It seems we've all survived Zombie Week! Enjoy my interview with Kim Paffenroth - his writing advice is so good, I'm going to put it in my "quotes" file. Have a safe, happy Halloween!

Welcome to the blog, Kim! Could you tell us a little bit about History is Dead: A Zombie Anthology?
It’s an anthology I edited a couple years ago, in which I asked contributors to set their stories before the Twentieth Century. So we ended up with lots of stories with zombies in unusual settings and living humans employing quite different tactics than we see when they’re fighting the undead in a contemporary setting.

What led you to write this book?
I wanted to see how people imagined fighting zombies in a world with much less firepower and mobility. I also wanted to see zombies as a more primal monster and not just a product of the late Twentieth Century. The results were a great range of stories, both in their particulars, and in their tone (some are hilarious, some are truly tragic).

You’re a professor of religious studies. How does your knowledge of the Bible and theology affect your writing?
I try to restrain myself from having a “message” as it were – but at the same time, I know I have a particular perspective, and it’s good for me to express it (subtly and not overtly). So I don’t want to be known as the “Christian zombie guy,” but I know that my outlook should come through in subtle ways, so people can have a deeper aesthetic experience of my work. 

Why do you think zombies are so popular right now? Are there any underrated horror themes you’d like to see become more popular?
Zombies are a potent mix – primal fears that everyone has always had about death, dying, and the dead; expressed in a monster that embodies some uniquely modern fears of alienation, lack of individuality, being “lost in the crowd,” of not having meaning or purpose in one’s life; exacerbated by a contemporary fear of bio-terrorism, plagues, and genetic manipulation.

I always wondered why aliens never got more scary than in the original Alien movie. They seem more comical or a more vague threat to me now, whereas the original was a movie that truly scared me to death. I think something more should be done with them.

What is your best writing advice?
Read a lot. Even if you don’t end up writing something, your time’s been well spent. 

Thanks so much for stopping by, Kim!
Entirely my pleasure, thanks!

Bio
Please write a short bio that includes any other writing or upcoming books. Any length from a few sentences to an average paragraph is fine.

Kim Paffenroth is Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College. He is the author of several books on the Bible and theology. His books in the horror genre include Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006), which won the Bram Stoker Award; the Dying to Live series (Permuted Press, 2007-2011); and Valley of the Dead (Permuted Press, 2010). He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two children. 

Kim Paffenroth can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and his blog at http://gotld.blogspot.com. (That’s the acronym for GOSPEL OF THE LIVING DEAD!)

History is Dead: A Zombie Anthology is available at Amazon, B&N, and any other online book retailer; it can be specially ordered at “regular,” brick and mortar bookstores.

It's still Zombie Week here at the blog! If you took my advice from the last post, you're probably hunkered down in some cellar or dark corner of your home. And you're probably wishing you had something to read. Jonathan Maberry, author of quality zombie and horror fiction, kindly agreed to stop by and share some insight about his new book, Dead of Night.

Freelance and Fiction: Welcome to the blog, Jonathan! Could you tell us a little bit about Dead of Night?
JONATHAN MABERRY: Dead of Night is a new take on the zombie apocalypse, starting with the absolute beginning of the outbreak in a small Pennsylvania town. We see the first kill, the first encounter with the cops, the first reporters on scene to cover it.  The main characters are a female redneck cop named Dez Fox and her partner, JT Hammond; and Dez’s ex-boyfriend, Billy Trout, a reporter who risks his life to discover the truth behind the outbreak. We also get a pretty plausible scientific explanation for how a zombie apocalypse could happen.  So plausible, in fact, that it absolutely creeped me out while I was writing it.

Freelance and Fiction: In Dead of Night, your zombie wasn’t an average Joe before being infected – he was a serial killer. Why did you choose this unique angle?
JONATHAN: That’s how the story started.  I had an idea about a prison doctor who creates a formula would keep an executed serial killer’s consciousness alive while even after his body has been buried. I thought of how horrible it would be to be in your coffin, unable to die but aware of your own body rotting.  Once I had that, the rest of the story just rolled out.  But the killer in the story, Homer Gibbon, became a much more important character, as did the prison doctor. 

Freelance and Fiction: How would you define horror to someone who’d never heard of the genre?
JONATHAN: Horror is a step into the dark with your eyes closed.  When it is at its best, horror takes the reader only half of the distance toward something frightening, but it allows the reader to go the last mile himself.  The point of horror is to engage the reader’s imagination, to coax them into participating in the process of defining what that horror looks like. 

Most good horror is cathartic.  We explore what makes us afraid as a way of understanding it.  When we understand it there is the potential for control and even resolution is possible.  Horror is seldom about monsters and more often it explores how monsters can be defeated.

Freelance and Fiction: Why do you think horror sometimes gets a bad rap? When does horror become art?
JONATHAN: Horror took a big hit during the seventies and eighties largely because of the advent of slasher films.  Those movies were marketing as ‘horror’ –which they aren’t.  Those films were written by screenwriters who have no idea what makes horror work. They’re self-indulgently misogynistic and they used shock instead of suspense.  But, since far more people go to the average movie than read the average book, the mass market perception was that ‘horror’ equaled ‘gratuitous violence and gore’.  That killed horror as big-market sales.  And it’s the reason that authors like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Peter Straub and Anne Rice chose not to use the word ‘horror’ on the covers of their books.

At the same time, there have always been writers who have ignored the word ‘horror’ and simply concentrated on superb storytelling.  Consider books like Shirley Jackson’s psychologically complex The Haunting of Hill House; Robert Bloch’s riveting exploration of psychopathic behavior in Psycho; Robert McCammon’s Mystery Walk, an elegant journey into the shadows of backwoods America; Peter Straub’s recherché deconstruction of mannered New English society in Ghost Story; Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, a novel that virtually created the model of the small town American gothic storytelling while at the same time reviving the vampire as a frightening fictional monster; and the ornate beauty of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.

Freelance and Fiction: Do you have any favorite authors we should be reading? Who are your influences?
JONATHAN: I read constantly and my tastes are all over the place.  As a result I have favorites in lots of different genres.  My long-time favorites are Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Ed McBain and John D. MacDonald.  But there are soooo many authors whose works I love.  I’ll read anything James Lee Burke writes.  My current favorite horror writers include Christopher Golden, Peter Straub, Nancy Holder, Graham Masterton, and the late L.A. Banks.

Freelance and Fiction: When you think about the future of horror, what do you envision?
JONATHAN: I’m seeing a movement toward mining folklore for ‘new’ monsters and elements of horror.  The mainstream/Hollywood models for vampires, ghosts and werewolves have gotten pretty tired, and they don’t bear much resemblance to the monsters in folklore.  Take vampires, for example—there are hundreds of different kinds of variations on this monster, most of which haven’t been used in modern storytelling.  I think that’s where the most exciting new horror is going to come from.

Freelance and Fiction: What is your best advice on writing?
JONATHAN: Learn the business.  Learn that publishing is a business.  Being good at the craft of writing will only take you so far.  That’s a fact of life in publishing.  Learning how the business works can give a writer a solid chance to get their stories into the hands of readers.

And, one more thing: be relentless.  Don’t let anything stop you from achieving your dreams.

Freelance and Fiction: Thanks so much for stopping by, Jonathan!
JONATHAN: My pleasure!

Bio
Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer.  His novels include the Pine Deep Trilogy  (Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song and Bad Moon Rising); the Joe Ledger thriller series (Patient Zero, The Dragon Factory, The King of Plagues, and Assassin’s Code); the Benny Imura Young Adult dystopian series (Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, and Flesh & Bone); the Scribe Award-winning film adaptation of The Wolfman and the standalone horror thriller –Dead of Night.  His nonfiction books include the international bestseller Zombie CSU, The Cryptopedia, They Bite, Vampire Universe and Wanted Undead of Alive.  He has sold over 1200 feature articles, thousands of columns, two plays, greeting cards, technical manuals, how-to books, and many short stories.  His comics for Marvel include Marvel Universe vs the Wolverine, Marvel Universe vs the Punisher, DoomWar, Black Panther and Captain America: Hail Hydra.  He is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse and co-founder of The Liars Club; and is a frequent keynote speaker and guest of honor at conferences including BackSpace, Dragon*Con, ZombCon, PennWriters, The Write Stuff, Central Coast Writers, Necon, Killer Con, Liberty States, and many others.  In 2004 Jonathan was inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, due in part to his extensive writing on martial arts and self-defense.  In October he’ll be featured as an expert in a History Channel documentary on zombies. Visit him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com, www.twitter.com/jonathanmaberry and www.facebook.com/jonathanmaberry 

Dead of Night is available in bookstores everywhere; also available for all e-readers and on audio. Check it out at Barnes & Noble and MacMillan!

It's finally Zombie Week! I'm really excited about sharing the interviews I've collected. Each author featured this week has written a book full of shambling, decaying, cerebral cortex-craving monsters, so hunker down behind a locked door, grab a rifle (or a crossbow, if you're a Walking Dead fan), and hang on to your brain.

Welcome to the blog, J. L.! Could you tell us a little bit about Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption?
Thank you for the opportunity.

Why do you think zombies are so scary?
Anything unknown is scary.  It takes you out of the realm of what is normal and comfortable.  The fact that they are cannibals goes against what a lot of what society deems is proper. While the living dead is nothing new, vampires and Frankenstein’s monster has been around for centuries. Zombies are relative newcomers to the scene circa 1960’s.  It is the thing which makes you sleep with a light on, check under your bed before and closet before turning in for the night, and all those creepy, crawling things which make your skin crawl.

What sets your zombie novel apart from other books featuring the same monster?
While this is a man against zombie survival story line, it’s the addition of a couple of zombie point of views which makes this novel stand out.  It takes the reader from first infection, death, and beyond, and into the lives of those battling the epidemic.  The reason why zombies eat brains is divulged. <Wicked evil laughter>

Do you have any favorite authors we should be reading? Who are your influences?
I have several favorites, but who stands out most in my mind having the ability to twist common everyday circumstances into the horrific has to be Stephen King. I think every horror reader has read or seen a movie/novel by this author. Max Brooks stands at the forefront with his “World War Z” and “Zombie Survival Guide.” You would be hard pressed to find one zombie aficionado who hasn’t read him. 

How do you create a mood of horror?
Taking a reader to the edge of belief and leaving reasonable doubt is an art form.  You tease. You manipulate reality. You add, in the reader’s mind, the element of wait a minute, this could really happen. Readers relating to the characters, the scene set up, the expectation and anticipation. I almost never take the reader where they want to go all play a part in writing suspense and horror.  The gold medal is in the details and the shock value.

Think of your favorite horror movie, there’s that music in the background, in writing you play it up with the words you choose. Even though you might predict this or that person is going to die, it’s how they die or do not die which creates the sense of horror.

What is your best advice on writing?
My best advice in writing is practice the art.  Yes, writing is an art form which creates pictures in the reader’s mind.  Like any art form writing is no different. It’s a skill and creative talent married together for the enjoyment of the reader. I guarantee that no artist ever got it all perfect the first time. You never know it all.

Don’t copy another author’s style. I can give twenty students in a creative writing class a writing prompt. It’s what they do with that prompt is the exciting part of teaching a class like this. You hear a lot about unique voice when writing novels. Your ability of writing a story which is uniquely yours is the challenge. If this is what you are destined to accomplish in your lifetime, don’t let anyone dissuade you.

Thanks so much for stopping by, J. L.!
Thank you for the invite.  It is truly my honor.

Bio
I write under several pen names: J. L. Murphey/Jolee Morriss/GrandmaJAM, depending on what I am writing. I live in Georgia, USA with my husband and two cats. I am the mother of four and grandmother to eight.  I have been a nonfiction author/freelance journalist for over thirty years. I have been acknowledged in more novels than I can count and believe in helping other authors to the best of my ability. 

I am an indie author of fiction by choice and not from the lack of offers of representation or publishers. My writing is a way of exorcizing demons from my closet, and let me tell you, it was full of them.  

J. L. Murphey can be found on http://jomurphey.blogspot.com, Facebook, and GoodReads. You can follow her on Twitter, too!

Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption is available at Smashwords, CreateSpace, and Amazon.

Today's guest is Steve Madden, author of the sci-fi novel Ascension.

Welcome to the blog, Steve! Could you tell us a little bit about Ascension?
Thanks for having me, Rachel.  It’s an honor.

Ascension was an idea I had years ago.  The first scene I can remember visualizing was this girl who has been driven to the brink of insanity.  After fighting to prove she wasn’t crazy, she’s on the verge of giving in when she notices a tear, a sort of corner of reality where the two planes don’t quite meet.  She begins tearing away at it like it’s wallpaper, until there’s a big enough hole for her to step through into true reality.  Though that didn’t exactly make it in the book, there’s a very similar scene.

What led you to write this book?
I had just finished writing my first full book, a fantasy, and was experimenting with some of my other ideas.  I wrote three chapters of Ascension, but promptly stopped the first time I watched The Matrix.  There were enough similarities between my book and that movie, I ended up shelving Ascension for years.  Only when I became desperate for something new to bring to my weekly Writer’s Group, did I dust off those three chapters.  The response was very positive, which motivated me to renew my writing on it and retool it in a different direction.  I’m glad I slacked off that week and didn’t have anything new to bring.

How did you show the shifting realities of Kharma’s life without letting the plot become too confusing?
I knew from the beginning there was a potential to lose the reader.  I tried very hard to stay inside of Kharma’s head, especially in the beginning of the book, so they were seeing things through her POV.  I wanted the reader to be just as confused as she is, but not more so.  It was a bit of a struggle, but I think it worked out.  I’ve had a number of readers tell me they were surprised how easy it was to follow the twisting, winding plot and that they found Kharma asked the same questions they did, which gives me confidence I did an all right job.

Also, I tend toward a more simple writing style in general.  When I first started out, I tried really hard to describe everything in great detail and use as many fancy words as possible.  After all, I was trying to prove I was a writer, right?  But I found I didn’t much care for over-writing when I was reading, so I made the decision to tone it back.  I’ve been much happier with my writing since then.  I prefer complex characters and plots to a complex writing style.

Who are you influenced by? Any new or underrated authors we should be reading?
My favorite writer at this time is George R.R. Martin.  I’ve been singing his praises for years and I love the fact the Game of Thrones series on HBO has inspired a new generation of people to check out his books.

In a very literal sense, I have to say I’m most influenced by my mother, Mickee Madden.  She had some books published back when I was in high school and, for better or worse, seeing her struggles with the industry really helped to shape my path forward.  I decided early on I would never strive to be a published author, that I would only write for the sheer joy of it.  Of course, as I got older, I started to realize there were others out there who might enjoy the fruit of my labors.  She was the one who first mentioned self-publishing to me, but I jumped on it and pestered her to try it out, as well.  Now, we give each other advice and help inspire the other to keep going on.

As far as a new, upcoming author, I really enjoyed Ted Krever’s Mindbenders.  It’s an excellent book and I look forward to the sequel and anything else Mr. Krever has coming out.

What is your best writing advice?
Not to be terribly predictable, but my best advice is…write!  It seems like a no-brainer, but it really is the backbone of being able to produce a finished product.  It’s easy to run into a scene you just can’t get right and let it grind you to a full-stop.  My method has always been to muscle through those difficult scenes and go back to them in the editing phase.  Meanwhile, my brain keeps working on how to better write the scene and by the time I come back to it, I more often than not have the solution.

I also recommend writers to try National Novel Writing Monthly.  This will be my third year trying NaNoWriMo, which is a sort of personal contest to produce 50,000 words for a brand new story during the month of November.  It’s a wonderful challenge (one which I’ve personally never beaten) and it’s a great way to get started on one of those books percolating in your head you just haven’t gotten around to getting out.

Thanks so much for stopping by, Steve!
Thank you, Rachel!.  This is a great service you’re providing.  It’s much appreciated.

Bio
Steve Madden works as a full-time Para-transit Driver/Dispatcher and a full-time husband/father.  He loves all genres, but has a fondness for SF/Fantasy.  He has one other book, The Four-Year-Old Guardian, currently available and hopes to have his next, Unseen Things I: The Shadow Walker, out this Fall.

Steve Madden can be found on his blog at http://travellerzero.wordpress.com/ and on Twitter @travellerzero.

Ascension is available at Smashwords and Amazon.

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