Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 39

The Non-Believers, Pt VI #free #bookboost #iartg @T_Double

Anything but Zombies, available now! Read The Non-Believers from the beginning!

 

Milton had wandered away from the house. Cindy had never admitted it, but she’d always been jealous of her little brother, had always envied how he had so thoroughly robbed her of the attention she rightfully deserved. She had had her parents for ten years all to herself, her grandparents too, and when he was born she went from six people who sang her praises to zero.

It wasn’t fair.

So when he’d somehow gotten outside and wandered away from the house she’d been the one to not only discover he was missing, but she’d led the charge to find him. In actuality, she had taken him to the clearing and told him to stay there. That they were playing a game of hide-me and she would come back for him really soon if he could be quiet and sit still for a whole hour.

He’d been hesitant because the clearing was so scary but Cindy had sealed the deal with the promise of a Tootsie pop if he could be a great big boy and stay right there. Milton had nodded vigorously, wanting that Tootsie pop. She’d given it to him and promised him another later once she came back for him.

After leading her parents all around the property once they’d done a complete search of the house, she had eventually led them to the clearing, all the while regaling them with horrific possibilities of his torture and death. She really hadn’t believed or wanted any of that to happen, it was more a venting of her frustration and a good punishment for how they’d been treating her over the last few years. She figured they would shower him with affection once again and that she would just have to get used to playing second fiddle, but she was hoping that if she were the hero who reunited the list child with its parents that she might actually get to be second place as opposed to being ignored altogether.

But what they’d found was every bit as horrible as what she’d been describing. Her intent, had she really had more than an inkling of forethought had been to raise their anxiety to the point that the flood of emotions at the sight of their son, safe and sound, would have washed over her too. However, Milton wasn’t there.

At least not all of him. And a lot more of him than any of them could have ever wanted to see. Something had carried the boy off and apparently made several trips to do it. It had left a significant portion behind but nowhere near enough for the Nostrands to describe what lay before them as their son.

Except for the Tootsie pop Cindy had left him with.

 

Make sure to check back for the next installment this week! In the meantime, Anything but Zombies is out now! Go download a copy.

The Non-Believers, Pt V #free #bookboost #iartg @T_Double

Anything but Zombies, available now! Read The Non-Believers from the beginning!

They tore into her. Morgan still fought as it became apparent she was moments from death. She grabbed one by the shoulders and smashed its head into another’s, sending them both down. The smaller one that had attacked Morgan first (which was suddenly much more upright and broader through the shoulders) raked a clawed hand across her back. Morgan stumbled into the arms and waiting mouth of one wearing Thomas’ khaki pants and it clamped its razor-toothed mouth in her throat and ripped.

Morgan spun around, shock and agony the on her face and she locked eyes with her daughter one final time.

“Mommy,” Cindy whispered and was about to open the door again when her mother clearly mouthed the word ‘don’t’. It was enough to freeze her in her place as her mother gave a final, gurgly roar and charged into the largest group, four of the creatures, completely unready for an aggressive attack.

The biggest one was naked and Morgan did some sort of karate chop that sent her hand through its sternum. The thing’s watery eyes bulged, it’s mouth working up and down before they toppled over together. The others didn’t hesitate, falling on her and tearing flesh as she scratched and fought them all.

Seconds later it was over. The first emerged from the pile with an arm. Another had a hunk of upper thigh. The last she saw before turning away in revulsion had her mother’s face held between indexes and thumbs.

“Daddy!” she said, running back to the kitchen. He wasn’t there, but her friends still were. Matt and Delilah looked grave and wide-eyed.

“They’re outside,” Delilah said.

“Gregory doesn’t look good,” Matt said.

Gregory vomited, slumped in his chair. As if it were a second thought he leaned forward and tumbled onto the floor, bouncing his head off the linoleum. He began coughing and Delilah turned and shushed him.

“Quiet. They’ll hear you.”

“Sorry,” Gregory said, barely stifling another cough.

“I need to go find my dad,” Cindy said, feeling as though she were in a fog. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Know what to do?” Matt said. “That’s checkmate out there. Game, set, match. That’s a grand slam walk-off homerun. That’s a–woof!” Delilah rudely interrupted him with a punch to the gut. He went to one knee and looked up at her, a tear streaming from one eye.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Children, what’s going on in here?” Daddy said. This time, in addition to that stupid pipe, he had the equally dumb ascot cap on his head.

“Dad, you can’t go outside,” Cindy said, ice in her veins.

“Of course I can. I have to bring the dog in.”

“No. You can’t. He… ran off.”

Her father actually pshawed her. “Verocchio would never do any such thing. I’ve never had such a loyal companion in all my life.”

Cindy couldn’t help but wonder if that was somehow a sideways dig at her, but she let it pass. “Okay. Fine. He’s dead. I ran him over.” Her father’s eyes went wide. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“How could you–” he began to say, but as if on cue, the damn thing began barking. He gave her a disapproving glare. “Cindyyyyy.”

“No, Daddy, you can’t go out there!” She charged him, shoving her palms into his chest. She stopped him, but only for a second before he casually brushed her aside and continued heading for the door.

“Mr. Nostrand, you can’t go out there,” Delilah said, shaking her head. “They’re out there.”

“Who? You’re friends?” he said. “I already saw them.”

“They’re not out friends. They’re monsters,” Matt said, putting his hands together and shaking them like he was pleading with Cindy’s father.

“Yes. You teenagers and your hormones are all quite monstrous,” he said and this time he did give Cindy a sidelong glance. Matt and Delilah seemed to sense some of what was going on and found something more interesting to look at in the room for a couple seconds.

“Look, daddy. I know you’re mad at me for some strange reason I can’t entirely say, but we don’t have time for this. Those things out there want to get in. They want to get us. Just like they got mommy.”

“Your mother’s out there? No why would she go out there with monsters?” He cocked an eyebrow.

“Daddy, mommy is dead. They… ate her.”

“Are you telling me those creatures out there are zombies?”

“No!” Cindy said a little too loudly. She knew that was a hot word in her household. Especially after her brother.

Her father was shaking now. “Just be honest with me and I’ll believe you. Tell me there are zombies out there.”

“Daddy… I…” Cindy began crying again as that day, three years ago, came flooding back to her.

 

Make sure to check back for the next installment this week! In the meantime, Anything but Zombies is out now! Go download a copy.

The Non-Believers, Pt IV #free #bookboost #iartg @AtriaBooks

Anything but Zombies, available now! Read The Non-Believers from the beginning!

She ran downstairs, thinking she was pursuing her father, but he was nowhere in sight. Cindy slid to a halt in front of her mother, arms folded with that constant look of disappointment written all over her face.

“I have to go in to work,” she said, keys in hand, tapping a perfectly manicured fingernail on her elbow. “You are to stay in the house until I get home.” Cindy hadn’t heard her mother go upstairs, but she was dressed in one of her tailored pants suits, looking every bit the runway model she could have been had she wanted and reminding Cindy just how inadequate she was. Morgan looked so effortless, like she wasn’t even trying–everything Cindy had always had to work so hard to achieve her mother had in excess.

God, she hated her.

Not in a literal sense, but in a way that was more of a reflection of how inadequate she was whenever she felt on the verge of competing with her mother. But she was so steeped in this emotion when her mother snatched her keys off the coffee table and strode to the door it didn’t exactly cross her mind to stop her.

“Wait,” she finally said once her mother was walking across the walkway toward her silver BMW X1. “Wait!” Cindy waved frantically to get her mother’s attention.

“What now?”

The words wouldn’t come out of her mouth, though. Cindy knew Morgan wouldn’t believe her, that short of knocking her much stronger and athletically inclined mother to the ground and dragging her back up the stairs and into the house there was nothing she could do to prevent what was about to happen.

Morgan shook her head and began walking toward her car, mumbling under her breath. The first one clipped her as she was opening the passenger door to put her purse in. Cindy’s father had warned her against doing that. The odds were if someone were going to attack you, they’d wait until you were opening the car door, when you’d be the least attentive and the most vulnerable. Morgan doubled her risk by opening her passenger door for her purse and then going around to the driver’s door for herself. She’d acknowledged that it was dumb, but did it anyway because it was habit.

“Mommy, no!” Cindy shouted, but was unable to move. The same irresistible instinct that had compelled her to continue running when Mario had fallen paralyzed her now, preventing her again from putting herself at risk. But she also couldn’t stop watching as a second fish-headed boy wobbled from around the rear of the car and sprang at her mother.

The first one, a smallish thing, was folding a strip of flesh into its mouth a few feet away. Morgan had been spun around and slammed against the vehicle, but had remained on her feet. She pushed off in time to meet the second, chopping it in the throat just before its razor teeth could take a chunk out of her face. Its already large fishy eyes bulged even more in their sockets and she speared the soulless orbs with her thumbnails. The creature screeched and reared back, clawing at the air with some sort of floppy fish arm. Morgan shot her palms into its midsection, sending it stumbling backward until it tripped over its feet and rolled around on the ground.

The little one had finished eating and turned back to Cindy’s mother. It jumped on her back and began clawing at her head with its baby T. Rex arms. She spun left and right, trying to throw it off, not seeing two more come around the car. One of them looked an awful lot like Sarah, it had on that top Cindy had tried to borrow from her a few times. They seemed a lot more sedate and by the time Morgan got the little one off her and had stomped on its head–bright orange goo pouring out of a crack in its skull and out of one eye–one of them had grabbed and began gnawing on an arm.

Morgan howled and began punching it in the face, but it had a hold of her like a pitbull. The other stepped around and tried coming at her from the other side, but Morgan at least had the wherewithal to kick it in the midsection, sending it stumbling back several paces. But it came back. Slowly, but it was coming again and the Sarah-looking one must have bitten down even harder because Morgan fought at it even harder.

Finally, Cindy broke free of her paralysis and stepped tentatively out on the porch. She picked up the potted plant by the steps and hefted it at the blinded one that was stumbling its way toward her mother. The thing went down, but immediately began crawling to its feet.

“I told you to stay in the house!” Morgan yelled over her shoulder.

“But Mommy–”

“No buts, young lady. Get… in… the… house!” She punctuated her last four words with lethal blows to the head of the creature that had all but chewed off her arm. It hung at a wrong angle and her mother just looked down at it, swore, and whipped off her belt, quickly tying a tourniquet above the wound.

Cindy retreated to the door.

“Your arm, Mommy. Those things!”

“My arm is fine. These are just… dogs. I’ve fought dogs before.”

“Mommy, those aren’t dogs!”

“And this is not my foot about to disappear in your–owwww!”

The one she had blinded had found her legs and was savaging it. Morgan brought her purse down on its head. Something heavy had been in there because when she stood upright, thick orange goo was stuck to the bottom and the creature lay still.

Cindy’s mother stood upright and saw it was all over. They had her surrounded. At least a dozen of them.

 

Make sure to check back for the next installment this week! In the meantime, Anything but Zombies is out now! Go download a copy.

The Non-Believers, Pt III #BookBoost #iartg #free

Read the other installments of The Non-Believers first.

 

Cindy didn’t have to wait long before her father knocked at the door.

“Honeybaby,” he began as he came inside her room. Thank God that stupid pipe wasn’t in his mouth. He’d started that ridiculous habit after three months of tai-chi after five months puzzle making. Yes, her father had actually made his own puzzles as if anyone in the world had ever stopped in the middle of their day and actually say, ‘Hey, there just aren’t enough puzzles in the world’.

“Daddy!” she said, rushing into his arms, allowing him to pet her on the back and coo to her. In truth, it was comforting, but Cindy had an alternative reason for allowing her father to comfort her. She need to enlist him, to get him to see the things that were no doubt coming their way. If he was on Mommy’s side, she’d never get him to believe anything. Mommy wouldn’t look outside just to spite her. She’d deny anything bad was happening until they tore out her own throat.

“Ohhh, what is it, honeybaby?”

“It’s Mario, Daddy,” she began. Cindy looked up at her father and was actually able to work up tears. “I know I wasn’t supposed to go to the clearing, but I didn’t know that would happen, Daddy. They hurt him so bad.”

Her father’s mouth bowed in a frown and he slid his glasses back up on his nose.

“I’m sorry to hear that, baby,” he said, shaking his head. He didn’t believe her. She cranked up the tears, widening her eyes to make herself appear even more doe-like and helpless. He should have been so tightly wrapped around her finger it should have been numb.

But he wasn’t.

“Daddy?”

He pursed his lips and held her out at arm’s length. “Your boyfriend’s outside, honey,” Daddy said, giving her a reproachful look.”

“What… what do you mean?”

“I saw his letterman’s jacket. He and a bunch of other boys are with him. What were you kids doing out there? There’s only the two of you girls–were you… were you orgying?”

Extreme revulsion and terror waged for the top emotion coursing through her, resulting in Cindy being momentarily paralyzed. Daddy must have taken her silence as affirmation, his eyes widening as he released her. He fled the room without another word.

“Daddy?” she called. “Daddy, no, it’s not like that!”

 

Make sure to check back for the next installment this week! In the meantime,Anything but Zombies is out now! Go download a copy.

First #Review for #AnythingbutZombies #BookBoost

Let me stand aside and let you read for yourself…

Anything but Zombies: A Short Story Anthology
Anything but Zombies is an anthology where we get a new twist on the things that go bump in the night. (Although I simply adored the description used in the forward about the things in 28 Days Later- people infected with weaponized monkey anger. This is so beyond awesome, I can’t wait to use it in conversation!)
Read more here…

Download your own copy on Amazon and everywhere eBooks are sold!
And are you reading The Non-Believers?

The Non-Believers, Pt II #free #bookboost #iartg @AtriaBooks

Read Pt I of “The Non-Believers” here.

They made it to Cindy’s house with no further sightings of the creatures that had pursued them. Had it not been for copious amounts of blood and viscera coating them all (and Gregory’s badly wounded legs) they might have fooled themselves into thinking what they’d been through had been some sort of horrid joke perpetrated by the friends who weren’t there. Cindy had to admit the makeup was doable and it wasn’t as if she’d been examining the wounds as that thing had dug into Martin’s abdomen or how Gregory’s sister had fallen and been dragged into bushes screaming the whole way. It was perfectly natural to assume someone was being bitten when a disheveled stranger growled and put his mouth on you. Even her beau had often found it funny to pull some completely mindless prank at her expense and laughed even harder the angrier she got. It would be just like him to come up with such an idea and then pop out at a later time and say, “Oh man, C, you should just see the look on your face!”

“Could this be a… joke?” Cindy turned and asked the other three as they stood on the deck. Matt and Delilah just looked at her, stupefied. Gregory looked on the verge of being sick and passing out.

“Are you kidding?” Delilah asked. “You saw what happened back there. Those things ate Martin!” Her voice increased in pitch with each word until she was practically screaming by sentence’s end. “And look at Greg’s legs. How is that a joke?”

Cindy nodded and turned back to the door. She pounded on it and took a step back, casting a long glance over her shoulder to the field where they had just been. A moment later her father came to the door, pipe firmly clenched between his teeth.

“Hey kids!” he said cheerily. Cindy winced from his all too jovial tone, the emotional equivalent of turning on a flashlight in someone’s face. She pushed past her father and the others followed before she nudged him aside and slammed the door shut.

“Is Popeye outside?” she asked him.

“Why, yes,” he said, quickly looking her up and down. “Cindy, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“No, Dad,” she began. “There’s… been…” she struggled for the words as they choked in her throat. “Mario’s dead!”

She resisted the urge to throw her arms around her father and bawl, the tears already streaming down her face. She would have been able to take comfort from her father, to hear him tell her how everything would be all right, except he had that damn pipe clenched between his teeth. It made him look ridiculous and when he put his hands on her arms and squeezed she shook him off.

“Aw, honey, I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems,” he said, clearly missing the exactitude of her words. She began busying herself, helping Gregory into a chair and prodding around his bite wounds. “Did you guys have a fight?”

“No!” she said, fixing him with a hostile stare. “He’s dead, Daddy. Zombies ate him.”

“Ohhhh,” he began and completely failed at heading off a laugh. “I-I-I see. And-and where were these zombies.”

“Mr. Nostrand, Cindy’s telling the truth, Delilah said. Matt nodded in agreement. “We were out at the clearing and–”

“Out at the clearing,” Cindy’s father jumped in, suddenly enraged. “Maggie!” he called over his shoulder. The hurricane of words Cindy was set to throw at her father; that he never listened to her, never believed in her, always took her for granted–years worth of pent up frustration was suddenly dammed up with those five words.

They weren’t supposed to be there. Cindy had been expressly forbidden by her parents and she had known exactly why and had gone anyway.

“Daaad,” she said weakly, but he sliced through the air with one hand, silencing her.

They all remained in silence until Mrs. Nostrand joined them a few moments later. Cindy felt like she was being prodded with a thousand tiny shards of ice down her spine and over the backs of her arms.

“Guess who just decided to take her friends to the clearing?” Cindy’s father said. Her mother’s eyes widened and widened even further as she stared at her daughter.

“How… how could you?” Mrs. Nostrand said, her eyes instantly glistening. She clutched at her husband’s side. “How could you hurt us like this when you know what happened?” They were the ultimate one-two punch, good cop, bad cop, thunder and lightning. It was always this way with the two of them, no matter what was going on in Cindy’s life. They were playing the trump card, but Cindy had to try something to swing the conversation back her way.

“I know I screwed up, but–”

“No!” her mother howled. “No, no, no, noooooooooo!”

“Mommy…”

“Go to your room! Nowwwwww!”

Cindy looked at her friends, hoping for some kind of defense, but they were all stunned to silence. Even Gregory was quiet. Cindy slunk past her parents, heading for the stairs.

“Are we… are we supposed to go with her?” Matt asked.

 

Make sure to check back for the next installment this week! In the meantime, Anything but Zombies is out now! Go download a copy.

 

Anything but Zombies, Tearing up the #Amazon Rankings

 

Anything but Zombies is ranked #29 right now on Amazon. Thank you to everyone who has downloaded it so far, thank you to everyone who is about to click this link. If you want an idea of what the anthology is about, read The Non-Believers or this.

 

Anything but Zombies #AbZ #bookboost #iartg @atriabooks

I also wrote a short story for the Anything but Zombies anthology. Read an excerpt of “The Takers” right here ahead of its publication this Tuesday.

 

The line buzzed three times before Phyllis answered.

“Hello?” his wife said.

“Honey, it’s me,” Toby said. “I lost my cell phone and I’m at the neighbor’s—Mr. Laferle—using his phone.”

“What happened?” The panic in his wife’s voice was thick. “Why didn’t you call me back? The girls and I were so worried about you!”

He didn’t say that he’d just told her he’d lost his cell phone. She was understandably worried. “I tore the house up looking for my cell. I looked inside and out before calling it quits twenty minutes ago and coming down here to call. I’m sorry I worried you.”

“You had me worried. Are you okay?” Phyllis took a deep breath and blew it out into the phone. “Should I come up there?”

“No!” he said a little too loudly. “I’m fine now that I finally got to talk to you. Everything’s fine.”

“What did the sheriff say?”

“Not too much in the help department.” There was a little anteroom off the back of the kitchen and Toby was half-mindedly examining the junk inside through a window when he spotted what looked to be a wavy strip of white aluminum siding sitting atop a pile of junk. “Uh, honey, I gotta go, there’s a call coming on the other line. Love you. ’Bye.”

He hung up the phone and put his back to the fridge. Mr. Laferle was still standing there. Maybe that particular siding hadn’t come off his house but Toby noticed the man’s half-bandaged hands. One was pretty well wrapped even though blood had soaked through until it looked like he was wearing a red mitten. The other hand had a deep gash through the palm and Toby would have guessed he’d severed some tendons. The bandage on that hand was haphazard, wrapped securely at the wrist and looser as it went up the hand like he’d lost interest in what he’d been doing. The man didn’t seem to notice his still oozing wounds as he stood silent as a mummy, his wide eyes on Toby.

“Mr. Laferle, you okay?” His layer of panic stripped away, Toby was able to process his surroundings more effectively. The man was in shock. There was still an air about him, however, making Toby nervous. More than his own issues, though, he was worried about the man. Was it possible for someone to bleed to death from the cuts on his hands? At the very least, he could have permanent damage if his wounds weren’t tended promptly, Toby guessed.

He spotted a stack of books on the kitchen table. He recognized the cover of the one on top and realized it was one of his. Mr. Laferle was a fan! Maybe the man was in shock and a little bit in awe of an author he’d been reading now standing in his kitchen.

He smiled and pointed at the books. “Hey, why don’t we get you to the hospital and I’ll sign some of those for you.” His neighbor lunged at him, wrapping oozing hands around his neck. Toby batted at his arms, breaking his weak grip and stepping aside. Mr. Laferle crashed into the refrigerator and Toby circled around him. The shorter man turned, his eyes locking onto Toby. He had that same expression, but the sudden violence changed the tenor of his eyes. He almost looked mindless.

They stood in front of each other, the air between them like ice. Toby wanted to run, but he didn’t think he could get the door open and out before the man was on him.

“Now wait a minute,” Toby said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can just forget I was even here.” He held out a placating hand. “Just let me walk out the door and we’re good. Okay?”

By way of reply, his neighbor’s mouth fell open. Toby thought he saw a blue light from behind his teeth and a millisecond before the man charged again, Toby snatched up the boiling pot and swung it in an arch at his head. It connected with a ping, but redirected him rather than stopping him. Mr. Laferle whirled, his bloody hands up like a 10 percent–wrapped mummy and Toby hit him again. The man didn’t go down, didn’t seem to understand his face had just been smashed open, didn’t appear to hear the pot clanging off his skull, his eyes never wavering from his target. Toby didn’t stop swinging, each time the pot pinging off Mr. Laferle’s head until his forward momentum stopped and he was driven back. There was a dent at the corner of the man’s hairline before he fell and Toby stood over him, panting heavily.

His neighbor’s eyes were still pointed at him, but they were glazed. Toby sidestepped to make sure they didn’t follow like a creepy wall painting. Mr. Laferle was dead.

Toby dropped the equally misshapen pot, his hands going to his mouth as if to stop it from speaking some secret against his will.

He had to call the police.

He had to get out of here.

The whole episode had taken on an eeriness he couldn’t stand to be around.

Toby backed away. He retreated to the phone, grabbing it off the wall mount and thumbed 911. The county operator he was routed to took his information and asked him to stay on the line while she contacted the local police. Toby let the phone slide from his hands, already headed for the door. He knew what this looked like and it would still look the same from the relative comfort of his own home. Let them say he’d murdered a man. But staying there was not an option.

He tore open the front door, making a beeline for his house. “The writer didn’t dare look into moonless night or listen to thick silence,” Toby said as he ran. “His eyes and ears were only for the house in front of him.” Toby’s lungs were starved for oxygen by the time he got the door shut behind him. He went through the house and turned on all the lights as if to wash the dark off him and sweep it back outside like a receding tide.

 

Don’t forget to download your copy of Anything but Zombies too! Available Tuesday on Amazon and everywhere eBooks are sold.

The Non-Believers, Pt I #free #bookboost #iartg @AtriaBooks

In the spirit of the anthology I edited for Atria Brooks I’ve written a story for you can read right here for free. If you have already pre-ordered your copy of Anything but Zombies, you already know what the anthology is about and that it is available this Tuesday. For those of you who have yet to read anything about it, please click on this Amazon link to be taken directly to the AbZ page.

With no further delay, I present to you part one of The Non-Believers…

Mario lay ahead of Cindy, clutching at his bloody shin and she leapfrogged him. The others were just behind her and she hoped one of them would stop to help him up. But she was just too afraid.

“Guys, help!” Mario’s words were thick and wet like he had hit his face and busted his mouth. City chance today look over her shoulder just as those things reach him, digging their hands and mouth into his young flash. Mario screamed and Cindy let out a scream herself as her boyfriend was torn apart.

“My legs!” Gregory screamed. “My legs hurt so bad!” He had been bitten by those things, three of them, while they’d been wandering through the trees. His sister, Janine had been bitten on the neck and as they had all run her face had turned blue and she had fallen, only to be quickly devoured before her brother could come to her aid.

“Just keep running!” Matt said, surging ahead until he was almost neck-and-neck with Cindy. She didn’t consciously think about where she was going, but she wanted to go home. She wanted to run upstairs and lock her bedroom door before climbing beneath her covers and staying under there until the danger passed.

Or at least until somebody else did something about it.

She stubbed her toe on a rock, but managed not to fall. It hurt like hell, she might have broken it, but she didn’t dare stop. Cindy gritted her teeth against the agony with each footfall, pressing on as they came out of the trees. The others screamed and cried as they ran close behind, their cries no doubt keeping those things on their path if nothing else.

Finally they crested the berm at the edge of her property. Cindy could feel her strength waning, but she couldn’t slow down. Slowing down would mean falling behind and falling behind would mean letting those creatures etch even closer. She’d seen Thomas and Sarah go down. Had dodged around one of those creatures as it munched on Kelly and beneath the lunging arms of another that continued on to gouge out Martin’s eyeballs as the hapless young lineman had beat harmlessly at it with his massive and useless fists.

And then Mario. Poor Mario. The boy who had told her he loved her once upon a time, would love her forever and she’d believed him. Had believed she’d felt the same way. But the young track star had promptly raced out of the clearing of the initial bloodbath, leaving them all behind and disappearing into the woods. She’d seen the stone where he’d had to have bashed his shin, could have told him to watch out for it had he not been so far ahead of everyone else. After all, it was the wood behind her property and she’d known it well enough. So she’d felt no guilt in leapfrogging her boyfriend–her ex-boyfriend by her thinking. As far as Cindy had felt it was better him than her, better she found out what kind of boy he was before she realized twenty or thirty years in what kind of man he was.

They climbed over the old wooden fence that wouldn’t hold those things back for two seconds and she used the precious moment to fill her lungs and finally chanced a look back. As far as she could tell, it was just her, Gregory, Matt, and Delilah. Everyone else had been… caught and well, their catchers might still be eating.

Gregory took that moment to let his legs give out. Matt and Delilah helped him to his feet. All of them were grateful to have an excuse to take a breather, but Cindy couldn’t stop. She turned back toward the house and began a brisk walk.

“Cindy, wait up!” Delilah cried. “C’mon, serious! Greg’s hurt real bad.” Delilah’s boyfriend had been the first one to be eaten, going back to the cooler they had brought to fish out another beer only to have his own guts fished out instead. He’d been the lineman, punching the elderly monster in the face after it had shoved both hands into his stomach. It wasn’t the first time Delilah had been sprayed in the face with her boyfriend’s fluids, but that particular sentence had been ended with a resounding exclamation point.

I hope you’re enjoying so far. Please check back for the next installment and don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Anything but Zombies right now! And if you like pseudo-vampires, check out my first YA novel, Vamp-Hire!

Stop Spinning Your Wheels & Track Your Work #amwriting

If you’re an author like me, you write a lot even when you’re not on your current WIP. Whether you’re looking for an agent, new reviewers, or anything else that you could make a list of, if you’re not making a spreadsheet to keep track of whom you’ve contacted, there’s every likelihood you’ll be contacting the same people over and over.

Stop doing that. Just stop it.

Seriously, you may have ready my post on why I moved to Google Drive and if you haven’t yet because you’re afraid the gummymint is watching you, well, 1) they’re probably watching you anyway, and 2) you’re more than likely not up to anything they’re interested in.

So come on already. Start a Gmail account and let’s get this thing going.

The reason I say use Google Drive and not just a flash drive with an Excel file on it is flash drives get lost. Okay, so I do still have a flash drive, but it’s so much more convenient to have Drive (and the Docs and Sheets apps on my iPhone).

The reason you want to put everyone you contact on a spreadsheet is twofold. You want to keep track of not only the people you contact, but what, if anything, they wrote back to you, said about you, or wrote about you. You can create fields to keep track of all that information. The other reason is if they do say something good about you, you want to be sure to utilize those people in the future. That’s assuming we’re talking about reviewers, of course. But if you have a spreadsheet tracking potential agents, you can use it to keep track of when you emailed them, when they responded, and whether or not it was positive. Just because they rejected a manuscript doesn’t mean they always will. Maybe you needed a little more seasoning or the right idea to hit them in just the right way and if it was a soft no, you can try them again versus resubmitting to the agent who responded with a form letter by mail six months after you contacted them.

With the release of Anything but Zombies from Atria Books right around the corner, I figure it’s time I found myself an agent, so I put together a spreadsheet to keep track of the people I’ve contacted so far. I’ll share it with you. It’s not the information that’s so important, about ten minutes worth of researching and you could have the same names plus some. It’s my format I think you’ll find useful. Just click this link and it’s yours. Sorry, if you don’t have a Google account, you’ll have to create one in order to access it. Again, they’ve already been watching you, so don’t worry too much.

All I ask is for a little feedback. Let me know how it’s working out for you! Copy it, download it and personalize it to do whatever you want it to do. I also have a spreadsheet to keep track of my review requests and I add to and prune that list regularly to keep it up to date and weed out the negative reviews and dead accounts. I’ve spent a lot of time creating that list and that one you will have to create on your own.

And if it’s not too much trouble, why not consider downloading a book? My YA book, Vamp-Hire was published back in February and Anything but Zombies is due out in a couple weeks.