing this indie scribbler intended to do—I scream. Loudly. Into a pillow. Read the rest…

Author of the Dying Days Series, including Dying Days 2 

Armand Rosamilia Guest Post

Same Songs, Different Stories

Years ago I wrote a long-winded comedic book about my experiences as a shoe salesman. It was fiction although way too much of it was autobiographical. It must be about 20 years ago I pounded away on my Brother word processor and finished it in about 2 weeks.

I literally did nothing but write the novel. It was awful, I’m sure.

Back then I had no clue what I was doing (I could make the same argument now, of course…) and just wrote. And wrote. I’d come home from work and immediately start typing, no care about sentence structure or anything else. It was fun and cathartic and I never had any intention of doing anything with it. Hell, I couldn’t in 1995 if I tried. I had no real clue except for short story markets. Read the rest…

Jake Bible Guest Post

Zombies: Why original ideas sometimes work and sometimes don’t

When I first started writing professionally, sending short stories off and getting paid for them, I told myself I wouldn’t start writing a novel until I had sold six shorts.

Then that day came and I was left sitting there wondering what the hell I was going to write about. I’d always wanted to write about zombies, but there just didn’t seem to be 

anything original going on with the genre. It seemed, and no pun untended, dead to me.

Then one fine night I was watching television and an ad came on for Transformers 2. This sparked a train of thought that led me to my love of the mecha genre. Even though I had never really explored the genre in depth, I had always been fascinated by the idea of pilots in mechs kicking some serious ass. Read the rest…

Eric A. Shelman Guest Post

I’m a guy who has loved monsters of all kinds since I was a little kid, so I often wonder why readers would limit themselves to a diet of only zombie apocalypse novels.  It’s not a slam, because clearly I love writing zombie fiction; it’s just interesting to me that someone who is a voracious reader could have such a narrow reading focus.

I suppose the very question tells you that I do write other than zombie novels, and sometimes, when I’m fully intending to write a new one, I have all these freaky ideas pop into my head … often leading me away from the traditional, shambling, human-turned-walking dead, zombie. Read the rest…

Jay Wilburn Guest Post

“The Weight of a World in Freefall”

The smart money in writing is on the series. Stand alone novels are thought to lose readership that could potentially follow the characters into another novel that carries the story forward. Readers of apocalyptic literature are thought to be particularly prone to follow a series or sub series which follow characters through the other parts of the world created by the story.

An extended series with multiple installments creates quite a landscape and mythology to follow for the readers and the writer attempting to serve the readers over time. Read the rest…

See the 5-song ep soundtrack , Dead Song Dodecology book 1: Legend

See Amazon ebook - The Dead Song Legend Dodecology Book I: January
 

Saturday June 13

Luke Ahearn Guest Post
Author of Transformation: Book Two of the Euphoria-Z Series
A Few Thoughts on Escaping from Zombies

Sure zombies are dangerous, and gross, but there are many other hazards during an apocalypse, even in the non-apocalyptic world, that you need to be aware of. First off keep an eye forward when trying to escape from them as you could trip. Here are a few things to look out for that can save your life. Some are obvious and require only a sentence or two. Some dangers aren’t the zombies but the environment and, as is often the case, the living.

More Zombies

Seems like a no brainer (pun intended), but you’d be surprised how many folks take off running, looking back over their shoulder, just to run right into another swarm. They may be brainless, slow moving, and silent but the zees have a way of getting the jump on you. So avoid the blind flight. Read the rest…

Julianne Snow Guest Post
Why I Dig the Undead  (Author of The Dead of Penderghast Manor)
 

    Many people don’t care for Zombies and I can understand that opinion in some cases. Many think that the genre has been overdone. However, there has been such an evolution in the genre lately that there are some definite new and fresh (forgive the pun!) perspectives that breathe new life into the Undead.

Let me go back to my first experience with the Undead. I was six years old and that takes us all the way back to [date redacted to protect the innocent]. I turned on our family television to find something to watch; it was one of those days that I was at home from school with a cold. I probably should have been in bed resting but sometimes vegging out in front of the television is highly warranted. What I found on the screen held my attention rapt for the entirety of it. Before my eyes was George A. Romero’s 1968 black and white masterpiece Night of the Living Dead. It was my first introduction to the idea of the Zombie and it was amazing. There were scenes that scared me (the My Little Pony comforter from my bed acting as a shield for my eyes) but more often than not, I found myself getting engrossed in the story. Even at six, I was hooked.  Read the rest...

Jack Wallen Guest Post 

Was Frankenstein's Monster a Zombie?

It’s alive! It’s alive!

Not really. No. Well, sort of. Depends upon who you ask. Victor? Yes. Igor? Maybe. The townspeople? Oh hell no.

Pardon me if I wax a bit pedantic here.

I am always (and never) shocked when I get asked this question. And I actually have a vested interest in the question from both sides, as I am an established author of zombie fiction who has planned a version of the Frankenstein myth.

Back to the question.

Was Frankenstein’s Monster a zombie? Before we actually come to a conclusion, we have to first examine the sources – the book by Mary Shelley and the original Universal film. The vast majority of people have only one frame of reference – the film. If you’ve read the book (especially the unabridged version), you know the film and the book are two very different beasts – so much so, that you have to wonder where Universal came up with film. Read the rest…

C.A. Verstraete Guest Post - (full post below)

Zombie Girl Character interview

Who’s that Girl? (or is that ghoul? )

By C.A. (Christine) Verstraete

Like any teenager, zombie or not, Becca likes to talk. So I thought I’d give her a chance to share a few things.

About the book:

  Becca Herrera Hayes is the 16-year-old protagonist from GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie. She finds her life changed when her cousin comes home, and via an accidental scratch, turns her into a part-zombie. Now she has to cope with a weird diet and changes no teenager wants to go through. As she struggles to cope with her new life, she’s searching for her lost mother with her other cousin/BFF Carm while hoping she’ll find something to stop a full transformation… before it’s too late.

 Links:

Amazon US: http://tinyurl.com/mwjn6v3

Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/ctyd9dz –

All Amazon countries: http://authl.it/B00E8HCVQM

Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/d889gzn

Blog: GirlZombieAuthors

Website: http://cverstraete.com

A Little Q & A:

Q: If it’s not too personal, share how you turned part-zombie?

Becca: My other cousin was changing. He came home and scratched me by accident. I was really angry at first, but I know it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t himself. I do blame him for making stupid choices. He went to work in a lab doing, as his sister says, “who knows what” as “he’s not the most responsible” of guys.

(Note: see what happened to Spence before he came home in the short story, ChangesDetails at my website, http://cverstraete.com.)

Q: What’s it like being half- zombie? Do you feel ostracized because of it?

Becca: Sometimes. A lot of people don’t understand. I tried going back to school. Bad idea. It was the worst, well, the second worst day of my life. Even the adults were mean. Luckily my family and friends are there for me.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

Becca: I’d like to go back to school. College, which should be better, I hope. I wanted to be a TV broadcaster. Maybe I’ll be able to do that yet. My boyfriend, Gabe, says I can do anything. He’s nice that way.

Q: Have you fought a lot of zombies?

Becca: A pretty lot. In my world here in Wisconsin, they call them the full zombies—the Zs—to distinguish from us part- zombies. They’re the nasty ones, the ones who want to bite and attack you. We don’t do that. I’ve had to protect my cousin since she’s not too good at the fighting stuff, but she’s getting better. She’s been there for me so I look out for her, even if we only started out with poisoned paintballs and BB guns. So far it’s worked okay.

And the author answers a few questions, too:

Q: Why zombies?

Christine: I say, why not? What can be worse when you’re 16 then turning into a part-creature and seeing your world turned upside down? Humor, (often more like “gallows humor”) can take the edge off things.

Of course, Becca has her limit, too, as when her would-be boyfriend, Gabe, tries to offer his own lame humor to “lighten” things up with his joke: What do you call a girl on a date who won’t eat?

Answer: A zombie! (of course. Ha-ha. Okay, you can groan now.)

Q: What’s coming up for Becca?

Christine: On the near horizon, I just completed a “long” short story, “Puppy Love and Zombies,” where Becca faces a couple more zombies – and her fear of dogs – as she solves the mystery of why local dogs are disappearing. It will be in the anthology, Young Adventurers: Heroes, Explorers and Swashbucklers, coming out sometime this summer or early fall.

You can also find out what happened to her cousin Spence before he gets home in Changes,a GIRL Z short story prequel.

* C.A. (Christine) Verstraete is the author of GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie and several short stories. See details at her website http://cverstraete.com or visit her blog,http://girlzombieauthors.blogspot.com.

Stevie Kopas Guest Post

Do good things really come to those who wait, and do all good things have to come to an end?

In my third and final book of The Breadwinner Trilogy, I went with the title of All Good Things (The Breadwinner Trilogy Book 3)."  The title, from what I’ve heard, has been interpreted in the two different ways, as my opening sentence asks.

For those of you that don’t know, the survivors in my trilogy have been through it all.  Life, death, loss, escaping the deadly clutches of the dead, and fighting even fellow survivors to make sure they make it out alive at the end.  They keep building themselves up, grasping at this hope that they can find and rebuild some semblance of solace or normalcy, only to be knocked back down, one tragic step at a time. Read the rest...

Samantha Gregory Guest Post

Author of After (After Series Book 1)

Interview:

What first motivated you to write?

I think when I would read books or watch shows on TV where I didn’t like the ending I would think up my own. I eventually wrote my own short stories in the way I liked.

What is your latest book about?

My latest book After is about a teenage girl called Jenna who is living in a world that was once over run by zombies. A new government has risen that is brutal and cruel and Jenna is pulled into a conspiracy involving her father who she thought was dead.

What helps you to write?

Junk food, a comfortable seat and a pen and paper or my laptop.

Describe your writing schedule?

Very disorganised! I work better to a deadline as it pushes me to finish, but otherwise I write when I can.

Why do you love writing?

I love creating my own worlds and writing the things that I would love to read as a fan of the horror genre. Read the rest…

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 Follow along on Twitter - #SummerofZombie  

BONUS! You can also order a cool T-shirt from the event.

** Get the ebook! Summer Of Zombie : 12 ebook box set,  with works by 13 Summer of Zombie authors. Available for a limited time!  

Check back often as more interviews, guest posts and teasers are added!