Mark Tufo's Blog, page 2
September 5, 2014
ZF Fan Fiction
My JournalEntry one: Today I am starting a journal because it was suggested by a traveler that my thoughts may prove interesting for someone in the future. I have never kept a journal but he finds it comforting and I want to give it a try. I hope the reader will forgive my writing style, Mike says just write it in a way that tells the story. So here goes.
Mike and his family/friends arrived here the day before yesterday. I saw them calling out and knocking on doors in my neighborhood. I liked the way they tried to be polite and walked up to them. They looked exhausted and hungry. I introduced myself and offered to take them to a shelter house Robin (my sister) and I had prepared for refugees. They looked surprised and a little leery but agreed to follow me. I took them to two homes on Foxrun Avenue. These two houses have running water and propane hot water heaters. There is a working stove and gas fridge and it is stocked for guests. I thought Mike was going to hug me when he realized he was getting a hot shower. I liked this guy. I told him, "Welcome to Georgetown, Kentucky".
I went by last night to check on them and everybody was in bed. Mike was standing guard duty. I told him it was unnecessary but he said he didn't sleep much anymore would feel better keeping an eye out for trouble. He said it liked to follow him around. I laughed and said I could understand that but that I hadn't seen a zombie weeks and nobody would come into my neighborhood anymore. He laughed and asked me if I was a badass. I told him I was much, much worse, a pariah. Since we were sitting out and it was a nice night I told him my story.
I used to like zombies. I read every zombie book I could find. If it was about zombies...I was up for it. I recorded The Walking Dead on two DVRs to make sure I got it. I would have watched it "live" but it was on late and I go to work at 4:45 a.m. I especially liked audiobooks, had an entire zombie collection.
I worked as a nurse at the University of Kentucky, Chandler Medical Center. A level One Trauma Center, capitalized because it is a big deal. If nobody else can handle the train wreck of your problems, you end up at a Level One Trauma Center, nearly everybody I took care of was on life support.
I was at work when I heard the first reports of the dead coming back to life. The announcers acted like they thought they were being punked...my mind went into overdrive. No...it couldn't be...could it? I thought about it all day and then said, “What the hell, why not?” After work I started on my crazy plan. I have a $10,000 credit limit on my credit card and I am going to max it out. I put a down payment on a nice little RV and stocked it with everything I thought I might need. I got a solar package with the RV for power, a case of solar lights, sterno, case of lighters, case of coffee (I like coffee), cereal, dry milk, canned and dried foods, toilet paper..well you get the idea. I went to Lowes and got plywood for my windows, I got hardware to secure my doors. I left everything in the packages--so I could return them if the zombie thing didn't happen. The prevailing theory was that it would take about 10 years for the zombies to get to Kentucky--we are about 10 years behind on everything else!! HaHa. That was what people thought.
I called Robin in New Mexico and MADE her come for a visit. Robin worked as the director of the commissary at the largest prison in New Mexico. She barely knew what a zombie was. I liked fantasy--Robin watched stuff like Scared Straight, too much drama for me. She is a logistical genius. 3000 prisoners and their families relied on her to provide snacks, clothes and hygiene stuff for the prisoners. Do you know how handy it is to have a logistical genius during a Zombie invasion? Wow she was unbelievable! The help she provided for families was incredible. You know how in the zombie books people take over the stores and protect the assets with guns? That didn't happen here. Robin and her crew dispensed the supplies as they were needed and people BROUGHT stuff to the stores for trade. She made it work with a no nonsense attitude--just like she used with the prisoners. You can have a guy with a AK47 show up to take over the store vs. my sister and my sister will winevery time. Look how she organized your family when you got here! Did anybody get a vote? No, I didn't think so! But...she was right, you all got what you needed. Hot showers, good food, privacy and the special things that make this place a respite for travelers. We offer these homes to travelers who are passing through the area. If you want to stay, we can send you to people who can help you get established.
Anyway, back to my story..the zombies were in the major cities and spreading devastation within days. Panic was starting but people here still thought the government was going to do something to stop it. I thought the government was going to make it worse. So I made a plan..yep me...a plan. I am not a military commander and my only experience was, get this...I liked to read zombie books. There is a gravel pit about 2 miles from my home. Every afternoon between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. they set off explosives. My neighbor is an engineer and used to work there. He said the tunnels go back for about a mile. I went there and inquired about buying some gravel and talked to the guys about the set-up. They didn't offer to show me how to set off explosives but I got a good bit of information that I hoped to never need.
A few days later, zombies came to Lexington. Within hours they were here. The plywood went up and we waited it out. Within 24 hours my zombie fantasy was reality. I spent those hours storing information on my ipad (car charger). I wanted to know where to go if we survived. I wanted places to go where somebody had set-up their house off-the-grid. Solar, wells, septic tank, food gardens. I wasn't looking for the dumbass that built a castle in the woods to keep out raiders, I wanted the Mother Earth News kinda guy. I am an optimist that way. I didn't buy a lot of guns and amo. This is Kentucky, you can't throw a rock without hitting a gun collector here. I figured it wouldn't be much of a problem. Mike wanted to know more about my information hoard. A virtual survivor is a person who dosen't want to commit the funds to surviving--but wants to know where to find what you might need. I surfed the net for y-tube videos, off-the-grid solutions, primitive living solutions, home-grown medications etc. Like football fantasy team for zombie geeks. The information is stored on my computer--not on the web, since the web went down a few days into the disaster. Personally, I want my own island in the Caribbean sea. Hard to get here in my RV hybrid though! I've got a few other possiblities...but it is hard to leave home. We have a pretty good set-up here but the winter is tough. Plus what is going to happen to the zombies? Will they rot and just disappear? I heard from Mike they hybernate. Crap.
Here is the way it went down. You know, the best zombie stories are the beginning of the series. Where you get to see how they survived and see what worked and what didn't, well here goes...Georgetown is a place where they made theCambry for Toyota. About 50% of the people worked at the plant, about 10% at the schools and another 10% in local business. The rest didn't work or went to Lexington. The Toyota plant is about 10 miles east of my house and the schools (elementary, middle and high) are on the other side of town about 8 miles to the west. Georgetown University is in the center of town but was basically closed for the summer, Thank God!! Toyota must have treated the zombie invasion as a terrorist event and shut the plant--with the workers inside. Nobody gets in or out until the situation is under control, departments locked down. At first everybody was okay with the plan, after all they didn't think it would be more than a few hours. Then they started getting panic texts from family about zombies in the schools. Moms and family members were rushing to pick up the kids. Kids had been bitten and teachers were taking care of them. You can guess how that went. Zombies took minutes to hours to turn. Soon there were hundreds of bitten kids, moms, teachers and it was spreading like wildfire. The west side of town was overtaken within hours. The people at the plant were not getting updates from family. Those that were getting news got unbelievable reports. The workers wanted to go home. The managers understood but denied all requests to open the doors. It wasn't long before the auto workers found equipment to start breaking out. But Toyota isn't made up of a bunch of stupid people and they were right, the workers should have just stayed there for a few days or weeks. They know how to secure a plant but the workers were determined to get home to their families. It was terrible. From what I understand the workers went a little crazy, who wouldn't? The zombies got to them because they forced holes in the defenses. I don't know anybody who made it out, but that is what I heard. I wonder what happened. Maybe someday I will hear the story first hand.
We still had electricity and internet in those first few days. I went on the Georgetown city page (where people were posting messages for police and firemen to come save them) and proposed my plan. Lure the zombies to the gravel pit and blow them up in the tunnels. I thought zombies would be attracted by sound and wanted volunteers to play the car stereo loud and get zombies to follow them to the pits and others would have arranged IUDs for the zombies and others would shoot any that survived from the ridge of the pit. I wanted drivers like the Dukes of Hazard, military guys and hunters. I was a idiot. I watched too much TV. I read too many fantasy books. These hillbillies jumped on board The Plan. We worked it out onlineand people who were trapped in their houses wanted a way out, and something to do. We are Americans! We can do this. I was a total dumb ass, any military leader would tell you this idea would take a couple of months to work out. We did it in days over the internet.
If we had enough military experience, maybe we could have made it work perfect. We made it work a little. The first day two 20 something girls died, they were drivers--bringing the zombies to the pits. They missed their turn. They made a u-turn to correct their mistake. A FREAKING U-TURN!! The zombies that were following the cars that made it to the pit were not as interested in following the sounds of the Grateful Dead CD we were playing, as they were in eating the drivers in the parked cars. Imagine that! I stood there on the rim with the gunmen and watched my plan not working. I ran down the side and started yelling at the zombies from the bottom. "Come here...Got your nice juicy human"! Idiot. Well they started coming..but just a few. Then others came down to help me. "Get out of here" I told them "I am an old lady (54) and I don't have kids, get back"! They came anyway and six of us got the zombies to follow us into the tunnel. There was a way out and we ran for the exit. I was the slowest. These guys ran like track stars! Dammit! I needed my inhaler but I made it. I pantomimed a boom while gasping, the demo team set off the explosives. The end of the tunnel collapsed and a lot of zombies were ended. The gunmen got the stragglers and we had a meeting to work out the problems. No celebration let me tell you. We were drained. We decided to do it again the next day and cleared out another area of town. By the fourth day, the guys looked pretty bad. I didn't think they were sleeping. We had destroyed hundreds of children zombies. Their families were fractured. Their souls were disintegrating. This must be what it is like for soldiers, I thought. We knew what we were doing was important but it was killing the humanity that made us the people we thought we were. We held it together long enough to clean out the town... Afterwards, two guys killed themselves.
If you think for a minute that the townspeople thought I was a hero for pulling this together you are wrong. I was told that I was "just like Hitler with the Jews". I led their family members to the pit and killed them in cold blood with my Nazi helpers. I am a nurse and know how grief works. DABDA we call it. Denial (10 years for zombies to reach KY), anger (Hitler and hernazis) bargaining (if we hate her then we are not responsible for killing our kids, friends and family) depression and acceptance. We have the anger and depression in full force here. Nobody is ready to say that what we did was for the best. You can't say what you are thinking. Not yet, maybe never. All these houses are empty because anybody alive in my neighborhood moved out—wouldn’t want to be associated with me. It is too bad because my sister, Robin had been helping a lot of people get food and clothing organized as I was working on my project. She is driving me nuts with nothing to do.
Mike thanked me for nursing his friend who was zombie bit and I told him is was okay because we were bit too and knew how it felt. He said he hadn't heard of anybody surviving the bite. So I told him about getting bit on the fifth day of the crisis. I was stupid and let it happen during the pit project. I went home and asked Robin to kill me. She said she would tie me up and take me out after I turned into a zombie. I talked and cried and talked some more and we waited. I had to pee. I chair walked to the shower and sat there waiting to turn. I got hungry and Robin made me a sandwich (which she fed me with thebarbecue tongs). I got tired and slept. Days went by. We talked about why I wasn’t turning. I wanted to get untied. She wanted to give it more time. I wanted to kill her. I had been tied up FOUR days before she cut me loose!! We were hardly talking by that time. Yeah laugh now—you try it! A couple of weeks later Robin got caught out in the yard. I had a gun and got the zombie but not before he got a piece of her. Now it was her turn to get tied up. Four days later I turned her loose. Good thing I had the gun is all I have to say. We talked a lot about why we didn’t turn and we have a couple of theories.
Mike wanted to hear some more but I was tired, I will tell more tomorrow.
January 16, 2014
Mayan Prophecy
I'm like 'shit what is going on?' Went back in grabbed a flashlight (still have the gun). I walk out on to my deck and go behind my house. The breathing is louder, I shine my flashlight down and there's a friggen black bear, looking up at me, I may have screamed, it was dark I couldn't tell. The bear didn't move except his head, he swiveled up to look at me. His eyes were wide and he looked petrified, I noticed wounds on his forearms and his back. I'm thinking what the hell attacked a bear. Pack of wolves maybe?
So now I'm thinking I'm way too far from the front door. I start edging back, the bear makes this low moaning sound and I hear him go thundering through the woods to the west side of my house. If he's spooked, I'm spooked. I start to hear shit in the woods on the other side of the house and I'm thinking, what a poor choice of weaponry I grabbed. I stayed a minute longer to see....them coming. It's started, my house is surrounded I don't know how much longer I'll have power. Good luck and God Bl....
I'm so exhausted. We made it through the night. The basement is lost...they...are...in...the...house. We've barricaded the door that leads downstairs, heavy oak, should hold them. But what's disconcerting is that I see the handle TURN from time to time.
It's just Travis, Tracy, Henry, Riley and myself. Maybe we should have done shifts to watch that damned door. I just want to be the first and hopefully last line of defense. I don't know what they are, human once. Not anymore. If you're reading this, you need to know THEY ARE FAST.
I thought I could keep them from getting inside the basement, went through two magazines. It looks like a head OR a heart shot will stop them. When I turned to pop my 3rd magazine in, they came and they came fast. I barely made it up the stairs ahead of them, felt more than one hand reach and grab for my calf. If Travis hadn't of opened the door I guess I would have been a late night snack.
It sickens me to think they're below us. My wife's Jeep is 25 feet and 500 ravenous sub-humans away. We're stuck, I heard sirens about 5 hours ago, pretty sure they're not going to make it. Once upon a time I'd wished for a zombie apocalypse. Be careful what you wish for, I don't know if we'll make it through the day.
I guess I figured it wouldn’t end like this. It’s kind of ironic, my last meal is going to be a fucking cherry pop-tart. I’m wincing every time I have to take a bite. The basement door is cracking, all efforts to keep that from happening have failed. Travis, Tracy me and the dogs have grabbed all the ammo and all the guns, and have retreated (fuck that Marines don’t retreat, we’ve withdrawn to readjust!) to the upstairs. We didn’t even bother grabbing anything besides some snacks this was not going to be a long withdrawn siege. Unlike ZF1 I do not have the luxury of being able to remove stairs.
Travis and I are shoulder to shoulder and will blow zombies to whatever maker they belong. Tracy after a quick lesson will be our re-loader. We’ve got enough bullets to coat my living room floor in 6 inches of enemy blood. If and when we finally fall even the zombies will have to take pause at the losses they suffered, and if this were middle-earth they would sing songs of our heroics.
Travis stiffened, I sagged, as we heard the basement door splinter, it’s show time. We locked the dogs in the master suite bathroom, I hope when the zombies are finished with us they leave them in peace somehow I could die a tad bit happier if that thought held true. The first zombies rounded the corner they were running so fast they couldn’t make the sharp turn to come up the stairs. More than a few slammed into the far wall and so it begins, Travis fired the first shot. I think it hit a shoulder but it was impossible to tell as we started to light them up. Rounds fired this close were devastating, arms fractured off, heads ruptured, dripping gray diseased mass across the wooden walls.
More than once my mind began to wander and wonder how I would get those stains out. They didn’t stop, no matter how many we blew apart, no matter how many times we changed out rifles and handguns, no matter how many times Tracy reloaded magazines and cartridges, they still came. No matter how many times that fucking cherry pop-tart threatened to reemerge, they came.
So far the zombies hadn’t got past mid-way on the stairs, still entirely too close, what’s that five, seven feet max? I thought for the briefest of seconds we would have to retreat to my bedroom. At that point it would have been a waiting game. This was our Alamo, our final stand was here, we left this spot and we might as well have turned the guns on ourselves and saved the zombies the trouble. It’s a stand-off right now, they’re slowing up trying to slog through the death and detritus of their dead, and we’re exhausted, thankfully we’re not yet running low on ammo, but the zombies seem to be in endless supply. I’ll write again when I can. Is it Christmas yet? We could use a miracle.
Been up 48 hours straight. I can barely focus. There were times in the Corps during battle I’d stayed awake 72 hours. But that was 6000 miles and 25 years ago. I’m a different man than I was then, I cared for little, including myself. This constant worry for my wife and son (and dogs) is draining. There is no cessation in fighting, the enemy needs not regroup, re-plan or reform, they just come unmercifully. There will be no quarter, no surrender, and no Christmas greeting across the span of the battlefield.
We were spent, physically and emotionally and it didn’t help that we had all suffered a fair amount of hearing damage from so many shots. Dialog was difficult. “Running low on 9 millimeter!” Tracy shouted. That was fine with me, gripping the small Glock 26 was murder on my hand and forearms anyway and if I didn’t damn near have the thing pressed against a zombie head it was difficult to hit something.
I could hear Henry barking off to my left, that was unusual although he could be hungry or Riley was beefing so bad he couldn’t breathe, both were highly likely. “Did you hear that!” Tracy yelled.
If she was talking about the mini-explosions that heralded the outgoing trajectory of a bullet, I’m pretty sure I’d heard it about twelve hundred times. I’d sent Travis into the master bedroom to see if he could get some sleep, we were going to have to do this in shifts if we were to have a chance. Typical teenager he was somehow able to sleep. The dead zombies had piled up so high they were an effective barrier against a bull rush of the smelly bastards.
Tracy even had some time to sit down next to me on the top step and take some shots. She kept closing her eyes as she pulled the trigger, maybe because she was afraid of the noise or just in the off-chance she would hit something and have to see the devastation the bullet caused. Either way I didn’t blame her.
I laughed.
“You laughing at me?” Tracy asked as she almost fell over from her last shot.
“Hell no, my enemy is to the front I see no reason to have one from the side.”
“Then what?” She asked.
“I’ve written, what? Ten books on zombies.”
“Probably.”
“I guess I thought I’d be better at this.”
“We’re still alive.” She said tenderly.
“Yeah that’s a positive. I’m going to be pissed if we die though.”
“What?”
“Do you know how many readers I’ve told that if I’m the first zombie or the first victim in a zombie apocalypse I’m going to be ripped!”
“I think they’ll understand.”
“Did you hear that?” I asked Tracy as I stood up.
“Gunshots. Our neighbors?”
We live in the sticks, ‘neighbors’ is a term used loosely. I’ve lived in houses where I could have reached out my window and borrowed my neighbor’s ketchup (not that I would mind you, who knows where that bottle’s been). We’d heard shooting from houses in our general vicinity but nothing for a long while.
“Mark you in there?”
‘It’s Ron!” Tracy and I exclaimed at the same time.
“Hon.”
“On it.” Tracy answered.
Our bathroom window over looked the driveway, the only viable approach. Although I guess that was wrong, the zombies had materialized through the dense thorn laden woods. Enough to stop a sane human, not so with our latest dinner guests.
I could hear them exchanging words, but like I said earlier I had suffered no small measure of hearing loss since this started and since I had been attending concerts since the ripe old age of 12 I didn’t have much I could afford to lose going into this battle.
“We’ve got problems.” Travis said coming out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes.
“You don’t say?” I asked him popping off the head of what looked like a 12 year old girl.
I retched a little inside my mouth, that was about the sixth or seventh time I tasted that fucking cherry pop-tart and it got worse each and every time. Serves me right for eating Devil’s fare.
“Uncle Ron’s leaving.”
“Fuck. Sorry.” What I thought was the cavalry was merely a message delivery.
Tracy’s head was hanging low when she came back out of the bedroom.
“He had to leave. They started to surround his car.”
Ron’s car was a 1992 Subaru, that was one pot hole away from its final resting place.
“Did he tell you anything?” I asked.
“Yeah he came here hoping to get more guns. There’s zombies everywhere.”
“Wonderful.”
Then our Christmas miracle started to happen (that would be a heavy dose or sarcasm laced with dread). Our post and beam house was starting to protest LOUDLY the number of uninvited we had in our living room and our stair case. A huge snap that was equal to or greater in sound than any of the guns we had fired exploded in the basement. I could only imagine that it was some sort of structural board as the house was being tested to the limits of its design and it was about to come up wanting.
“What was that?” Tracy cried. “Is someone in the basement?”
“I think our house is getting ready to fold in on itself.” I said in despair.
“Get some clothes on.”
“Why? Where are we going?” Tracy asked.
Travis knew better and had already headed into my closet to grab some hoodies.
“The roof.” I told her.
“What? Why?”
“Hon this house is going to collapse, we can’t be in here when it does.”
She was looking at me with panic in her eyes. My stomach was in full on tilt mode. My idea (see how I didn’t say plan) was to go out the skylight in the bathroom and onto the roof. Although from there I had no idea what we were going to do. It was twenty feet down to my yard which was frozen solid. It would be akin to landing on cement. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
“What about the dogs?” Travis asked.
“Gonna have to shove them in the laundry basket”
“The both of them?” He asked.
“It’s gonna be tight but we have no choice.” I told him.
I grabbed the sheets and started to tie them together, when I was fairly certain it would hold I tied it to the handles of the basket. This time I was confident enough to go with ‘plan’. I’d lower them down and they’d be able to get out when the basket went onto its side. Travis and Tracy got out on the roof, I was hefting up a very pissed off Bulldog basket and had it about halfway out when I heard in rapid succession the collapse of another two beams. And there were now zombies at our bedroom door. The hits they keep on a-coming! (Use your favorite DJ voice).
It’s Christmas Eve, I wish all of you that are still hanging on a very Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.
Getting down off the roof wasn’t quite as bad as I had anticipated. The scariest part was when one of the handles on the Bully basket let go, cantilevering them off to the side. Not sure if they cared or not, probably asleep. I hated using the pups as test dummies but it wasn’t like they would be lowering us down. I knew the tied together sheets could hold at least the combined weights of the dogs, somewhere in the 130 pound range. Tracy was easily under that, she was up next.
“Run to the car when you get down.” I told her.
“Okay give me the keys.” She replied.
Pretty sure the expression on my face gave it away. “You don’t have them?” She phrased it as a question but it really was never in doubt.
“First things first.” I told her when another series of wood splintering sounds resounded from inside the house. “Go towards the street. Travis and I will be right behind you.”
Henry and Riley were outside the basket just looking back up at the house. I wanted to yell at them to ‘scram’ but I didn’t want to be a zombie early warning detector.
“Take the dogs with you.” I told her.
“Henry won’t leave until your there and Riley won’t go without him.”
“Fine go to the street.”
I gave a fast demonstration to Tracy on a quick rope decent I’d learned in the Marine Corps it really revolved around the one fact of getting down and away from the rope as fast as possible so you didn’t get your ass shot. It usually came with rope burns if you didn’t have gloves, we all were going to have red palms tonight. I could only hope that was our biggest problem for later.
She was down and heading out the driveway before I could even begin to churn up some stomach juice.
“You’re next.” I told Travis.
“You sure about this?” He asked looking over the roof line.
I had a smart ass answer all lined up for him, the caving in of the center roof line was all the impetus he needed. He was down faster than his mother if that was possible. Then I got my answer.
“Fuck my hands!” He yelled.
“No swearing.” Tracy yelled from the woods by the side of the roadway.
I was next and I was having the same doubts as the boy, plus I had an additional 30 pounds of added desk weight. (You know the kind you accumulate by eating peanut butter laden snacks as you type at your workstation.) I would later blame the sheet giving on the added ammo I was carrying in my pockets.
I was halfway down when I felt the free fall sensation of free falling or for you truly optimistic, ‘short flight’. I thudded to the ground solidly. This was punctuated by the rapid firing of guns, luckily not mine. Zombies were bearing down, I didn’t have time to lament the air getting knocked out of me. I’d once been blindsided by an opposing lineman in high school once. I felt that daze like quality at this very moment. And I didn’t have the luxury of taking the next play off at the sideline.
I stood up and wobbled mightily. Zombies were literally falling by my feet.
“Dad move your ass!” Travis was screaming.
I just about had those little stupid cartoon birdies swirling around my head. I started to head towards Travis’ yell. Zombies close on my heels. I saw Tracy jumping up and down waving her arms. She was facing away so I don’t know what the hell she was doing, I’d find out soon enough as I sped down towards her.
Travis waited until I got flush with him before he turned and followed. I could hear a car or something fast approaching, now I knew what Tracy was doing. She was trying to flag them down. Would they stop? Would I if the roles were reversed? I could hear the engine revving as if in answer. And then just as suddenly I heard tires sliding on gravel.
“Son of a bitch.” I breathed out.
Only in Maine. If we had the misfortune of living in New York they probably would have given us the finger as they sped past.
“Get in!” A grizzled old man said sticking his head out the passenger side window.
Tracy was hopping into the back bed, Travis had long since passed me and was getting in.
“Might want to pick it up dad!” He yelled.
“Yeah and you might want to kiss my ass.” I grumbled.
The truck was starting to pull away just as I got my first foot into the truck, I would have been left in the dust if Tracy hadn’t of grabbed my sweatshirt. It was close until Travis helped. I felt a zombie hand scrape down my back. And then we were off.
“Holy fuck.” I said as I leaned back, zombies were almost abreast of us and we were still building speed.
When I caught my breath, I thanked our savior.
“Name’s Jed.” He said sticking one hand through the middle glass that separated the cab from the bed.
Tracy looked at me. ‘No fucking way.’ She mouthed.
I could only agree. Life imitates art and all that shit, I get it, but Jed is a fictional character in a book that saved Michael Talbot’s ass a couple of times. Looks like I’ve found my own.
“Where you headed!” he shouted as he swung the truck to the left in a valiant but failed effort to avoid a zombie.
The resultant mist of bone and blood that shot over our heads reminded me of the cherry pop-tart I’d eaten a couple of days ago. “Headed to my dad’s in Belfast!” I shouted over the roaring wind.
He looked back, longer than he should have. “Belfast is gone son.” He said slowly. He didn’t offer a clearer explanation. “I’ve got relatives on Foster island that’s where I’m headed.”
He paused. Not sure what he wanted from us. I was still trying to wrap my head around my grief.
“You folks look like a deer in the crosshairs, do you want to come with me?”
I looked over towards Tracy. I didn’t have an answer, I mean it’s always easy to think up one when I’m sitting at my desk sipping coffee maybe eating a Devil Dog or two. But my house had just been destroyed and I had no idea where the rest of my family was. I needed some time to think.
I apparently took too long, Tracy was all about making sure her son was safe. “We’ll gladly take your offer.”
The truck came to a stop we all piled into the cab, I don’t remember much on that 4 hour drive. There was some traffic, some fighting and more zombies. I was lost, emotionally and spiritually, and hell even physically I had no fucking clue where Foster Island was.
When we finally did reach Jed’s destination, there were greetings abounding. I didn’t much care to stay in the house for small talk I went out onto the deck to watch as the sun went down, I was unsure if it would ever rise again.
When I was confident I had sufficiently frozen my body and thereby my brain so I didn’t have to think anymore, I went back in. The clock had just turned to midnight and two thousand, twelve years ago baby Jesus was born.
To paraphrase John Lennon - ‘So this is Christmas’ - Would there be a happy New Year?
More to come around the New Year
Thank you everyone!
December 27, 2013
Twelve Days Of Christmas Talbot Style
’T was the night before Christmas, when all through the home-stead
Not a creature was stirring, not even the dead.
The entrails were flung to the wall with care,
In hopes that Eliza soon would be there.
The Talbots were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of Pop-Tarts danced in their heads;
And Tracy in her ’kerchief, and I in my Red Sox cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap;
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But the dead of the day, and eight ripped open reindeer,
There were old ones and slow ones, some lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be the sick.
More rapid than eagles her curses they came,
And she whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Pestilence! now, Plague! now, Death! and Famine!
On, Vomit! on War! on, Demise! and Contagion!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now attack away! attack away! Destroy them all!”
As hard enemies that before the wild apocalypse bound,
When they meet with an obstacle, smash it to the ground,
So up to the front door the zombies they flood,
With their mouths full of meat, and hands covered in blood.
And then, in a sinking, I heard in the room below me
The prancing and pawing of each little zombie.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Through the front door Eliza came with no sound.
She was dressed all in black, from her head to her foot,
And her clothes were all tarnished with blood and soot.
A bundle of heads she had flung on her back,
And she looked like a murderer just showing her pack.
Her eyes — how black and flat! her mouth how tight!
Her skin was like snow all dried up an withered like corpses,
her nose dark as night!
Her droll little mouth was drawn up in a growl,
And the pallor of her face was as white as the snow.
The stump of a finger she held tight in her teeth,
And the smoke of destruction encircled her head like a wreath.
She had a oval face and a flat little belly,
That growled, when she ate, what looked like a handful of jelly.
She was crabby and bitchy, a right mean old self,
And I laughed when I saw her, in spite of myself.
A wink of her eye and a twist of someone’s head,
Soon gave me to know I had everything to dread.
She spoke not a word, but went straight to her work,
And caved in all the skulls; then turned them with a jerk,
And laying her finger aside of her nose,
And giving a nod, up into the air she arose.
She sprang to her sleigh, to her team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the flight of a missile.
But I heard her exclaim, ere she drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-bite!”
November 12, 2013
Chances to win audio CDs signed by Sean Runnette and Mark Tufo!!
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/71801-zombie-fallout-2-a-plague-upon-your-family
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/71800-zombie-fallout-3-the-end
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/71799-zombie-fallout-3-5-dr-hugh-mann
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/71803-zombie-fallout-6-til-death-do-us-part
January 26, 2013
The Walking Dead Actors stop by for some lunch with Mark Tufo
What is going through your mind when are acting as zombies?
To be honest, I spend much of my time as a zombie doing my Transcendental meditation practice, or playing with Reiki. The days can be incredibly long and I don’t know if you have been to Atlanta during the summer, or even the winter, but the weather is neurotic. We go out there in just about everything accept big storms. When we are in between takes team zombie tends to be silly to try to make the long days easier.
Do you think if something in particular or do they have their minds blank? For my zombie walk, I tend to recreate the first time I got drunk, in my mind. I was 18 and downed 3/4 a bottle of 151 with a buddy of mine, it wasn’t pretty. I find this keeps my zombie walk uncoordinated and without a set rhythm.
What are the zombies eating or biting in the show when they are biting people or bodies?
It depends on the scene. They have used actual cooked meat for some of the longer eating scenes, although when the meat is fully eaten it can be any number of things.
I swear the KNB EFX guys can turn anything into a nasty effect. In fact, in the scene where I am biting Hershel on the leg, the tendon you see me pulling is in fact nylon. That is right, that nasty effect was created with pantyhose and a well timed squirt of fake blood.
What other roles have you played?
Well, the first role I had, about 10 years ago, was a featured role in a television commercial for Turner South. At this time of my life, I had just recently been homeless; in fact I had turned 19 on the street.
I was a young dread locked kid, with an unbreakable spirit. A friend of mine, sadly now deceased, told me about an audition his parents were having.
They run Stilwell Casting, here in Atlanta. They were looking for the stoner look, and I fit the bill. I prepared for my audition by getting stoned; I figured it was just a little method acting.
After the audition I figured that I had just had a really interesting adventure for a day stoned, and nothing more. Bright and early the next morning, I get a call from Annette, asking me to come in the following morning for a call back.
I really couldn’t believe it, but once again prepared for some method acting by getting stoned. Turns out I was meeting the director and he hired me on the spot. I guess I truly looked the part of the stoner.
From there I took part in a training video for the post office, as the ‘what not to do’, also by the same director. I went out to Arizona for school and then stayed years. I did not do any acting while I was out there and really feel that my life was incomplete.
Since coming back to Atlanta, I have been in Hallpass, Vampire Diaries, and 2 seasons of The Walking Dead.
After your scene, do you become one of the extra Zombies or do you go through the makeup for the one scene?
You are locked for the day; you just get rotated to a spot where you won’t be recognized by the camera. For last season’s finale many of us were inside the barn, breaking into the barn, up on the fence, and by the house. It was a long, cold two weeks, but damn was it fun.
Are you going to audition for Zombie Fallout if it goes to production?
Don’t hate me for saying this, but I haven’t read Zombie Fallout. Since my kindle broke I feel as if I have been out of touch with the literary world. I have learned to stay away from the bookstore as I have two 150 pound boxes full of books and I have moved, a lot. That being said, if a character really spoke to what I feel my skills are, I would be all over the audition like flies on a corpse.
C-Section Zombie Clair Danielle Canterbury
Who was the c-section zombie? My daughter thought she looked like Crystal from True Blood?
The c-section zombie was me, Clair Danielle Canterbury. As a fan of both True Blood and Lindsay Pulsipher (the actress who played Crystal) I'm very flattered at the comparison, though, thank you.
If you ate a Zombie would you turn into one?
I think everyone already carries the zombie virus. So, I suppose it wouldn't really matter if you ate a zombie or not. You're gonna turn either way.
Will a Zombie eventually just rot away?
At a certain point when the brain fully deteriorates, yes, I think so. But it would take a lot of time.
Do you think Zombies and Ghouls are the same type monster?
Nope.
Do you think denial is the zombie’s best form of defense against its upcoming meal?
No.
How long does makeup usually take and how long is the scene?
Transforming me into the c-section walker took three people roughly three hours. There were full body prosthetics involved so it took quite a bit of work. Generally speaking, though, it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to process a performer through the full zombie makeup.
January 9, 2013
December 31, 2012
Award Winning Author Jonathan Maberry sits down for a chat about writing with Mark Tufo
JONATHAN MABERRY: I had a great time with the guys from the History Channel. We shot my segments in a deserted and crumbling building in New York City during a couple of the hottest days. It was about a million degrees and they had lights on me. But even with all that, we had a blast. The producer, director and writer were all pop culture geeks like me, so between shots (and later over beers) we talked zombies, apocalyptic fiction, monster movies, and comics. It was great.
The documentary itself, ZOMBIES: A LIVING HISTORY, did a lot of good for putting the monster in its proper historical context. They did a top notch job with the production, and it’s been an enormously popular special that’s been re-run over and over again.
MARK TUFO: Seeing the Indy publishing market boom, is it something that you would ever consider doing?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I worked with Indy publishers before I signed with the bigger houses, and I contribute short stories and novellas to many Indy anthologies. I have a lot of respect for the independent houses, particularly in the creative freedom they offer. But for my novels, I’m quite satisfied being with the bigger houses. They have a longer reach into the reading community.
MARK TUFO: What is your schedule like, do you write daily? Take time off after writing a book? Switch between writing comics and books?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I’m a full-time professional writer. I write 8-10 hours per day –and a little less on weekends. My agent keeps me hopping by selling projects before I write them. I’m in a cycle now where I write two-three novels per year (one teen novel, one thriller, and one horror novel), as well as short stories, novellas and comics. It comes out to about a million and a quarter words for publication per year. Since I have to produce a novel about every four months, I don’t get much time off between books. And, over the last two years, I’ve been touring heavily in support of my books, which means I have to write while travelling.
MARK TUFO: My wife’s favorite saying is “No writer can please all readers, its an uncertainty.” I saw you go head to head with a reviewer which you advise others not to do. Do you regret it, or did you find it liberating?
JONATHAN MABERRY: Only someone with a weak ego or a delusional mind thinks they can please everyone. Otherwise every book would sell seven billion copies. I usually take negative reviews in stride because everyone gets them. Occasionally though a particular review will be so asinine or offensive that I break my usual ‘non-involvement’ rule and post a comment. It’s never a good idea. There seems to be an unwritten rule that writers are not allowed to defend themselves, even from those reviewers who clearly are using the anonymity of forum-based reviews to publish what amounts to libelous character assassination. Usually, though, my better angels encourage me to ignore those comments and focus on other, more positive things. Usually I listen.
MARK TUFO: With all of the changes in the publishing industry in the last few years, what do you think are the best? Worst?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I love the upsurge of digital markets for books. A lot of authors –conventionally published and self-published—are making good money because of eBooks. But the thing that makes me really happy is the dynamic increase in audio books. Because the digital recording and editing technology has changed to become easier to use and far less expensive, more audio books are being produced. And, because most audio books are bought as downloads rather than on CD, it’s drastically lowered the cost for the producers and the consumer. As an audiobook fan myself, I love this change. It’s also resulted in anthologies being produced on audio, which was quite rare a few years ago.
MARK TUFO: I read that your profession of choice is writer with 2nd being a teacher. It looks like you have successfully tied the two in together with your writing conferences and workshops. Did you set out to be a writer or happen into it?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I’ve always been a writer. Even before I could read and write I told stories with toys and drawings. Everything else is second to that for me. That said, I haven’t always been a full-time writers. For much of my career I worked various day jobs and wrote on the side. Most of those day jobs involved one form of teaching or another. I taught at Temple University for fourteen years (Women’s Self-Defense, Martial Arts History, etc.), I’ve been a jujutsu instructor all my life; I was the CEO and chief instructor for COP-Safe, a company that provided defense workshops for all levels of law enforcement including SWAT; I developed self-defense programs for special needs groups (the vision-impaired, the disabled, etc.); and I’ve been teaching writing for quite a while now. Over the last decade or so I’ve been teaching a number of writing programs that are a balance of craft and publishing-industry savvy. Many of my students have gone on to publish.
MARK TUFO: You write both adult and YA fiction. Which is your favorite and why?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I don’t really have a favorite. I’m fickle in that the book or genre I love most is whatever I’m currently working on. For example, I just finished FIRE & ASH, the fourth (and final) book of my ROT & RUIN post-apocalyptic zombie series for teens. While writing and revising that I was totally in love with that genre and with YA fiction. But right now I’m writing CODE ZERO, the sixth book in my Joe Ledger series of thrillers for adults. Which means I’m totally immersed and in love with science thrillers, espionage, global terrorism and hard-core action.
MARK TUFO: What is your favorite thing to do in your “off ” time if there is such a thing?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I definitely take time off –usually nights and weekends, with the occasional vacation. My wife and I love to travel, so we build that into my book tours. For personal relaxation, I’m a film and TV geek, an avid book collector and a science geek. Lots of stuff there to keep me interested.
MARK TUFO: What is the strangest thing a fan has ever sent you?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I received a formal printed obituary for one of my characters, along with photos from a memorial service a group of readers held. Everyone wore black and people were crying. Yikes.
MARK TUFO: What do you have in the works that the readers can look forward to?
JONATHAN MABERRY: Geez…how much time do you have? Issue #3 of MARVEL UNIVERSE VS THE AVENGERS hits comic book stores soon. My first anthology as editor, V-WARS is out in hardcover and it’s full of very scary vampires. My teen zombie series, ROT & RUIN is now in development for film. And in March EXTINCTION MACHINE hits stores –it’s the 5th Joe Ledger novel and deals with an arms race based on technologies reverse-engineered from crashed UFOs.
MARK TUFO: What is the one question you wish someone would ask you but never has and the answer?
JONATHAN MABERRY: I guess I’m surprised no one’s asked about how I feel about how fast everything’s happening. Prior to 2006 I was known only for magazine feature pieces, college textbooks, and a few mass-market nonfiction books. Then I wrote my first novel, GHOST ROAD BLUES, which was published in April 2006. Since then I’ve sold nineteen novels, fourteen of which are written and twelve of which have been released. EXTINCTION MACHINE and FIRE & ASH are written and scheduled for release in 2013; and I have five novels sold that I haven’t yet written. I’ve won over three dozen awards for my various books, including three Bram Stoker Awards, the Cybils Award (for ROT & RUIN), the Scribe Award (for THE WOLFMAN); etc. Because of my novels I was scouted by the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and now I freelance for them, writing stories about characters I’ve been reading since 1966. I have a movie in development, I appear on TV and the radio. And I’m making more money than I ever thought I would.
So…how’s it all feel?
Deeply weird. Surreal. Mind you, I totally dig it…but it feels like the sort of thing I’d read about in the biography of someone else. And I’m loving every minute of it. I get to play inside my imagination all day long and get paid for it. If this is a dream…then for god’s sake don’t wake me up!
I can be found online at….
http://www.jonathanmaberry.com
http://www.facebook.com/jonathanmaberry
http://www.twitter.com/jonathanmaberry
December 26, 2012
Indian Hill 3 New Audio release giveaway!
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
Indian Hill 3
by Mark Tufo
Giveaway ends January 01, 2013.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Enter to win
December 23, 2012
In the mind of Award Winning Author Joe McKinney
Thank you very much for taking the time to join us Joe.
1. Are you still working as a sergeant with the San Antonio Police Department?
Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yes, I’m still a sergeant in the SAPD, and have been for about two years now. The writing career has been going well enough for the last few years that I could support my family on just that, but I love being a cop too much to quit. In the fifteen years I’ve been on the job I’ve done just about everything. I’ve been regular old patrolman, a disaster mitigation expert, a homicide detective, I’ve run the 911 Call Center, and I’ve been a Patrol Commander, which is what I do now. I love it!
2. Out of everything you have written who is your favorite character and why?
I’d have to say Lily Harris, from Quarantined. Stephen King has a quote (and I’m paraphrasing here) that goes something like: “For every novelist – and hopefully it comes early in their career – there is a book that forces the writer to work above and beyond what they thought they were capable of. Those are the books that make you grow as a writer.” I believe that’s true, every word of it, because that was what happened to me while writing Quarantined. I had used women characters before, obviously, but I’d never attempted to carry a novel length first person narrative in a woman’s voice. Being true to her character forced me to focus on every word. I learned a lot about my craft from writing Lily, and for that reason she’ll always be my favorite.
3. How in the world do you find time to write with a full time schedule, wife, kids, writing workshops, well you get the idea?
It’s not easy, that’s for sure. It seems like every day there’s something going on, be it Girl Scouts or basketball practice or one of my speaking engagements or something for my wife’s work (she’s a college English professor). The calendar on my iPhone looks like a pinball machine going full tilt. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. And really, I owe my writing method to that busy schedule. I learned early on that I would only have a few stolen moments out of every day to write, and that if I was going to do it I’d need to be organized about it. That’s why I started outlining everything I do before I start writing. My outlines for novels can run as long as 90 pages, and are usually detailed enough that I could write chapter 3 today and chapter 16 tomorrow and chapter 9 the next. It works for me.
4. What is your favorite form of social media to keep your fans up to date?
Facebook, definitely. Twitter is cool too, but Facebook is my favorite. I’m on Facebook as Joe McKinney (I’m the writer, not the Irish actor famous for his Guinness commercials) and on Twitter as @JoeMcKinney.
5. Out of all your book covers, which is your favorite?
Up until a few weeks ago I would have told you Flesh Eaters. I love that Megan Fox looking girl zombie on the cover. She’s sexy and scary at the same time. But now I really like the cover to my haunted house novel from Dark Regions Press called CROOKED HOUSE. This is what it looks like:
Wayne Miller and I talked about what I wanted for the cover and this is what he came up with. I am over the moon about it. The fangs really stand out and make it seem so incredibly menacing.
6. You have two new books coming out. Crooked House and Inheritance both look excellent are either based on your old trick or treating grounds?
Actually, yeah! Funny you should ask. Both are ghost stories, but very different from each other. Inheritance is a police procedural. It’s about a young police officer named Paul Henninger who celebrated his eighteenth birthday by killing his father in self-defense. Six years later, he’s a policeman learning the ropes on San Antonio’s East Side. But then the ghost of his father returns, hell bent on passing on the black magic he perfected in life to Paul. That is Paul’s inheritance, a gift he most certainly doesn’t want, but can’t avoid either. But Paul has other problems, for his father is murdering everyone stuck in his path, and the murders keep pointing back to Paul.
Writing INHERITANCE I got to cover a lot of familiar ground. Paul’s experiences on the job mirror my own education as a young police officer. I remember how wild it was back then, when I was first starting out. Every night I was getting into fights and foot chases and car chases. I was handling crazy calls from the public, and at the same time building some of the best friendships of my life. I put all that into Paul’s narrative. But there’s a parallel narrative running through the book. There’s a Homicide detective named Keith Anderson hot on Paul’s heels. Anderson is older, a little worn down and overworked. He’s tired, but he’s also relentless, and damn good at what he does. His world comes from the world I lived in during my Homicide days. But there’s another “old stomping grounds” in the novel as well: the many scenes of Paul’s old family house in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio. I spent a good many years out there, living amongst the horses and peach orchards, and so that part of the novel was a real joy to visit again.
CROOKED HOUSE is a haunted house story, but of a different world than INHERITANCE. I did my undergraduate work at Trinity University in San Antonio. Trinity is set in the middle of the Monte Vista neighborhood, which, during the late 1800s and up through Prohibition, was where San Antonio’s wealthiest people lived. There are sprawling mansions just a few blocks from where I went to school that take the breath away. Trinity in fact owns quite a few of those mansions, and from time to time, as an incentive to lure some distinguished professor from another university, they offer one of these mansions as part of their hiring package. That was the premise I started with. Well, that, and a baseball bat.
First, let me tell you about the bat. A lot of serial killers keep mementos of their kills, some little trinket that enables them to relive the thrill of the kill. For me, every book is memorialized on the shelves of my office by some little trinket that was significant to me at the time I was writing it. While I was writing Dead City, for instance, the wallet the police department issued me at my graduation from the Academy (the one that holds my ID and all my other stuff I need to present while off-duty to prove I’m really a cop) fell apart. Literally, it fell apart. But I kept it for some reason, and it sits to this day on a shelf about three feet from my desk. Anybody who’s read Dead City will probably remember the scene where Eddie Hudson takes out his police wallet and looks at the picture of his newborn son he’s put over his official police ID. My oldest child’s baby picture rests in the same place in my wallet.
While I was writing Crooked House, the object that stayed by my side night after night was a Louisville Slugger baseball bat I used while playing baseball for Trinity University. I’ve loved baseball my entire life, and I’ve played it in one form or another, from Little League all the way through college. Recently my unit in the police department formed a softball team, and of course I joined. I took my favorite bat out of storage and kept it next to my desk in my office. Using it again, I got the inspiration for one of the characters in Crooked House and the bat figures in a big way in the book’s ending.
So I had a main character, but no house to haunt. That’s where the second source of inspiration came in. The living characters in Crooked House all work for Lightner University in San Antonio, which is loosely based on Trinity University, where I went to school. Trinity is surrounded by one of San Antonio’s oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods, Monte Vista. And Trinity owns quite a few of the homes close to campus. They tend to give these to distinguished professors as part of their hiring package. I was visiting campus just after you approached me about doing a book for Dark Regions Press, and I happened to see one of the homes owned by Trinity. It was an enormous fourteen-room mansion built in the style of a Tuscan farm, you know, the kind you’d expect to see surrounded by vineyards. Well, the house next door was an equally fancy Mediterranean style villa. I looked from house to house, wondering what they’d look like sandwiched together, and that’s when the idea for Crooked House popped into my head. It was a weird experience, because the entire novel really did pop into my head at that moment. The setup, the big finish at the end, all of it. Just like that. And it all came from my old stomping grounds back in my undergraduate days.
7. With your background have you ever considered doing a who done it series?
Already done, in fact! I’ve already done the murder mystery several times (Quarantined, Dodging Bullets, and most recently Inheritance) but I’ve also got the first novel written in an ongoing police procedural series written. It’ll follow a female Homicide detective who gets regular help from a mysterious man who may or may not have been a spy in his former life. I’m hoping the series will come across as successful blending of the sexual tension on Castle and the gritty, hard-edged realism of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books.
8. How is your home office decorated?
This is where the magic happens!
You can’t see it in this picture but the wall to the left (the one directly across from my desk) is one solid bookshelf sagging under piles of horror books. Plus, there’s usually a cat sleeping on the arm of the chair to the left and a dog sleeping under the desk.
There’s a passage in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene where the Red Cross Knight has to fight a monster called Error. The scene sticks in my memory because Error distinguishes herself by spewing books and pamphlets containing heresy. Imagine that, a monster that pukes books! Kind of looks like what happened to my office.
9. With the poor economy throughout the world right now do you feel that an apocalyptic event could take place?
Unfortunately, yes. Look at the riots in Greece and France, and in the Middle East, and in West Africa, and in Pakistan and India. I don’t know if our world is any closer to complete anarchy than we’ve ever been in the past, or whether TV just allows us to notice it, but things are pretty scary. Thinking of what the world will look like 30 years from now terrifies me. I have two young daughters who will be living in that world. I can only hope that things settle down a little by then, but something tells me that they probably won’t.
Realistically, I think that’s the most likely form an apocalyptic event would take, mass rioting. With economic collapse, rioting would be inevitable, and we certainly seem to be heading toward a major economic event. I’ve got my fingers crossed, but my shotgun loaded just the same.
10. Are there any new authors that have caught your attention and why?
Quite a few, actually. In the last two years or so I’ve started watching John Palisano (his novel NERVES is amazing), Brad C. Hodson (his novel DARLING scared the crap out of me), Pete Giglio (who writes the short novel so well he stands up to the likes of masters like T.E.D. Klein and Dan Simmons) and Nate Southard (whose writing reminds me an awful lot of Richard Matheson). There are more, but those come immediately to mind. Also, there’s this guy named Mark Tufo who writes a damn good zombie story, but you don’t want to hear about that…
11. What is the one question you wish someone would ask you and the answer.
Q: How would you like your steak?
A: Medium rare, please!
…or maybe…
Q: Honey, can I bring you a beer?
A: Yes please!
…or…
Q: (From my publisher) Will there be any more books in the Dead World Series?
A: Yes! Two more, in fact.
