David Moody's Blog, page 59

SCREAM issue 29

There are a number of upcoming movies I’ve got my eyes on, and several of them are featured in this month’s issue of SCREAM magazine. MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT is an unnecessary (but intriguing) sequel to Gareth Edwards’ superb 2010 MONSTERS, and IT FOLLOWS just sounds phenomenal. The directors of both movies are interviewed in an issue which also includes features on Eli Roth’s CLOWN, the history of Italian zombie movies, and a retrospective piece on Robin Hardy’s seminal THE WICKER MAN.

Yes, I pimp it every month, and yes, I know the folks behind it, but I have a huge amount of time and respect for SCREAM magazine and I urge you to grab a copy. Visit www.screamhorrormag.com, or pick up the magazine from any branch of HMV, Forbidden Planet, or any of the newsagents listed here. SCREAM is also available digitally as iSCREAM!

SCREAM issue 29 is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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Kerb Crawlers

You’ll remember the name James Plumb from earlier posts. He’s a fellow SCARdiff alumni, and director of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: RESURRECTION, which I talked about here. James was kind enough to let me watch his new movie, KERB CRAWLERS, ahead of release. The long and the short of it: this is a sick, twisted and depraved little movie. And I loved every second of it. Here’s the synopsis and a trailer (warning, definitely NSFW – don’t watch if you’re easily offended). Click the link below for my thoughts.

Hired to make a depraved snuff movie, five men abduct a young woman to be their plaything for the night. However once the cameras start rolling so do heads as they discover their victim belongs to another… something living inside of her… something monstrous. The tables now turned, the men will receive a lesson on true pain and torture as they become the “stars” of the film.

KERB CRAWLERS gives me hope for the future of film-making. Sure, it won’t be to everyone’s tastes, and some will no doubt find the premise offensive, but that’s beside the point. What we have here is an exercise in sharp, efficient and professional standard indie movie making. James Plumb and the team at Mad Science Films have taken a pretty tasteless concept and created something sleek, smart and compulsively watchable.

Performances across the board are strong (particularly from Matthew Batte as Blair and Lee Bane as Grant). I hesitate to describe KERB CRAWLERS as a found-footage movie, because although it most definitely is, it successfully avoids all the pitfalls of that tired old sub-genre. There’s a reason everything is being filmed: it’s an integral part of the story and it works perfectly. Loved the soundtrack, loved the graphics, loved the pacing, loved the gore.

KERB CRAWLERS comes very highly recommended. The film doesn’t have a release date yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything. In the meantime, you’ll be able to meet James (and Wayne Simmons, and me, for that matter) at the Cardiff Independent Comic Expo 2015 on 27 June. All the details you need can be found here.

Just remember: There are no good guys.

Kerb Crawlers is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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Something for the weekend?

Remember me? I know… it’s been deathly quiet around here lately. As I keep saying, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes that I can’t talk about yet (don’t you just hate it when people post that kind of empty, bullshit comment and leave you hanging?!).

Anyway, here’s something for you. From now until midnight Sunday, you can download my gruesome little zombie invasion story THE COST OF LIVING for absolutely nothing. Zip. Bugger all. I hope you enjoy it (though enjoy probably isn’t the right word to use). Click here or on the banner below to get it.

I’ll be back soon with some fresh news. Big news. Honest. Until then, I need to get back to writing about man-eating monsters destroying Birmingham (sorry, Birmingham).

Something for the weekend? is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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An apology

There’s lots of really cool stuff going on in the background here (which is probably why there doesn’t seem to be much going on in the foreground… no posts for a couple of weeks which isn’t good).

Unfortunately we’ve had to postpone tomorrow evening’s scheduled live This is Horror podcast. As soon as a rescheduled date is available, I’ll announce it here.

It will all be worth the wait. Promise.

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Forthcoming Events

A quick reminder of a couple of live events coming up towards the end of February.

On Saturday 21 at 3:00pm I’ll be at SOUTHCART BOOKS in Walsall alongside Wayne Simmons. We’ll be doing one of our famous ‘double-headers’ – talking, reading, signing books and taking questions about our work and the business of writing in general. More details can be found here. And as you can see from the picture to the right, creepy store mascot Claude the Clown is already getting in the mood.

A few days later on Tuesday 24 at 10:00pm (subject to confirmation), I’ll be taking part in the first ever live THIS IS HORROR podcast. You can find more information about the show here, and please send in any questions you’d like answered. We’ll do our best to get through as many of them as we can. Get yourself in the mood by listening to our free JOE AND ME audiobook, and while you’re at it, why not subscribe to the This is Horror podcast using the following links: iTunes / RSS

Forthcoming Events is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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Time to Talk

I’ve been intending to write this piece for a while, but I didn’t know how to start or when to post it. Today’s the day. Today, if you didn’t know, is Time to Talk day and like thousands of other people, I’m taking five minutes to talk about my experiences with the aim of breaking the silence (and stigma) around mental health. Please don’t switch off. Please read through to the end.

You see, last May, my world fell apart. My personal life, my relationships, my health, my career – everything crumbled and collapsed. None of it made sense anymore, and I couldn’t see a way to start repairing the damage. Hell, I didn’t even know if I wanted to fix things.

That might sound overdramatic, but that’s exactly how it felt. One day everything was fine, the next… Well it still makes me go cold thinking about those days. I’ve spent hours, days, weeks and months since then trying to put everything back together and make sense of what happened, and if there hadn’t been such a stigma about mental health, I think that perhaps my meltdown could have been avoided or at least lessened.

I’d always been the big man. I’d done pretty well in everything I tried to do. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, it’s just the way I am. I work hard. Sometimes too hard. Five years ago I felt invincible with a great family, good health, a lovely home and a career that felt like it was skyrocketing. A couple of years back, though, something changed. We moved house, and I fulfilled my writing obligations. Then, all of a sudden, nothing. Bigger bills, no book deals. I felt increasingly disconnected from everything and everyone, and became increasingly reclusive. My mood changed. I was banging my head against a brick wall. The words didn’t stop coming, but the flood of books I was producing reduced to a slow trickle. I stopped being excited by writing, and it began to feel like a chore. Stories remained uncompleted. Ideas were shelved. I spent more time thinking about what I should have been doing, than actually doing any of it.

I’ll cut a long story short: I was pretty seriously depressed, and I had no idea at all. Or maybe I did know, I just didn’t want to accept it…

Last summer everything came to a head. And contrary to how it felt at the time, being diagnosed with depression wasn’t the end of my world; instead it was a chance to press reset, to get myself back on track, and to learn to love myself and my world again.

Forgive me if that sounds a little saccharine and cliched, because it happens to be true. Thanks to an incredible family, a great GP, and a bunch of other wonderful folk, things are moving in the right direction. I’ve gone back to non-writing work to make sure I mix with other people, and I’m loving the buzz of spending time with folks again. I was worried it might have meant the end of my writing, but I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve written the first draft of a new novel since 1 January. There’s progress on a number of long-gestating projects. Infected Books is growing exponentially. I’m more excited by writing than ever.

As I said at the beginning, it’s Time to Talk day today (find out more about it here and here), and the aim of the day is to reduce some of the stigma around mental health. Lots of people suffer, and a large number continue to suffer in silence. I think I’d known for a long time what was wrong, I just didn’t want to admit it. Bloody hell, I wish I’d been more honest with myself. It would have saved me (and the people I love the most) a heck of a lot of pain and heartache.

I’m a writer, and this site is supposed to be about my books and films, so I’ll finish this piece by bringing it back to the business of writing. Regular visitors here will remember my series of writing articles ‘What Works for Me.’ You might have noticed they dried up around the same time I imploded last spring. It’s been incredibly interesting to look back at the books I’ve written over the last two years or so in light of what I’ve discovered about myself, because if I wasn’t outwardly honest with myself about my health, I definitely had some inkling of what was going on as I’d been writing about my problems all along. I only have to look at the male characters I’d created… there’s Steven Johnson from STRAIGHT TO YOU – a man who is on the verge of losing absolutely everything because he can’t bring himself to face his own demons. There’s Stuart from THE COST OF LIVING – a belligerent, stubborn bugger who’s set on his course and who won’t listen to anyone else, even when they’re clearly right and he’s so very obviously wrong. And then, finally, there’s Scott Griffiths from STRANGERS. I’ve had a huge reaction to Scott, not least because he’s an absolute shit: a total, wretched scumbag who outwardly appears to be dedicated to his family, but who has a seriously warped view of right and wrong and no appreciation of how his behaviour affects those around him. I was terrified and stunned when I read the book back just prior to publication and realised I’d been writing about aspects of myself.

Things are good today. Thanks for sticking with me. There’s some really exciting stuff on the horizon.

If anything I’ve written about affects you or someone you know, please find Time to Talk today.

Time to Talk is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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LAST OF THE LIVING ebook

While I’ve got my head down working on new projects (and that’s what I am doing, honest), I’m also trying to catch up on an ever-increasing backlog of emails, blurbs, business things to organise, and so on. Sometimes things slip through the net, and I have a feeling that’s what might have happened here. I can’t remember posting about the ebook version of LAST OF THE LIVING.

You’ll probably remember that I released a couple of Kindle-exclusive zombie novellas last year: THE COST OF LIVING and ISOLATION. Together with various other zombie shorts (some reprints, others written specifically for the project), these stories amounted to around 90,000 words of fiction, which is about the length of a novel.

I’m conscious that not everyone like ebooks, so we released all this undead goodness in print as LAST OF THE LIVING. You can find out more about the collection here, and signed copies are available direct from Infected Books or from Amazon or eBay. In keeping with the Infected Books ebook ethos, if you buy the paperback edition of LAST OF THE LIVING – from any source – you’re entitled to download a complementary ebook version. And here’s the bit I don’t think I made clear before: the complementary ebook is available for Nook, iBooks and Kobo as well as Kindle.

Apologies to anyone who’s held off reading the stories because of format issues.

Keep and eye on the Infected Books site in the near future, because we’re going to be announcing a partnership that’ll make it easier than ever for you to claim your complementary ebooks when you pick up an IB release. Why not check out the range today and see if there are any you’re missing? There are always good deals on, and every book you order direct from IB comes personally signed by me!

LAST OF THE LIVING ebook is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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The Ultimate Undead Collection is out tomorrow

I posted a while back to tell you about THE ULTIMATE UNDEAD COLLECTION – an incredibly low price ebook collection of zombie stories. It’s out tomorrow, so here are all the relevant links and a full list of contents. Enjoy! You’d be hard pushed to find this much zombie goodness elsewhere for such a crazy price.

Quarantined by Joe McKinney
The Last Survivors by Bobby Adair and T.W. Piperbrook
The Colony: Genesis (Book 1) by Michaelbrent Collings
Autumn: The Human Condition by David Moody
Trudge: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser
Until the End of the World by Sarah Lyons Fleming
Zombie Wilson Diaries by Timothy W. Long
100 Days in Deadland by Rachel Aukes
Dead Hunger: The Flex Chronicle by Eric A. Shelman
Dying Days by Armand Rosamilia

AMAZON.COM / AMAZON.CO.UK / AMAZON.CA / AMAZON.DE / AMAZON.ES / AMAZON.IT / AMAZON.AU / IBOOKS / KOBO

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SCREAM Issue 28

The team behind SCREAM have been long-time supporters of my work, and it’s an absolute pleasure to be able to return the favour and promote each and every new issue of this great horror mag. It gets better and better each month. Maybe it’s just me, but SCREAM seems to regularly prey upon many of my horror weaknesses and it’s become compulsive reading. It manages to feel fresh and contemporary, whilst retaining the look and feel of the horror mags I remember from my youth.

The new issue is out now, and it’s an absolute peach. Packed with plenty of news, reviews and interviews, I particularly enjoyed the interviews with David Morrissey (THE WALKING DEAD), and Jennifer Rubin (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 – an early horror crush from my younger days!). With features on Italian zombie movies, the new Australian zombie film WYRMWOOD, and THE WOMAN IN BLACK: ANGEL OF DEATH, I’d recommend getting your hands on a copy asap.

Visit www.screamhorrormag.com, or pick up the magazine from any branch of HMV, Forbidden Planet, or any of the newsagents listed here. SCREAM is also now available digitally as iSCREAM!

SCREAM Issue 28 is a post from: David Moody - author of AUTUMN and HATER

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Two Bald Blokes – Back on the Road

Remember when Wayne Simmons and I embarked on our ‘Never Trust a Man with Hair‘ tour a couple of years back? Well, we’re getting the band back together!

I’m very excited to announce we’ll be appearing together at Southcart Books in Walsall on February 21 at 3:00pm. Hear us read, bicker, reminisce, talk about the future of Infected Books and publishing as a whole, and generally put the world to rights.

This was originally to be an event hosted by Jasper Bark to support the release of his new Prime Cuts but, unfortunately, Jasper can no longer make it. Keep an eye on Southcart Books, though, as he’ll now be appearing there in March.

Southcart Books can be found on Facebook here, and in the real world here:

 

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