Colin M. Drysdale's Blog, page 12

Would Knowing The Zombies Are Coming Make A Zombie Apocalypse More Terrifying?

When it comes to zombie fiction, there’s two basic themes. The first is best illustrated by the start of 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead, where you have a character who has no idea what’s going on. Here, all the tension is developed by the unknown. The character (and indeed the viewer or reader) knows something has changed, but they don’t know what. Suspense is built as they (and, by proxy, you) move through a world filled with some unknown threat which is eventually revealed. The second theme is where the characters know exactly what’s coming, through past experience, or through news broadcasts and the media, yet they’re powerless to do anything about it, but fight or flee. Here the suspense comes not from wondering what’s out there, but how to escape its clutches.

The question is, if it were really to happen, which would be scarier? Would it be the unknown and the unexpected? Or would it be knowing exactly what’s coming, yet being powerless to prevent it? Personally, while I like the first in my zombie fiction, the second would be much, much worse to have to endure for real. If you don’t know what’s out there, you can at least persuade yourself that it might not be as bad as you imagine. If you do know, then you’ll know exactly what you’re up against, and when it comes to zombie hordes that would be truly terrifying.

Indeed, if a zombie apocalypse were to happen, the chances are most people wouldn’t be faced with the unknown, especially in the modern, highly-connected world. The moment the first dead started to rise, or the disease starts to spread, the 24 hour news channels would spring into action, doing their best to capture the story as it develops in full technicolour and high-definition, while Facebook and Twitter would be inundated with out-of-focus pictures and shaky video as people posted what was going on outside their front doors.

In short, pretty much everyone would know exactly what was coming to get them as they barricade the doors or take to the streets to run for their lives. They’d see it on their screens from every possible angle and they would be frightened beyond measure. Yet, this is rarely portrayed in zombie fiction. Instead, we seem to prefer the single, somehow ignorant, character point of view as they face the unknown. I’m not quite too sure why this is, but I think it might be to do with that childhood fear, when going to sleep at night, of whether the world will still be there, unaltered, when you wake the next morning or whether it might all change as you slumber.

From a writer’s perspective, there’s possibly also something more appealing about writing about someone dealing with the unknown. It’s easier to build suspense and create tension when the reader doesn’t know what’s waiting for them out of sight, but just around the corner. The reader also gets that vicarious thrill when they follow the characters as they do something they clearly shouldn’t, given the situation (you know, those moments when you want to scream out advice, like ‘Don’t open that door!’ or ‘Don’t go into that basement!’).

Yet, there are also many interesting possibilities to explore when people know what they’re up against. The tension can come not from what’s coming to get the characters, but from when it will arrive, and whether they will survive. The plot devices which you can employ have also been used less often, so it’s easier to be original rather than ending up with something which reminds the reader of something else. For example, there’s only so many times you can have someone waking up in a bed in an abandoned hospital before it starts becoming a cliché. Similarly, the emotions which you can explore aren’t the usual confusion and disbelief, but rather the fears and horror of knowing exactly what’s happening just outside the door while being powerless to stop it. This means if you’re going to write a zombie story, it’s worth considering whether ignorance really is bliss, or whether a little knowledge would be a much more dangerous, and terrifying, thing.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

First Review For ‘Zombies Can’t Swim…’ Anthology

Zombies Can’t Swim … got its first official review yesterday from the nice people on the ZombieGift.com, where it got 4.75 brains out of a possible five.

Here’s a few of my favourite quotes from it:

‘The majority of the terse tales in this collection are so well written and so engaging they leave you yearning for more.’

‘I found these stories more realistic than many zombie novels I’ve read. I really liked the fact that Mr. Drysdale acknowledges the fact that the good guy doesn’t always win, especially when it comes to the apocalypse and the days of the undead roaming the earth. Things don’t always work out for the best. Sometimes the most logical or easiest conclusion to a zombie story isn’t always the prettiest or most desirable for the protagonist.’

‘A collection of short zombie themed stories is perfect for busy zombie fans that don’t have a ton of time to read. This is also the ideal solution for those with a short attention span. I loved being able to pick up this book and read a short story or two when I needed a break from my daily activities.’

‘The end of most stories in this book features an “Author’s Notes” section. It’s a very cool little blurb where Mr. Drysdale provides some deeper insight on things such as why a story was written, how the idea came about or simply a way to provide more information on a topic.’

If you want to read the whole review, you can find it here. Even if you don’t, it’s worth checking out ZombieGift.com for regular zombie-based giveaways (including signed copies of Zombie’s Can’t Swim … at some point in the near future).

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Yet Another Prediction Of The End Of Civilisation – But The Source Will Surprise You!

We’re used to stories popping up in the news from time to time, where someone or other claiming the end is near because of some prophecy or the writings of a long-gone ancient civilisation. In the last few year, there’s been the rampant speculation based on the end of the Mayan calendar, the appointment of a new Pope and even the occasional comet streaking across the heavens. There’s also been the fears of Swine Flu, H5N1, SARS and a few other diseases that have spluttered out rather than bringing humanity to its knees – despite the glaring headlines predicting doom and gloom. For this very reason, I take almost all end of the world predictions with a very large pinch of salt.

Today, something different happened. I first became aware of this new prediction as a headline claiming western civilisation as we know it might come to and end within the next 50 years. I was just about to ignore it when I noticed where this prediction had come from. It wasn’t from some lunatic fringe; it wasn’t a conspiracy, or the ravings of some over-zealous religious group: instead, it had come from NASA – Yes, THAT NASA! Now, NASA aren’t exactly known for making wild claims, so I thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and read on.

So why are NASA predicting the collapse of civilisation? It’s down to this: there’s simply too many people on the planet and we depleting its resources faster than they can be replaced. Add to this the ever-growing inequality between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, and you have the perfect storm for pushing western society over the edge.

This might seem like idle speculation, but it’s actually rooted in some pretty hard facts. When we look at past civilisations which have collapsed, such as the Roman empire, we see exactly the same warning signs occurring before the final fall, and all NASA are pointing out is that the way we’re going, we’re heading in exactly the same way.

Now, they’re not saying it’s unavoidable or inevitable, just that we need to start doing something to stop things getting much worse. In many ways, I agree with them, especially when on the same day the NASA report came out, there was another in Britain that pointed out that just five families had the same financial worth as the poorest 20% the population. That is the type of imbalance which the world cannot maintain without the people at the bottom rising up and doing something about it.

So, is the end of the world coming? Probably not, but if those in power don’t start doing something to limit the way that the rich are asset-stripping the planet, leaving the rest of us to pay the price, we’re likely to see some massive upheavals which will mean that much of what we currently consider western civilisation will disappear. In the end, it’s not going to be zombies that bring our world down around our ears, but the greed of those we let run our lives.

The worst thing is with the way the western political system is set up, there’s little we, as individuals, can do about it, and it’s unlikely that the rich will stop lining their own pockets at our expense if someone doesn’t force them to stop. Maybe NASA’s predictions will be the catalyst to change all of this, but I wouldn’t count on it. There’s a certain inevitability to it all. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. The only question is what will our world look like when it happens to us?

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

‘Zombies Can’t Swim And Other Tales Of The Undead’ – Free Kindle eBook Promotion

My anthology of short zombie stories, called Zombies Can’t Swim And Other Tales Of The Undead, will be available to download for free as a Kindle eBook from Amazon this weekend (Saturday the 15th to Sunday and 16th of March 2014 – the start and end of this promotion are governed by Pacific Standard Time).

Zombies Can’t Swim And Other Tales Of The Undead contains 23 stories, most of which were originally published on this blog, but there is one completely new story (The Dark Heart Of The Sea), which will only ever be available in this anthology.

From The Back Of The Book:

Zombies Can’t Swim And Other Tales Of The Undead is a collection of stories written by Colin M. Drysdale whose debut novel, For Those In Peril On The Sea, was released in 2013 to much acclaim. In this anthology, he explores a variety of zombie and post-apocalyptic related themes in tales ranging from ones short enough to fit in a Twitter posting, through flash fiction to full length short stories. They take their inspiration from subjects as disparate as the real life mystery of Flannan Isle through dilemmas you may face in a zombie apocalypse to why you shouldn’t try waiting up for Santa Claus.

As a marine biologist by training, it’s perhaps unsurprising that several of Colin M. Drysdale’s tales link traditional zombie stories and the sea to provide a new and unusual take on how to survive in the world of the undead.

Stories Included:

The Bookshop

I’m With The Band

Zombies Can’t Swim

Last Flight Out

Waiting Up for Santa Claus: A Cautionary Tale

Nightwatch

The Watcher

Leaving

The Lighthouse At The End Of The Road

The Wall

The Girl At Little Harbour

A Plague On Both Your Houses

When Death Came To Flannan Isle

Family

Three Men In A Boat

The Emergency Room

Survival Skills

The Custom Of The Sea

Winter’s End

When The Comet Came

The Labyrinth

Apocalypse Apartments Incorporated

The Black Heart Of The Sea

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’ Selected As Finalist In The Horror Genre For Foreword’s ‘Book Of The Year Award’

Some of you will remember that when it was first published, For Those In Peril On The Sea was selected as a for first time novelists run by Foreword Review.

Well, For Those In Peril On The Sea has now also been selected as a finalist in the horror genre for the even more prestigious Foreword’s 2013 Book of the Year Award.

This award is for books not published by the ‘big six’ publishing houses, and aims to recognise excellence in independent publishing. As always, it’s good to see the zombie genre represented within the finalists for the horror genre.

The winners within each genre, and overall across all books entered will be announced sometime in May, with a celebration of the winners taking take place during the American Library Association Annual Conference in Las Vegas on Friday, June 27 at 6 p.m., with awards in over 60 categories, cash prizes for the best in fiction and nonfiction, and widespread recognition.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here. To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

In The Event Of A Zombie Apocalypse, How Quickly Could The Military Be On The Streets?

I was reworking a scene in the book I’m currently working on which involves a military checkpoint being set up, complete with barricades, well-armed personnel and even a tank, shortly after a zombie outbreak begins in a city. I always like to try to make things as realistic as possible, but on re-reading it, it occurred to me that I had no idea what-so-ever of how long it would take to mobilise all the men and equipment required to lock down a large city during a major event, such as a zombie apocalypse.

The thing is, when it comes to stopping a zombie outbreak becoming apocalyptic, speed is of the essence, and containment would almost certainly be the first strategy which would be tried. Yet, containment only works under two conditions: the people you’re trying to contain are more scared of you than staying where they are, and you have enough personnel to control them.

The first responders will always be the police, but, as evidenced by almost any urban riot in recent years, they can generally only control a population by mutual consent. That is, if enough people decide to just ignore them (and let’s face it, if you’re being chased by a zombie, you’re not exactly going to freeze, just because the nice policemen asks you to), there simply isn’t enough of them in any city to be able to do anything about it.

This means that in an outbreak situation, only the army can mobilise sufficient manpower to actually contain such large-scale event. Yet, how long would this take? Are the conspiracy theorists right, and there’s secret (or perhaps not secret, but rather unnoticed, as you will see later) military bases in our major cities, filled with heavily-armed men, ready to roll at a moment’s notice? Maybe, but only if the government is expecting trouble, and if we’re talking about a zombie apocalypse, it’s going to come out of the blue with little or no warning. So, does that mean it would take hours, possibly even days for the army to mobilise enough people and equipment, and get them in place to contain the situation? If this is the case, then they’re going to be too late.

Maybe it’s somewhere in between, and maybe it’s different for every city, depending on what military resources happen to be close at hand. For my own city (Glasgow), I can look back to 1919 when the British Government ordered 10,000 troops, complete with tanks and howitzers, to suppress rioting workers striking for a shorter working week which they feared (given Glasgow’s naturally socialist leanings and the events of 1917 in Russia) would develop into a Bolshevic-style revolution (it’s retrospectively referred to as the Battle of George Square, and represents a little known episode in Scottish history). In this case (I think it’s the only time that tanks have been deployed in anger on the streets of mainland Britain), it took several days to get the right personnel in the right places to make it happen.

Of course that was back then, and I thought it would be hard to find out what the situation would be today. I don’t ever recall seeing any sort of military bases, beyond a few cadet units here and there, and I presumed it would still take several days to get the right men in the right places. Yet, when I typed ‘Army Barracks Glasgow’ into Google, I was surprise to find there is, indeed, an army barracks in my own back yard, ready to respond, should the need arise. Great, I thought, if there’s a zombie outbreak, then here are the men and women, right on my doorstep, ready to contain it. Then I looked into it in a bit more detail: it’s home to a single company of infantrymen, armed with nothing more heavy-duty than a standard assault rifle, and consisting of only three platoons. How big is a platoon? 30 men. That makes 90 infantrymen to try to contain an outbreak in a city of half a million people. That isn’t going to work, is it?

That brings me back to the beginning, wondering how long it would take to mount the type of military response needed to contain something like a zombie outbreak? Could they do it fast enough to stop it turning apocalyptic? I suspect not. You see, for all their might, soldiers rely on the same tactics as the police. A few men can control a whole city only if the populous of that city lets them. And let’s face it, when the zombies are coming up behind you, you’re going to storm the barricades, just like everyone else.

What does this mean for containment as a strategy for preventing a zombie outbreak turning apocalyptic? Well, if the local police can’t suppress it, don’t think you can count on the military coming to the rescue. Even if they were ordered in immediately, the chances are they wouldn’t be able to get enough men and equipment mobilised in a fast enough time to get their boots on the streets before the situation had spiralled far beyond anything they could ever hope to control.

So, where does this leave us? The bottom line is the military are meant to protect us, yet in the event of a zombie apocalypse, the only thing they will be able to do is too little, too late. This is because our military rely on predicting where the next attack will come from and aiming their guns in that direction, and despite all their planning, they’re just as vulnerable to the rest of us if something truly unexpected happens.

This is the problem with military strategy, it’s always based on the last war fought, and not the one which is coming next, whether it’s containing a zombie outbreak, or something more real, like Russia annexing the Crimea, someone half the world away ordering planes to be flown into tall buildings or Japanese Zeros appearing, without warning, out of North Pacific skies. And just to tie this article up, at the time of Pearl Harbour, the Allied forces didn’t call these aircraft Zeros (their Japanese name), but Zekes. If that term sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same term soldiers in World War Z use for zombies. Given the geo-political undertones in the book, I suspect this is no co-incidence.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

The Law Of Inverse Familiarity – A Rule Of Thumb All Writers Should Remember

I’ve been working on the second draft of the novel I’m currently writing (The Outbreak), and as part of this, I’ve been sorting out one of the issues my girlfriend (in her role as unofficial editor) pointed out when she read over the first draft. This is my habit, when writing initial drafts, of over-using certain words and phrases. This is particularly true of the action sequences where all the infected roar, all the main characters scream and all the weapons blows land with a thud. I know when I’m writing the first draft that I’ll need to go back and change all these things, but it helps me get down the general framework for the story if I ignore them at the time.

Now I’ve been going back over it again, I’ve been working on varying the language so that no words or phrases leap out at the reader as being over-used, and this is where the law of inverse familiarity comes in. So what is this law? Well, it’s a nice little rule of thumb which is well worth remembering when you’re writing and it states that the less familiar a word is to a reader, the less often you can use it without the repetition leaping out at them.

For example, a reader will barely notice if you used the word ‘and’ or ‘the’ several times in the same paragraph, but if you used the word ‘defenestration’ or ‘exsanguination’ to describe how a character dies more than once in the same book, it will stand out as being odd (unless, of course, this is a specific characteristic you have for how someone kills others). This is because they’re unfamiliar words to most people and so stick in the reader’s mind. Between these two extremes, you might have words like ‘decapitation’, which is more familiar, but which you’d still need to used sparingly, or ‘glanced’, which you would probably get away with using once every page or two without it standing out too much, but not every second sentence (as I have a tendency to do in early drafts).

Identifying when words are being used too frequently can be difficult, especially if you are fully-immersed within your writing. This is because the words will become more familiar to you each time you read them, and so they’ll stand out less and less as being over-used. This is why it’s always useful to have someone else read over your work as they will come to the work with fresh eyes, and so they will be able to spot such issues much more easily than you can. However, if you are doing this yourself, one of the best approaches is to print out your work, then pick a word which you think you might have used to often, and using a highlighter pen, carefully mark each and every instance of its use. Suddenly, the frequency of usage will leap off the page at you as it you’d never read the piece before, and in almost all cases, you’ll find you used it much more often than you thought it would have been.

Once you’re aware of when you’ve over-used a word, it is quick and easy to sort it out. This is simply a matter of going carefully through your text and changing the word, either to another with a similar meaning, or by restructuring the sentence to avoid having to use it in the first place. Of course, you don’t have to replace every usage of a particular word, just enough to ensure that its usage fits more closely with the law of inverse familiarity.

So this is what I’ve spent the last week doing, re-reading my latest draft, wondering whether I can use the word bravado on three different occasions, realising that the characters are running their fingers through their hair way too often when they speak, and that I’ve been starting too many sentences with the word ‘While’. It takes time and careful reading, but the result is a much better end product so it’s well worth putting in the effort.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Useful Resources For Zombie Authors

You might think that writing a good zombie novel is as simple as coming up with a good idea and then getting it down on paper, but there’s much more to it than that. In particular, one of the most intriguing and spine-tingling aspects of many zombie stories is that they take place in a world not too different from the one the reader lives in, except for the zombies of course, and that leaves them feeling like it could happen to them. This means that you need to work hard to make sure that the zombie-filled world you create still feels real, and you need to make sure that you don’t have survivors doing the physically impossible, that you don’t have guns which can fire an infinite number of shots without having to be reloaded, cars driving vast distances without ever stopping for more fuel, and so on.

You might think you can gloss over the details, but you’d be wrong. It’s the little things that can make the difference between a story working really well, and it falling flat on its face. It doesn’t help that if you make even a minor mistake, someone somewhere will spot it (and there’s a good chance that, one way or another, they’ll let you know!). For example, if you have a character using a specific model of gun, you can guarantee that someone will be counting the bullets which it fires before the character stops to reload, and they will be quick to point out if it’s more than that specific weapon can hold.

So how do you get the details right? Well, sometimes, you can fill in the details about things from your own experiences (like how hard it is to kick a door down – much more difficult than they make it look on television!), but many other times you’ll need to do a bit of research to make sure that you get them right. This means you need to become an armchair expert in things as diverse as guns, car mechanics, geography, survival skills, medicine and first aid, epidemiology, and even human anatomy. For the first time writer, working out where to find all this information can seem daunting, but it’s not as hard as it might at first seem, especially in a world where you can google just about anything and come up with an answer. Of course, you also have to remember that just because it comes first in a search engine, it doesn’t make the information contained on a website right.

With this in mind, here’s a few resources which zombie authors are likely to find useful. I’ll start with two general ones:

1. Wikipedia: Wikipedia is often my first stop when looking for information on any subject, and it generally proves reliable (although not always in-depth enough). If you find it useful, or if you use it regularly, consider making a donation to keep it going, and advert free.

2. Google Earth: This is a great, and I suspect greatly under-used, resource for writers. You use it to check up on the layout of cities, to work out how long it would take to get from place to place, to plan out escape routes and search for great places to hide out. If you want to make sure that your zombie story fits neatly into an existing landscape, this is the resource for you.

Now for some more topic-specific ones:

1. Diseases: If you’re going down the route of having your zombies caused by a disease, you’ll need to make sure your disease plays by the rules. This means tracking down information about how diseases spread and how they affect people (especially if you’re going to base your zombie disease on a real disease). For this, I’d recommend checking out the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s website as it has lots of helpful information (although you may have to dig around to find just what you’re looking for). They also have a web portal of toxic substances which might also prove useful.

2. Military Hardware: if you’re going to have a strong military element within your zombie novel, you’ll need to make sure that you know your howitzers from your hand grenades. One of the best places to find out more about military hardware is through the Military.com equipment guide. It will tell you all you’ll need to know about almost any type of weapon you can imagine (and possibly a few you can’t).

3. Vehicles: Vehicles can be tricky. How far could you drive on half a tank? Would you really be able to take it off-road and keep it in one piece? How full could you cram it with people or gear or cases of spam raided from the nearest warehouse before it refuses to go anywhere? If this is what you need to find out, try the car specifications data base from Carfolio.com. They claim to have technical specifications on just about everything that’s ever been produced.

4. Vehicle maintenance: If you need to have your characters fix cars or cannibalise them for spare parts, you’ll need to know about mechanics. For specific vehicles, one of the best places to start is the relevant Haynes manual. This will show you how to take your vehicle apart and put it together again, and help you include just the right details when you’re writing about it.

5. Survival Skills: For years, the place to find out about survival skills was the SAS Survival Handbook, and I think I still have my old copy floating around somewhere from when I was a teenager. Nowadays, much of the same information can be found online. One good source of information is the Wilderness Survival Guide where you can find lots of handy hints about how to survive in the wild (although it doesn’t cover how to fend off marauding zombies – a bit of an oversight on their part if you ask me!).

6. Medical Skills: Writing about medical skills and procedures, and getting it right can be difficult. Generally, my advice would be to find a friendly doctor and ask their advice on anything medical, but if you don’t have that option, you can try The Wilderness First Aid Handbook for information about how someone with only basic first aid training might be able to deal with accidents and injuries in a realistic manner. If you need something that is a bit more technical, especially related to injuries likely to be suffered from guns and other weapons, and how characters might deal with them, you can try the Emergency War Handbook to see if it has any useful tips. It will also help inform you about what levels of injury are survivable and what aren’t.

7. Human Anatomy And Physiology: If you want to find out anything about the human body and how it works, the best place to start if Gray’s Anatomy (no, not the overly-schmulchy TV series, but the book which it stole its name from). For the last 150 years, it has been the book on what humans look like on the inside. Yes, it can be a bit technical in places, but it will have the information you’re looking for.

8. Military Strategy: Many zombie novels strongly feature military reactions and/or strategies in the response to a zombie apocalypse – either through the conventional military, or militias set up by survivors. Either way, knowing a bit about military strategy will help you to make things as realistic as possible. If you want a case in point, read Max Brook’s World War Z. Almost all the military strategies and set pieces he featured in that have been lifted straight out of real military history (it’s just that he’s applying it to fighting zombies and not badly behaved neighbouring countries!). A good starting point to learn more about military strategy is a books called (perhaps unsurprisingly) Military Strategy: Principles, Practices, and Historical Perspectives by John M. Collins.

9. psychopaths: Within zombie good zombie novels, the struggles between survivors can be just as important as the struggles against the zombies. Think, for example, of The Governor in The Walking Dead. Yet, getting the bad guys just right can be difficult. This is because it is too easy to slip into stereotypes and leave the villans feeling a bit one-dimensional, especially if you’re aiming to portray them as somewhat psychopathic. If you want to get these types of characters right, a good starting point is to read a book called Without Conscience: The disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among Us. It’s written by Robert Hare, the world expert on psychopaths, and reading it will help you get your baddies feeling just right and true to life. I’d also recommend reading this so that you can learn to spot any psychopaths you may run into in your everyday life (and with psychopaths making up 1% of the population, this will happen more often than you might expect).

Finally, there’s the zombie forums. A lot of these have sections specific to topics like selecting a vehicle, what weapons would be best for killing zombies and how to survive. They offer the opportunity for you to ask questions about even the most unusual zombie-related subjects and get an answer back from people who really know their stuff. Some also offer you the opportunity to discuss plot ideas, and get feedback on your novel as it progresses, which can be really useful when you’re stuck on how to get a specific scene to work and you just can’t see a way forward on your own. Of those available, these are amongst my favourites:

1. The Zombie Squad Forum: A great forum with separate message boards covering everything from weapons to survival skills, bug out bags, zombie biology and zombie combat tactics.

2. Homepage Of The Dead: The HtoD forum also covers a wide range of topics, but probably of most use is the Fiction Discussion section where you can discuss all things to do with writing zombie stories as well as sharing ideas or asking for help with problems.

3. Post-apocalyptic Forum: Not directly zombie-related, but still post-apocalyptic in nature. One particularly board is called Apocalypse Now where people post photos and links to real examples of what the world might look like once the zombies take over. Always good for a bit of inspiration when want to really get into the visual description of life in a post-apocalyptic world.

4. Permuted Press Forum: The Permuted Press Forum (publishers of a number of zombie books), provides a number of boards of interest to zombie writers. This includes their board about writing and the publishing business. It won’t really help you fill in the details, but it will help you with your writing in general.

These are just the resources which I use while writing, and I’m sure that there’s many others out there too which would be of use to zombie writers. If you have your own favourite and it’s not covered here, feel free to post it in a comment on this article with a brief note about what it is and why you find it useful.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

The Awakening – A Short Story About One Man’s Fight Against A Zombie Disease

‘John, can you hear me? John?’

I feel someone rub a knuckle against my sternum. My eyes are heavy, but somehow I pull them open. I try to turn my head, but I can’t; instead I move my eyes, even though it hurts to do so. A shadow leans over me and I feel liquid dropping first onto one eyeball then the other. I blink to clear my eyes and find I can now move them without the pain; as things come into focus, I’m surprised to find I’m lying on a bed. No, not just lying on it, I’m strapped to it and there’s something covering my mouth. Standing over me is a man in a white coat holding an empty syringe; next to him is a young woman in blue hospital scrubs holding an eye dropper and a small bottle of clear liquid. Seeing them, I pull at my restraints, not knowing what’s happening and desperately trying to get away.

The man in the white coat smiles reassuringly, ‘John, it’s okay, your safe. You’re in hospital; I’m a doctor. Do you remember why you’re here?’

I think back, but there’s nothing. Well, not nothing, there are memories of my childhood, of going to university, of getting married, of having children, but then things just seem to peter out. I remember something about getting ill, or was it having an accident? I fight to bring the memory to the front of my mind, feeling like I’m trying to drag my brain through molasses just to recall this single event. No, it wasn’t an accident, I’d been attacked by something; or was it someone?

The man in the white coat steps to the side, revealing a tall, scared-looking woman, ‘John, do you recognise who this is?’

I nod, or at least I try to, but I can only move my head few millimetres because of the way it’s strapped down.

‘Good, that means it’s worked, we’ve got you back; at least for the time being.’ The man gives a signal and unseen people remove the restraints and the gag that had been strapped across my mouth. I sit up but as I do so, my wrists grazing against the side of the bed sending a searing pain shooting through my body. I glance down and see my forearms are raw and bleeding. The man waves to someone and the young woman in hospital scrubs scurries forward to dress on my wounds.

I turn my attention back to the woman beside the man in white. I smile at her, ‘Gabrielle?’

She steps forward, a tear running down her cheek and I notice there’s something different about her. Her once beautiful hair hangs limply and is flecked with grey; her face is drawn and gaunt, with worry lines etched across her forehead. I can’t understand how she’s changed so much in so little time. Only yesterday, her eyes sparkled with happiness but now there’s only pain and despair in them. can’t help but be struck at how much older she suddenly looks than her thirty-five years. I know that’s how old she is because it was her birthday yesterday, wasn’t it? We’d gone out for a meal, but something happened, didn’t it? But what? My mind’s starting to connect the random thoughts more freely, but still I’m confused. ‘Gabrielle? What happened to you?’

‘Life happened, just like it happened to you.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Look.’ She holds out a mirror and I stare at the grizzled face which stares back. Not believing what I’m seeing, I touch the side of my face, feeling the rough stubble that’s more white than it’s usual auburn. I struggle to understand what’s going on. ‘How long have I been here?’

The doctor examines his chart but it’s Gabrielle that answers. ‘Ten years. Ten years today. That was when you got attacked; when you got infected.’

I scowl, trying to remember, but failing. ‘And I’ve been in a coma all this time?

‘No, John, not a coma. You’ve been … You’re a …’ She struggles to find the words.

The doctor steps forward, ‘Maybe I can explain better. I’m Dr Walker, but you can call me Ben if you want.’

I shake the hand he’s holding out, feeling the weakness in my arms as I do so. He doesn’t seem to notice and carries on. ‘You won’t remember it, but there was an outbreak, a disease; no one really knows what it was or where it came from, just that it flared up briefly and then disappeared. This disease, it took over people’s brains and made them attack anyone who was nearby. That’s how the disease spread, through infected people biting others. At first people thought it was rabies, but there was no trace of the rabies virus and rabies doesn’t spread quite as fast as this disease did. The government managed to get it under control, but most of the people who were infected had to be shot because they were too dangerous to get close enough to restrain, but you were lucky, your wife,’ the doctor smiles at Gabrielle, ‘managed to get you here before you started showing too many symptoms and we were able to restrain you.’

I’m still confused. ‘But I don’t remember anything.’

The doctor cleared his throat. ‘That’s because the disease shut down the conscious part of your brain, but left the basal areas unaffected. You could move and sense the world, but you weren’t consciously aware any more; you weren’t in control of what you were doing. It made you incredibly dangerous, you’d attack anyone who came near, trying to bite and infect them.’

‘Are you saying I was like … like a …’ I try to think of what I’m meaning, and then the world comes to me. ‘A zombie?’

Gabrielle looks away and the doctor shifts uncomfortably. ‘Yes. In fact, that’s exactly what we call people like you.’

‘But I’m still alive, I’m not really a zombie.’ Then something the doctor had just said wormed its way into my consciousness, ‘People like me? There are other people who have this disease too?’

‘Yes. There are thirty-eight of you in all, spread throughout the hospitals in the city. All kept in isolation, in rooms just like this, so you can’t infect anyone else.’

I struggle to comprehend what’s happened to me. ‘But I’m cured now?’

Again the doctor shifts uncomfortably. ‘No, not cured; just temporarily relieved from the worst effects of the disease, allowing you to regain control of you body and become conscious again.’

A wave of fear washes over me. ‘For how long?’

The doctor glances at his watch. ‘Thirty minutes; maybe forty at the most. I don’t know how long the drugs will last this time. It’s a new one you see, never been tried before.’

‘This time?’

‘Yes. We’ve brought you back before.’

I wrack my brain for memories. ‘But I don’t remember.’

‘I’m not surprised. It takes time to lay down memories and we’ve never managed to bring you back long enough for that to happen.’

‘Why do the drugs stop working?’

‘We don’t know, it seems to be that the disease fights back and block off the receptors which the drugs stimulate. That’s why each drug only works once in each person.’

I try to take this all in, but I’m struggling. There is one question which springs to mind though. ‘What will happen when the drug you used this time wears off? Will I go back to being a zombie again?’

The doctor stares down at his feet. ‘Yes.’

I’m angry now. ‘So why did you bring me back if it’s not going to last?’

Gabrielle sits down beside me and hugs me. I remember her scent and the feel of her skin against mine. ‘Because I asked him to, because I wanted to see you, the real you, one last time.’ I feel her shake and realise she’s crying. ‘Because I wanted to say good-bye.’

I try to pull away, but she’s holding me too tightly. ‘I can’t go on like this, seeing you strapped down, struggling against the restraints. I need to move on with my life.’

I finally break free. ‘But Gabrielle, you can’t leave me, not now, not when I’m like this!’

This is the only woman I’ve ever loved and I thought she loved me too. I can’t believe she’s abandoning me, not when I need her most.

She holds my hand. ‘I’m not leaving you, John, you left me the moment you got infected. It wasn’t your fault, but I can’t keep doing this. In ten years, I’ve only been able to spend thirty minutes with you here; quarter of an hour there: maybe half a day in all. I can’t go on like this, with just brief snatches of the real you now and then; the rest of the time you’re as good as dead.’

Before I can say anything I notice my hand is shaking. At first I think it’s because I’m upset, but then I realise it seems to be doing it on its own.

The doctor sees me staring at it, and checks his watch. ‘Only ten minutes. Damn, I thought we’d get more time with this one.’

Gabrielle kisses me on the cheek and stands up.

‘Gabrielle? Where are you going?’

She bows her head and turns away from me. ‘I’m leaving. I don’t want to watch as I lose you all over again.’

‘But Gabrielle …’

‘No, John, not this time. This will be the last time. I’ve told them not to give you any more drugs. I won’t bring you back again.’

Anger rises inside of me; not normal anger, but something more consuming. ‘But why?’

At the door she stops and turns round to face me. ‘Because it’s unfair to you, John. I keep bringing you back so I can see you, spend time with you, hold you once more, whenever a new drug becomes available no matter how much it costs, but I realise now I’m being selfish; I’ve only been thinking about what I want, not what’s best for you. You don’t remember the times I’ve brought you back before; the anger you feel, the pain as the disease takes over again, the fear in your eyes as you know once more that you’re disappearing again. I can’t keep doing that to you just so I get to spend a few more minutes with you. I love you too much to put you through all that again just because I’d give anything to have you back the way you were, even if it’s only for the briefest of moments.‘

I feel my arm jolt and an urge rushes over me. Suddenly I want nothing more than to tear her throat out. I feel a hunger build inside me. I try to speak, but words don’t come out; instead there’s just a low guttural groan, sounding more animal than human. My eye sight starts to blur around the edges and the world starts to close in around me. I fight as hands from unseen orderlies grab me and roughly push me back onto the bed. I feel the restraints being attached again, but I don’t feel pain as they chaff against my wounds, turning the fresh dressings red as blood oozes from them. I shake my head violently, trying to stop them putting the gag over my mouth, not because I want to speak, but because I know that once it’s on I won’t be able to bite them, and all I want to do right now is sink my teeth into someone’s flesh; anyone’s.

The last thing I hear is Gabrielle saying goodbye, her voice cracking and filled with sorrow; then a door closes and everything’s slowly fading to black. In my mind, I’m frozen with fear, screaming as loud as I can into the darkness that’s engulfing me, but my body’s still moving, fighting as hard as it can against the restraints, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

***

You can download a PDF of this story from here.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

If You Became A Zombie, Would You Ever Want To Become Human Again?

I’m working on a short story at the moment which is inspired by the movie ‘Awakenings‘. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s the true story of one doctor’s attempts to reach people who’ve become locked in a catatonic state by a disease they caught as a child. Decades later, he found a drug that managed to awaken them (hence the title), but their rest-bite was only brief and soon they slipped away again, but all the time knowing what was happening to them.

What, I wondered, would it be like if someone became a zombie (of the still-living infected kind rather than the traditional risen-from-the-dead kind) and we discovered a drug which could make them human again? How would such people manage to cope once they found out what they’d done while in their zombie state? What if they’d killed strangers? Or friends? Or relatives?

This was a subject which was touched upon in the great TV series ‘In The Flesh‘ which aired last year, but I’ve been thinking about it again because of the short story I’m writing. I guess the question here is whether, if you became infected with a zombie disease, would you want to become human again if that choice was available to you? Yes, you would have your life back, but you’d have to live with the knowledge of what you’d been and what you’d done. It’s also very unlikely that your friends and family would treat you as being the same person they’d always known and loved. Some might shun you, or treat you as a second class citizen. Even those who didn’t would still treat you differently, they wouldn’t be able to help it, and would you be able to live with those changed relationships? The mother who can’t bring herself to hug you, the partner who jumps every time you roll over in the night, the children who run away and hide when you approach.

What about if it wasn’t a cure that brought you back, but simply a way to keep the disease at bay, meaning you’d have to take medication for the rest of your life. Would you want to become human again then? Would you want to live with the responsibility of knowing that if you ever forgot to take your medication, you would once again turn and be a danger to all those around you?

What if it was only temporary? What if you knew the medication would only make you human again for a few weeks, or days, or even just a few hours? Would you want to take it just for a few moments of once again being who you’d once been?

Then again, the decision to start treatment wouldn’t be yours, would it? It would be your doctor’s or your family’s, or it might even be forced on you by the government. If a zombie disease arrived and you wanted to make sure you were never brought back if you caught it, would you need to sign a ‘Do Not Dezombify’ statement like the ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ statements which exist today?

Personally, if something like this happened to me, I’d probably not want to be brought back. I might if there was a straight out cure, although I’d have difficulty living with the knowledge of what I might have done in my zombie state. I certainly wouldn’t want the responsibility if I’d have to keep taking medication on a regular basis (sometimes I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t screwed on, especially when I’m writing, let alone remembering to take a pill three times a day). And I definitely wouldn’t want to come back if it was only temporary because I’d permanently be looking for signs that it was coming back and worrying that every little thing might be the first step on the steep slide back to zombism.

Yet, the temptation for loved ones would be to give you the medication, just so that they could spend more time with you, and get to say good-bye to you properly – to get the closure that would be so rare in any zombie outbreak – even if it wasn’t necessarily what you would want for yourself given the circumstances.

So, where am I going with this? Well, there are some quite serious issues here and they are ones we are increasingly have to think about and deal with in the modern world. Yes, zombies don’t exist (not yet at any rate!), but medicine has now reached the point were we can keep people alive in states that even a few years ago would have meant certain death. People are also living longer and that means more and more people are developing Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Together, this means we now live in an age where we ever more frequently face having to make decisions about the lives and deaths of those we love when they lose the capacity for doing it for themselves, yet we rarely speak to each other about it until it’s too late.

This might be a depressing thing for a Friday afternoon, but these are the types of conversations that we need to have with those around us in the world of modern medicine. We need to know what our friends and relatives would want to do in such situations, and we need to tell them what we would wish to happen to us. It sounds morbid, but it at least means we’re prepared if the worse were ever to happen and we end up in a state trapped between the living and the dead, unable to make decisions for ourselves.

Oh, and if there’s ever a zombie disease outbreak, please remember, it I could do it for myself, I’d tick the ‘Do Not Dezombify’ box.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.