Bryan Cassiday's Blog, page 32
January 2, 2013
Brand-new Rave Review for “Sanctuary in Steel”
“Cassiday blends thoughtful suspense and pulse-pounding terror to deliver a novel with both bite and creeping dread.”–David Dunwoody, author of Empire and The Harvest Cycle
January 1, 2013
Amazon’s Review Policy: Sock Puppets not Wanted
According to the New York Times (12/23/2012), you do not have to read a book on their Web site in order to review that book. A spokesman for Amazon said, ”We do not require people to have experienced the product in order to review.”
This means that anybody who wants to read my new zombie book Sanctuary in Steel, or has added it to their TBR list, can post a review like, “I’m looking forward to reading Sanctuary in Steel,” and Amazon will not delete the review.
However, sock puppets are discouraged. A sock puppet is a false identity created by a person in order to deceive. Apparently writers like Stephen Leather and John Locke created sock puppets in order to post positive reviews of their books under phony names.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with authors posting reviews of their own books. After all, no less a writer than the French author of The Human Comedy Honore de Balzac used to do it all the time.
I have recently posted on Amazon a review of my new zombie apocalypse thriller Sanctuary in Steel. Amazon published it. As of this moment, my review is still posted on Amazon. Of course, there’s no chicanery involved. I signed the review with my own name. If I had used a sock puppet, maybe Amazon would have deleted the review. The problem with using my own name on the review is that nobody will pay much attention to it, thinking it biased. A sock puppet’s review would carry more weight with visitors to my book’s Amazon page.
But sock puppets aren’t allowed on Amazon anymore.
December 26, 2012
“Sanctuary in Steel” in Trade Paperback
Bryan Cassiday’s zombie apocalypse thriller Sanctuary in Steel is available in trade paperback at Amazon.
Don’t you miss the old-fashioned feel of a good paperback book in your hands? Here’s your chance to remember what it feels like.
December 22, 2012
“Sanctuary in Steel” Gets a Makeover
Here’s the new cover art for Bryan Cassiday’s zombie apocalypse thriller Sanctuary in Steel.
This new cover will soon be available at Amazon.
December 19, 2012
The Apocalypse Isn’t Going Away
If we survive Dec. 21, 2012 (the last day of earth’s existence, according to the ancient Mayan calendar), the apocalypse won’t disappear. All you have to do is look at the popularity of post-apocalyptic TV shows like The Walking Dead and Revolution. The apocalypse is here to stay.
Whether it’s a zombie apocalypse or a world without electricity run by a Gestapo-like militia (as in Revolution), people can’t get enough of the apocalypse. They want to know what it’s like to try to survive in a world teetering on the brink of annihilation.
Back in the day, you needed a bunker mentality to even acknowledge the apocalypse. The end of the world appealed only to kooky flakes holed up in caves cached with a plethora of canned beans, double-barreled shotguns, a couple thousand rounds of ammo, Sterno, and enough bottles of Johnny Walker to open your own gin mill. Sadly, or maybe not, those days are gone.
Nowadays, more or less everybody is watching The Walking Dead, reading zombie books like Max Brooks’s World War Z or Stephen King’s Cell, or watching movies like 28 Weeks Later. The nearer the end gets, the more we want to experience it, it seems.
In fact, zombie apocalypse books are so popular they have become a separate genre, instead of being lumped under the rubric of horror or science fiction. And yet, bookstores don’t get it. Behind the curve, they still stack zombie books in their Horror or Science Fiction shelves, as does the public library (at least the one in my vicinity).
The world’s changing. Not long ago, zombie books didn’t even exist, but now zombie books, due to their proliferation, especially among small publishers, demand their own separate section in bookstores. After all, the apocalypse is just beginning!
November 29, 2012
New Zombie Short Story on Kindle–The Zombie and the Chess Master
Bryan Cassiday has a new zombie short story and more on Kindle for only 99 cents on Amazon. Included are three sample chapters from Sanctuary in Steel. The chess master meets his match in “The Zombie and the Chess Master” by Bryan Cassiday, the author of the new zombie novel Sanctuary in Steel (available in paperback and on Kindle).
November 20, 2012
Zombies Books–the New Pulp Fiction
Zombie books have become today’s pulp fiction. Like their close relative film noir, they depict a bleak, dystopian world where the heroes or antiheroes must fight, kill, and do anything else it takes to survive in a hostile environment, frequently at the expense of their moral sense–if they have any to begin with.
In yesteryear’s pulp fiction, the antiheroes are often criminals on the lam who become entangled in ever more harrowing situations. In zombie books, the heroes tend to be ordinary people enmeshed in the cataclysm of a zombie apocalypse in which they must do everything they can simply to survive one more day.
Pulp fiction writers like Jim Thompson wrote about criminals, like the casually homicidal cop Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me, who exist in a hopeless amoral world and become as amoral as the world around them in order to survive.
Current zombie writers such as Joe McKinney write about characters like Michael Barnes in Apocalypse of the Dead, a Houston cop who becomes a sociopath as he slaughters zombies in his desperate bid to stay alive.
Bleak and violent (like their predecessor pulp fiction), zombie books reflect an undercurrent of malaise and a feeling of hopelessness in our time as the economy collapses and the world seems to be spinning out of control toward annihilation.
November 16, 2012
"Sanctuary in Steel" Now on Nook
Sanctuary in Steel
November 13, 2012
Joe McKinney’s Rave Review of “Sanctuary in Steel”
I just received Joe McKinney’s plaudits for my new zombie thriller Sanctuary in Steel:
“With Sanctuary in Steel, Bryan Cassiday has given the Californian coastline a beating like it’s never had before. Written with the epic scope of World War Z and infused with the gritty spook works derring-do of a Robert Ludlum spy thriller, Sanctuary in Steel is full of zombie mayhem through and through.” –Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance
Sanctuary in Steel by Bryan Cassiday is now available at Amazon.
