A Comic Con Kind of Weekend

Heeeeey, friends! I hope you’ve had an amazing week and are looking forward to a spectacular weekend. I know I am. I get to go to Cheyenne Comic Con! It doesn’t get much better.

My boys and I will be heading over on Saturday to check things out, then on Sunday I will be giving my Surviving Zombies workshop. It’s going to be a blast! We’re very excited to see the different costumes. The boys contemplated dressing up, but then decided against it because the helmets to their Stormtrooper costumes are broken. Dang it all!

I love being able to do these kinds of things with my boys. It’s my job to make sure they are raised right, and that means appreciating and experiencing the nerdy, dorky things in life. Makes them well-rounded citizens.

Aside from that fun, I’ve finished the first draft of the first book of my next young adult zombie novel. It’s called Humanity’s Hope. I mentioned last week that I’m not sure what will happen to it, and it’s still up in the air. However, I’ve taken a few baby steps to get back into indie publishing, including applying to Books of the Dead Press and participating in a Twitter pitch yesterday called #PitDark. I had some interest in the book, but I’m honestly not holding my breath. I’m not convinced my book is exactly what they are looking for. It’s dark—and not just because it has zombies in it.

Would you like a glimpse of what the book is about? I had to write a query and a synopsis, so I’ll share what I have. Not all of it, of course, because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. Here ya go:

Seventeen-year-old Caleb survived the zombie uprising, but he’s scarred mentally and physically. Humanity is trying to rebuild, but after the loss of his family and friends, Caleb walks a path of self-doubt and self-harm. Caleb gets up every morning and goes to work at Zomtech, writing computer code so that the scientists can find a cure. Today, though, regulars—zombies—escape the ghetto and kill his neighbor, and the death is a message directed at him. He receives an email with a video of someone unleashing zombies onto her. The video says if Caleb doesn’t give them what they want, more people will die.

Then he and his friend Samuel are attacked by a hoard of undead in a park. These aren’t typical undead. In addition to regulars, there are mutants known as BZs and RBZs—Big Zombies and Really Big Zombies. A regular bites Caleb, and things only get worse when he discovers he’s immune to whatever turns a person into a zombie. Caleb has to make a choice: will he become humanity’s hope and save them from the undead menace, potentially becoming a pawn in a power struggle, or will he finish what he started long ago and end his own life?