Spooky Stacks Giveaway: Win $500 worth of signed horror books

Win $500 worth of signed books from bestselling horror authors Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Nicholson, and Bryan Smith! The SPOOKY STACKS GIVEAWAY runs from Oct. 24-31. Be sure to pick up your free copy of the Spooky Stacks ebook in all formats at Smashwords. Enter daily at their web sites or enter below!

Brian Keene Website Facebook Twitter

Jonathan Maberry: Website Facebook Twitter

Scott Nicholson Website Facebook Twitter

Bryan Smith Website Facebook Twitter


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V-Wars audiobook video

It's a video about the making of an audiobook about a book!

Skyboat Media produced the video about the making of V-Wars, a vampire anthology edited by Jonathan Maberry. My entry "Heartsick" is narrated by veteran actor Arte Johnson, who gets some face time in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBr9sfgsiCw&feature=player_embedded#!

Out from the comics giant IDW, V-Wars is also available from your favorite bookstores in multiple formats. Learn more at IDW's page.

Author Harry Shannon

Author Harry Shannon is a talented guy and I was lucky enough to win a copy of his first collection BAD SEED way back when we both had darker hair. Since then, he's piled up the properties. A musician, counselor, filmmaker, author, family man--and guy.

 

What is the working title of your next book?The Hungry 3: At the End of the World, co-written with Steven W. Booth. The novel should be out in February, 2013. It concerns the further adventures of Sheriff Penny Miller of Flat Rock, Nevada, who is still braving the Zombie Apocalypse.

Where did the idea come from?

The first book The Hungry began as a short zombie story written for a charity anthology. Steven and I had so much fun doing it we continued on and finished the novel version on a lark. It sold very well, so The Hungry 2: The Wrath of God followed in August. We're still not sure if this finishes a trilogy or if we'll feel compelled to do more.

What genre best defines your book?

Zombies, baby! And tongue in cheek horror, I guess.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie? 

The actress featured on all three covers of The Hungry books is the lovely Ms. Gillian Shure, who co-starred in my micro-budged ode to 80's horror Dead and Gone back in 2007. She has become so connected in my brain with redheaded Sheriff Penny Miller it has become difficult to imagine anyone else playing the part. Our fans tell us Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl on The Walking Dead, has simply got to play her biker friend Scratch.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Sheriff Penny Miller and her friends hide out at a hunting lodge in the snowy mountains of Colorado, hoping to escape the zombie plague. It is not a Merry Christmas.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

All three of The Hungry novels are published by Genius Books, which is owned by my co-author Steven.

How long did it take you to write the first draft?

We do an outline first, emailing back and forth, working out just the key beats of the story in rough chapter form. Once that is set, Steven generally does the rough, I rewrite that and send it back. Once we get going the actual first draft (one pass for each of us) generally takes us about three months.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I suppose we'd be considered a mix of drama and comedy. We have loads of redneck humor, a touch of Zombieland or Shawn of the Dead, but the satire is mixed with genuinely creepy scenes similar in tone to the zombie work of Jonathan Maberry and Joe McKinney. Joe and Jonathan are friends of ours, and fans of Sheriff Penny Miller. In fact, Joe wrote the introduction to the first book.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I've always loved zombie lore, particularly the George Romero school and the 1970's classic Night of the Living Dead. I'm from Nevada, and often set stories and novels in that state. When we were writing the charity story, it just tickled me to combine those two and see how a redneck Sheriff in a small town might react to facing a horde of the undead. We began in the jail, in a salute to Rio Bravo, and it took off from there and became a series.

What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

You can read The Hungry: At the End of the World by itself come February, or buy and read the first two now and start from the beginning. Either way, be sure to make a very, very big bowl of popcorn, dim the lights and be prepared for a mix of laughs on scares. These novels have been a ton of fun to write, and we think anyone who loves shambling monsters is bound to enjoy reading them.

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Slow Zombies and Halloween

We hardcore horror fans think of Halloween as "Amateur Night," since we're 365/24/7, but there's no reason not to throw some extra monster love at the end of October.

While I prefer ghosts as my favorite supernatural entity, if you take it to the level of creatures, I have to give zombies the nod over their fang-bearing, red-eyed brethren in arms. The Night of the Living Dead ranks in my Top 10 pantheon, and last year I even participated in first zombie walk  I just love the relentless nature of the living dead, their relatively calm persistence, their focus on the prize. As you may be able to tell, I am a fan of the Slow Zombie.

I remember watching Fulci's Zombie on back-to-back nights in a theater in Chapel Hill, NC when I was in college. It's the only movie I've ever seen twice in a theater, and I have no idea what I was thinking. I even went alone to that second showing, so I must have been seeking some private connection with the horrors that unfolded (or maybe I just dug the groovy synth soundtrack). I enjoyed 28 Days Later but I find most modern zombie movies are too jokey and self-referential and attention-deficit-disordered, as if zombies have now jumped the shark (cue that really cool scene in Zombie where...well, just watch it).

I guess it's hard to keep fresh, and NotLD definitely borrowed from the The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. Even the old-school, Haitian zombie movies like I Walked With a Zombie captured an atmosphere of dread., instead of the shock-horror that modern audiences expect. I hate to sound like a grumpy old geezer ("Quit playing on my lawn, you kids!") but I would love to see a revival of the slow zombie, where the experience was less that of a shoot-em-up video game and more like, "It doesn't matter what you do, we're gonna get ya."

But, heck, I guess I'd still take a bad zombie movie over a good romantic comedy any day. Got any suggestions for good Slow Zombie movies?

(Zombie Bits, my Z collection with bonus material from Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney, and Jack Konrath, is available at Amazon, BN, Apple, and Kobo. The Murdermouth comic is still in development as I seek ways to raise funds for it.)



Thanks for sharing your list!
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Oct 30: Pre-Halloweening

Today's Kindle Giveaway Book Blog stop is at http://themindfulmusingsbookblog.blogspot.com/

Trade paperback graphic anthology Grave Conditions releases Oct. 31--J.A. Konrath, Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Stephen Susco, William Harms, Lavie Tidhar, and more. Order today and get free bonus sketch cards from Shane Kirshenblatt and Digger. http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/comics.htm

My new crime thriller Disintegration officially launches Nov. 1. All author proceeds from sales of October Girls from Oct 25-Oct 31 will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

If you're a writer, why not swing by and pick up your free copy of Write Good or Die?
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Comics, funny books, graphic novels

Whew, what a week. Putting together the final pieces of the Grave Conditions comics project. We'll end up with three digital issues and one trade paperback of about 90 pages. I am pleased to have Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Stephen Susco, William Harms, Sergio Castro, Kewber Alves, Louis Bermer, Chad Blevins, Shane Kirshenblatt, and more in it. More than a year in the making, with the corpses of a few artists laying by the roadside, I have to say I am pleased with all the hard work, talent, and vision in these stories. I'm not sure I want to undertake another such project, but now I am glad I did it.

We'll have digital issues out starting in April, with the trade paperback coming out in early May. The Dirt trade paperback will likely be out in May as well. In addition goes the regular writing and revising. I have also decided to release the supernatural thriller DRUMMER BOY in April and the psychological thriller DISINTEGRATION in May. That's all for now--getting ready for the big comic convention tomorrow. Fun, art, and a lot of moving tables and chairs!

By the way, thanks for all your support on the ebooks--they are still selling steadily, which is why I've decided to release more.

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