THE NEXT BIG THING

1. What is the working title of your next book?
My next book published under my own name will be On Her Majesty’s Behalf, book two in the Great Undead War series, due out from HarperVoyager in July.   (I say under my own name because I have two books coming out before that under the pseudonym Alex Archer as part of the Rogue Angel series before that – Staff of Judea in June and The Vanishing Tribe in May.)

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
I was doing some reading on the use of gas in World War One and wondered what it would have been like if the Germans had invented a gas that brought the dead back to life. 

3. What genre does your book fall under?
It’s definitely a mishmash of genres – alternate history, for sure.  It is also a zombie thriller and a steampunk adventure.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I have no idea. Too many characters and not enough time to imagine who everyone would be!   That said, I think Jeremy Renner would make a terrific Major Burke.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
The ragtag band of misfit warriors known as Burke’s Marauders must penetrate the bombed-out and zombie infested city of London to rescue the Royal Family.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
This one is coming out from Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Three months, which is about average for me.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Hmmn, I’m not sure there is an alternate history world war one steampunk adventure out there to compare it to.  Maybe Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula? (WWI with vampires instead of zombies.)

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
See question 2.  Once I had the idea, I thought about how much fun it would be to write and that was all I needed.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
Come on!  It’s zombies in World War One with steampunk gadget and gizmos!  Do I really need to say anything more?

* And in case you missed it, you still have time to grab By the Blood of Heroes, book one of the Great Undead War!

Update #1 – Now available for the Kindle on Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and Amazon DE! (Feb 1)

As the title of the post notes, INFERNAL GAMES, book four of the Templar Chronicles series, is now officially available in ebook form.  A paperback will follow at some point in the next couple of weeks.  Some of the online vendors are still pushing the book through their systems, so I’m going to use this post to note when it is live at each site.  That way, if you are waiting to pick it up for a particular reading device, you will know when you can pop over and grab it!

NOTE – If you pre-ordered the book and didn’t get an email from me today with your copy attached, please let me know!

Live and available at:

Barnes & Noble

iTunes

The long-awaited return to the world of the Templar Chronicles by the internationally bestselling author of Eyes to See and By the Blood of Heroes!

He says, “By the Blood of Heroes by Joseph Nassise was an undeniably cool fusion of WWI alternate history, zombie fiction, and steampunk…” among other things.  The whole article is well worth reading and I invite you to drop by and check it out.

Here’s some visual evidence of his good taste:

 

The Best Zombie Fiction Releases of 2012

In a devil’s deal, Jeremiah Hunt sacrificed his human sight in exchange for the power to see the hidden world of ghosts and all of the darker spirits that prowl the streets. Hunt uncovered a world of murder and magic that took his daughter from him and nearly cost him his life, but that was only the beginning….

Now Hunt is on the run from the FBI, who have pegged him as a mass-murdering dark sorcerer. His flight from the law is diverted to New Orleans when his companion, a potent witch, has a horrific vision of the city under magical siege. When they arrive, they realize that the situation is more dire than they could have imagined: the world of the living faces a terrifying attack by forces from beyond the grave. King of the Dead, the second book in this groundbreaking series, promises more of Nassise’s electrifying writing that will enthrall readers looking for a supercharged, supernatural thrill.

You can get your copy in hardcover or ebook format at any major retailer, including:

Amazon – http://amzn.to/UZShfk

Barnes and Noble – http://bit.ly/YnihYX

Kobo – http://bit.ly/TrjYl2

CHAPTER ONE
HUNT

       Life as an interstate fugitive isn’t easy.  It’s not being on the run itself that’s so difficult; mankind has been wandering from place to place since the dawn of human existence.  No, it’s the constant state of fear and anxiety that wears on you, little by little, bit by bit, until you’re ready to turn yourself in to make it all stop. 

     Being on the run turns you into a virtual prisoner; all that’s missing are the steel bars.  You can’t go out without worrying about being seen in public.  If you do go out, you end up having a terrible time because you’re constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering if you’ve been recognized.  Then, when you’ve finally buckled under the strain of it all and retreated to whatever hole-in-the-wall place you’re calling home that week, you spend the entire night waiting for that knock on the door, the one that heralds the arrival of the police who’ve come to drag your ass away to jail for the rest of your natural born life.  All that and I didn’t even mention the never-ending itch between your shoulder blades, that constant sense you’re being hunted, tracked, like a fox fleeing before the hounds.

     Fact is, life as a fugitive pretty much sucks.

     You’ll have to take my word for it when I tell you that it’s even tougher when you’re blind.

     I know.  Cry me a river, right?

     We, meaning Dmitri Alexandrov, Denise Clearwater and I, had been on the run for the last three months.  We’d left Boston in early September, just a half-step ahead of an FBI agent named Robertson.  Mr. FBI was convinced I was the serial killer known as the Reaper, a particularly vicious monster he’d been hunting for more than a decade.  He also thought I was responsible for the death of a homicide detective named Stanton.  To be honest, I did have to take some responsibility for Miles’ death; he wouldn’t have been following me and ended up getting himself killed if I hadn’t broken out of a holding cell at One Police Plaza. 

     Then again, if I hadn’t been illegally imprisoned and accused of multiple homicides that I couldn’t possibly have committed, I wouldn’t have had to break out of jail in the first place.

     Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

     It all started with the kidnapping of my daughter, Elizabeth, five years before.  I didn’t know it then, but she’d been snatched by the supernatural equivalent of the man with a thousand faces; a doppelganger, or fetch as they were sometimes called, that could take the form of any creature it came into contact with.  The fetch was the magically-created twin of a sorcerer named Eldredge, who had been locked away in a mystical prison somewhere around the time the American colonies won independence.  Eldredge eventually died, but he not before he used the power that bound him to become a shade upon his death.

      Shades are nasty business – incorporeal spirits imbued with the intelligence and power that they had in life, with no expiration date for their hatred or their craving for vengeance.  With the right ritual and no small measure of arcane energy, a shade can even regain its physical form, or, in the words of the Star Trek’s Spock, create life from lifelessness.  All Eldredge needed to do was track down and slaughter the last living relatives of those who had originally sealed him away in that mystical prison beneath the earth and he’d be home free.

     It had taken him more than a decade but he’d made good use of the time, sending his doppleganger crisscrossing the country, killing as it went.  By the time I’d entered the picture he was down to the final four or five. 

     If the doppelganger hadn’t kidnapped my daughter, he probably would have succeeded.

     Instead of completing the ritual and waltzing off into the sunset, he’d been forced to fight for his life and in the end, the three of us had cleaned his clock and put him down like the rabid dog he was.

     Before we had though, his pet fetch had disemboweled Stanton and nearly killed the three of us as well.

     We’d survived and had taken out Eldredge, something those sorcerers two centuries before hadn’t been able to do.  The fairytale ending I’d hoped for never materialized though.  I soon found out that while Elizabeth had been kidnapped by the fetch at Eldredge’s command, she died in an accident almost a year before.

     Sending her ghost on to the rest she deserved was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

     And what did we get for all our trouble? 

     Three months of living as fugitives, with no end in sight.

     Which was why we were parked in an empty lot in the warehouse district at midnight, trying to buy a set of fake IDs from a gangbanger named Carlos.  He’d been recommended to us by the friend of a friend of someone Dmitri knew, which didn’t put him too high on the trustworthy list, but at least it gave us a place to start.  We needed those IDs.  With them, and the security of being able to do simple daily tasks, we could start to build some semblance of a life.  It wouldn’t be what we’d had before; there was no way we could ever go back to that but at least it would better than what we had now.

     Things had been going pretty well, too, until the punk in front of me stuck his gun in my face.

     I was standing next to the door of my car when he arrived in his low-riding Impala, the booming beat of a bass drum pumping out of his open windows.  I had to struggle to conceal my smirk as he got out of the car and sauntered over to me.  He’d killed his headlights before doing so and that had allowed me to give him the once over from behind my sunglasses without making it too obvious. 

     He was five seven, maybe five eight on a good day, which put him four inches shorter than me.  He was dressed in a pair of baggy pants that were belted on halfway down his ass, revealing the top of his boxer shorts, and a dark form-fitting long sleeved shirt, the kind the body builders wear.  The whitest sneakers I’d ever seen and a red bandanna tied around his left arm completed his get up.  He was trying too hard and it showed; he looked more like Hollywood’s idea of a chollo than the real thing.

     In the good ole days, before we had to run for the hills, Dmitri had owned and operated the best bar in all of Southie, which, when you think about it, was kind of unusual for a guy with the last name Alexandrov.  But he’d successfully defended his territory against more than one attempt by the Irish mob to hone in on it and it wasn’t until I’d known him for a few years that I’d discovered why.  Besides being a mean sonofabitch, Dmitri had been one of the best fixers in the business.  Information and equipment were his stock in trade; if you needed something, anything at all, you went to Dmitri.

     It was his safe house that we’d been staying in for the last several weeks and when it came time to establish a new set of identities for each of us, it was his expertise that allowed us to set up this meet.

     Something went wrong, however.  We were expecting a professional and ended up with the farm team instead.

     This punk with the gun.

     The acrid smell of gunpowder filled my nostrils, letting me know the weapon had been fired recently.

     That wasn’t a good sign, either.  So far, our negotiations were off to a bad start.

     I put my hands up without being asked and said in a soft, nonthreatening tone, “Easy, man.  No need for that.”

     Carlos must have thought he was now the big man on campus for he turned his wrist so that the weapon was practically upside down and waggled it back and forth in front of my face.  “Shut up and give me the money,” he said with a sneer.

     Nobody with an ounce of brains would fire a gun from that position and expect to hit anything with any degree of accuracy, so I could tell he was more bark than bite.  If I could stall him for just a bit longer, I knew we could turn the tables on him, so I played the clueless white guy, full of indignation and completely out of his element. 

     “But we had a deal,” I whined.  “Two sets of IDs for ten grand.”

     Carlos grinned so wide that I could see the gold teeth in his mouth.

     “I’m changing the deal, shithead.  Give me the money before I put a cap in your ass!”

     My whining tone did the trick.  All he saw was some gringo in way over his head, which was exactly what I wanted him to see.  It kept him focused on me and not on what was silently lumbering up behind him on all fours.

     “Okay, okay.  Take it easy,” I said, looking down and to one side, signaling my submission in a way he’d instinctively understand.  “I’m going reach into my pocket and…”

     “Stop talking and just do it, fool!”

     I reached into the pocket of my coat and withdrew a thick envelope.  I started to hand it over to him and then pulled back.

     “The IDs…”

     Carlos practically snarled as he snatched at the envelope in my hand.  “Give me that!”

     I pulled my hand back just enough to keep it out of his reach.  The charade had gone on long enough.  I glanced over his shoulder, saw what I was looking for, and dropped the scared gringo act.

     “You might want to look behind you first,” I said, letting the boredom I was feeling with the whole situation color my voice.

     Surprisingly, Carlos caught the change in tone.  Maybe he was smarter than I was giving him credit for or maybe he just had a finely tuned sense of survival, I don’t know, but he seemed to recognize he was no longer in control of the situation.  His eyes narrowed and I could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to figure out where the danger was coming from.

     It didn’t take long.

     From directly behind him came a roar that suddenly split the night in two, shockingly close and loud enough to make my knees tremble involuntarily despite the fact I’d known what was coming.

     Poor Carlos didn’t have any such warning and he nearly wet his pants as that cry sounded from directly behind him, so close that he could probably feel hot breath on the back of his neck.  His eyes got as round as saucers and he frantically spun around and tried to bring his gun to bear at the same time.

     Whatever it was that he expected to see there, I’m pretty sure that a ten foot tall polar bear wasn’t it.

     In the aftermath of my daughter Elizabeth’s disappearance I’d tried everything I could think of to discover what had happened to her.  When, after a few years, I’d exhausted the usual methods I’d delved into more esoteric ones.  Things like divination, witchcraft, and black magic.  It was in the course of those “investigations” that I’d encountered the Preacher.

     To this day I’m still not sure who or what he actually was or why he appeared to me, but it was through his help that I located a ritual that would let me see that which was unseen, and I’d used it in an effort to locate Elizabeth.

     As is typical of dark magick, the ritual did exactly what it promised to do but not in the way I’d expected.  Rather than helping me locate what was missing, it stole my natural sight and replaced it with something else, something I’ve come to call my Ghostsight.  Among other things, it lets me see the supernatural denizens of the world around me.  It doesn’t matter what they were, I can see them all; the good, the bad, and the scares-me-shitless.

     I’m not completely blind.  I can actually see better in complete darkness than most people can in broad daylight.  I can no longer see colors – everything comes out in a thousand shades of grey – but at least I can see.  The minute you put me in the light, however, everything goes dark.  Direct sunlight is the equivalent of a complete whiteout for me; I can’t even see the outline of my hand if I hold it directly in front of my face.  All I see is white.  Endless vistas of white.  Electrical lights are almost as bad, though if I use a pair of strong UV sunglasses I can see the vague shapes and outlines of things around me.

     Which was why I was standing in a dark alley at night wearing the darkest sunglasses I could find.

     Thanks to my Sight I’d known that Dmitri wasn’t just a simple bartender, but I hadn’t been able to pierce the glamour around him to know exactly what he was.  It was when I was hunting for the fetch earlier that fall that I’d discovered that he was a berserker.

     First mentioned in the Norse saga, Vatnsdoela, the berserkers were described as elite warriors that wore animal pelts on their heads and charged into battle in a ravaging frenzy, fighting so hard that they were nearly unstoppable.  Of course, the bards hadn’t quite gotten it right, never realizing that the berserkers were actually warriors that were so in touch with the totem spirits of certain animals that they could assume the physical properties of those beasts in battle, borrowing their strength, cunning, and senses to accomplish things they never could have done as mere humans.

     Dmitri and I decided to play it safe for tonight’s rendezvous, arriving early and having only one of us meet our intended contact.  While I did that, Dmitri would remain out of sight, ready to come to my assistance if necessary.

     Now, we were glad that we’d taken the extra precaution. 

     Dmitri reared up on his hind legs, towering over Carlos.  He opened his mouth and let loose another ground-shaking roar of challenge.  That close, his teeth seemed bigger than my clenched fist.

     To his credit, Carlos stood his ground, though what he thought a pistol was going to do against a brute like Dmitri was beyond me. 

     He needn’t have bothered.  Before he’d even managed to move his arm a few inches it was intercepted by the swipe of a massive fur-covered paw.  The impact sent Carlos spinning to the ground and the gun went flying off into the darkness.  Dmitri lumbered forward, straddled Carlos’s body and clamped his teeth firmly onto the back of the gangbanger’s neck.

     A few more ounces of pressure and bye-bye Carlos.

     For the first time all night, our would-be thief did the smart thing.

     He froze.

     Smiling now, I put one hand on Dmitri’s broad back and squatted down next to Carlos so that he could see me without having to move his head.  This close I could smell the stink of urine and feces that was coming off of him in waves.  From the smell I knew he’d be a bit more receptive to our needs now that we’d gotten the preliminaries out of the way.

     Good thing, too, since I was done dicking around.

     “One word from me and my friend here will crush your head like an eggshell.  Comprende, amigo?”

     He opened his mouth, only to find that his fear had stolen his voice.  He gaped like a fish a few times, vainly trying to get something out.

     I took that as a yes.

     “Where are the IDs?”

     This time he managed to find his voice.

     “Glove box,” he gasped out.

     I patted Dmitri on the back, rose to my feet, and walked over to the low rider.  I slid into the front seat, leaned over to the other side, and opened the glove box.  Inside I found another pistol and a manila envelope containing the driver’s licenses and passports that Carlos’ organization had agreed to provide.  I put the new IDs back in the envelope and then tucked that and the pistol into the pocket of my jacket.

      Carlos had left the keys in the ignition, perhaps in anticipation of a quick getaway after screwing us over. I took them with me as I got out of the car and threw them into the darkness as far as I could.

     Once I had, I signaled for Dmitri to let the other man up.

     Dmitri growled low in his chest, expressing his annoyance at the idea and eliciting another whimper of fear from Carlos, but with a little encouragement Dmitri eventually backed off, moving to sit on his haunches at my side.  Even seated, he towered over me.

     “Not a particularly bright play, Carlos,” I said, packing all the disdain for his intelligence that I could into the words.  “But today must be your lucky day, for I’ve decided to let you go.  Now get the hell out of here and don’t even try to come back for your car.”

     Carlos didn’t need to be told twice.  He scrambled to his feet and ran off, never once looking back.

     Dmitri turned his shovel-shaped head in my direction and grunted something.

     Having no idea what he’d just said, one roar sounding pretty much like the next, I just stared at him blankly.

     Another growl, a quick sensation of movement, and before I had time to look away, Dmitri was back in human form, standing in front of me completely naked and not seemingly bothered by it at all.

     Catching a glimpse of what he was carrying around with him, I could understand why.

     Some guys just get all the luck.

     He walked over to Denise’s car, a black Dodge Charger we’d borrowed for the evening’s activities, and pulled on the extra set of clothes that he’d brought along for that purpose.  I got in the passenger side, he slid in behind the wheel and we took off in a spray of dirt and gravel.

     Dmitri drove for a few blocks and then pulled into the parking lot of an all-night diner, finding a spot beneath one of the few street lamps illuminating the lot.

     “Give ‘em here,” he said.

     I passed him the envelope containing the fake IDs.

     Besides limiting my vision, the Preacher’s ritual had also robbed me of my ability to see photographs or paintings of any kind.  I could see the spot on the IDs where the images were supposed to be, but the images themselves were just flat black squares, making it impossible for me to judge how well the passports and driver’s licenses had turned out.

     Dmitri looked them over for a few minutes, even going so far as to hold them up to the light one at a time and turn them this way and that, before dropping them back into the envelope.

     “Good enough, I think,” he said, passing the envelope back to me, and I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.  If we’d gone through all this trouble only to end up with useless junk. . .

     But we hadn’t and that was good.  Really good.  Having the IDs would at least provide us some small measure of protection, allow us to do simple things that other people took for granted, like cashing a paycheck or signing a long-term lease on a piece of property.  Even opening up a bank account or getting a line of credit was now possible, though I don’t think I’d want to put our IDs up to that level of scrutiny unless it was absolutely necessary. 

     Dmitri started the car and pulled out into traffic, while I took out one of the prepaid cell phones we’d been using to communicate with one another and called to let Clearwater know we were on our way home.

     If I’d known what she was going to drag us into less than seventy-two hours later, I might have tossed the phone out the window and told Dmitri to head south at the fastest possible speed, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

     Unfortunately, I didn’t.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Cassandra Ammerman
Digital Marketing Manager, Tor Books
646.307.5519 or cassandra.ammerman@tor.com

November #TorChat lineup revealed!

This month, #TorChat focuses on the importance of setting, from real world places to imaginary spaces. Joining us on November 14^th from 4 to 5 PM EST are Suzanne Johnson, Felix Gilman, and Joseph Nassise, to talk about the richly developed worlds they’ve populated in their books!

 New York, NY – Monday, November 12^th– Tor Books (@torbooks) is thrilled to announce the November #TorChat, part of a monthly series of genre-themed, hour-long chats created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter.

Setting is, arguably,just as important as the main characters in a novel. How an author creates and describes their world can give us chills, thrills, joy, and even tears. What does it take to create a realistic world, even one that comes populated with ghosts, demons, or monsters? We’ve invited three masters of the subject to chat with us on Twitter about how they do it. Joining us will be Suzanne Johnson, the author of River Road, the second book in the Sentinels of New Orleans series, featuring a beautiful, fragile New Orleans post-Katrina; Felix Gilman, the author of The Rise of Ransom City, a book that shows that steampunk is an ideal fit for not just Victorian England, but the American West; and Joseph Nassise, whose book King of the Dead features a protagonist who gave up his normal sight to see the true world that surrounds us – one filled with ghosts and things much worse. These three authors know how to set a scene, and they’re ready and willing to dish their secrets!

The chat will be loosely moderated by Tor Associate Publicist Leah Withers (@PhaeTo). We hope that urban fantasy, horror, and genre fiction fans in general, as well as aspiring writers, will follow the chat and join in using the Twitter hashtag#TorChat!

About the Authors

SUZANNE JOHNSON (@suzanne_johnson) is a magazine editor and features writer with more than fifty national writing and editing awards. A longtime New Orleans resident, she helped rebuild for two years after Hurricane Katrina. She currently lives in Alabama. River Road, her second novel, publishes on November 13^th.

FELIX GILMAN (@felixgilman) has been nominated for the John W. Campbell award and the Locus Award for best new writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Thunderer, Gears of the City, and The Half-Made World, which was listed by Amazon as one of the ten best SF/F novels of 2010. His latest book, The Rise of Ransom City, publishes on November 27^th.

JOSEPH NASSISE (@jnassise) is the author of the bestselling Templar Chronicles series and Eyes to See, the first novel the Jeremiah Hunt Chronicles. He lives in Arizona with his wife and four children. His new novel, King of the Dead, publishes on November 27^th.

About #Torchat

#TorChat is a genre-themed, hour-long chat series created by Tor Books and hosted on Twitter. Guest authors join fans in lively, informative and entertaining discussions of all that’s hot in genre fiction, 140 characters at a time, from 4 – 5 PM EST on the third Wednesday of every month. Each #TorChat revolves around a different genre topic of interest, often of a timely nature, and strives to provide a new media opportunity for readers to connect with their favorite authors.

About Tor Books

Tor Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, is a New York-based publisher of hardcover and softcover books. Founded in 1980, Tor annually publishes what is arguably the largest and most diverse line of science fiction and fantasy ever produced by a single English-language publisher. In 2002, Tor launched Starscape, an imprint dedicated to publishing quality science fiction and fantasy for young readers, including books by critically acclaimed and award winning authors such as Cory Doctorow, Orson Scott Card, and David Lubar. Between an extensive hardcover and trade-softcover line, an Orb backlist program, and a stronghold in mass-market paperbacks, books from Tor have won every major award in the SF and fantasy fields, and has been named Best Publisher 25 years in a row in the Locus Poll, the largest consumer poll in SF.

It’s day five of our fifteen day journey through horror’s dark depths, a journey designed to offer up a wide selection of terrific books to get you through the Halloween season.  So far we’ve looked at offerings of coming of age novels, vampire novels, zombie novels, and young adult novels.  Today we’re going to take a peak at two books that have one thing in common – their heroines kick butt!

BLACKBIRDS
Chuck Wendig

Miriam Black knows when you will die.

Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name.

Miriam has given up trying to save people;  that only makes their deaths happen. But Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

I first discovered Chuck through his blog, Terrible Minds, where he dishes out freelance writing advice with irreverent humor and all the subtlety of a chainsaw.  I expected his fiction to be the same and I was quite pleased to be proven wrong.

Don’t get me wrong – the humor is still there.  It is twisted and dark, but humorous none the less.  But Chuck’s real talent lies in getting us to look deep beneath the surface to the truth that might be lurking there.  His themes are larger than life – fate, death, grief, tragedy, redemption – and he handles them with a finesse you’d expect from a more seasoned writer. 

As one reviewer put it, “Blackbirds is a snarling, vicious crime thriller populated by con men, druglords and psychotic assassins up against a prickly psychic heroine hauling a truckload of emotional baggage.”

What’s not to like?

Another newcomer to the horror genre is Jeremy Bishop, the pseudonym of thriller writer, Jeremy Robinson.  Bishop burst onto the scene with his first book, TORMENT, in early 2011.  He followed it up later that same year with today’s second selection, SENTINEL.

SENTINEL
Jeremy Bishop 

In the frigid waters off the Arctic Ocean, north of Greenland, the anti-whaling ship, The Sentinel, and her crew face off against a harpoon ship in search of Humpback whales. When the two ships collide and a suspicious explosion sends both ships to the bottom, the crews take refuge on what they think is a peninsula attached to the mainland, but is actually an island, recently freed from a glacial ice bridge.

Seeking shelter, the two opposing crews scour the island for resources. Instead, they find Viking artifacts, the preserved remains of an ancient structure and a stone totem warning of horrible creatures buried in the island’s caves. Facing violent, frigid storms, a hungry polar bear and the very real possibility that they are stranded without hope of rescue, Jane Harper leads the two crews, who must work together to defend themselves against an ancient evil upon which the modern stories of both zombies and vampires are based.

The original undead are awake and hungry. Beware the Draugar.

Bishop’s sophomore effort gets high marks for originality.  He takes zombies, vampires, and Viking lore and mashes them all together to come up with a new twist on a creature from ancient legend.  The writing is tight and fast-paced, perfectly suited to match the never-ending cyclone of events that snatches up our hero, Jane Harper, on page one and doesn’t let her go until the very end.

Jane herself is a strong character, full of caustic wit and sassy attitude, and yet these qualities do not detract from her general appeal.  In fact, we like her all the more for it.

Bottom line, you can’t go wrong with either of these two heroines!

********************

Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

The popularity of young adult fiction has exploded over the last ten years, particularly in the speculative fiction genres.  From  J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter to Heather Brewer’s Vladimir Todd to Susan Collins’ Katniss Everdeen, the heroes of modern YA are larger than life yet still grounded in the difficulties and challenges that teens everywhere face.

In today’s installment of Horrifying Halloween Reads, we’re going to look at two new individuals to add to the growing list of unforgettable heroes.

Department 19: The Rising
Will Hill

Sixteen-year-old Jamie Carpenter’s life was violently upended when he was brought into Department 19, a classified government agency of vampire hunters that was formed to deal with a little problem . . . known as Dracula.

But being the new recruit at the Department isn’t all weapons training and covert missions. Jamie’s own mother has been turned into a vampire–and now Jamie will stop at nothing to wreak revenge on her captors. Even if that means facing down Dracula himself.

2011 brought us Department 19 by Will Hill, an edge-of-your-seat action adventure that was part thriller and part modern horror.  It introduced us to Jamie Carpenter and Department 19, a secret organization in the British government responsible for policing the supernatural across the globe and founded more than a century before by Abraham Van Helsing and the men who had accompanied him on his epic quest against Count Dracula.

Jamie Carpenter is back in Department 19: The Rising and the one event that the men and women of Department 19 feared more than anything else has become a reality – Dracula himself has risen from the grave.   Jamie must deal with grief over the death of his closest friend, his growing love for the vampire girl Larissa, and the legacy left behind by his famous father – all while trying to stop the world’s oldest vampire from conquering the planet.

International locales, cutting edge weaponry and gadgets, and a non-stop pace make this one you won’t want to miss! 

For today’s second selection we move halfway around the world and back a century or so in time to meet Shigoko, the hero of Jon F. Merz’s episodic new adventure, Zombie Ryu!

Zombie Ryu: Episodes One and Two
Jon F. Merz.

A swarm of zombies has swept over feudal Japan brought forth by the maniacal ravings of a mad monk opposed to the Emperor and his lords.  The dead walk at night, searching to feed upon the brains of the living and turn others into their mindless brethren.

Soon, they will have an army of virtually unstoppable opponents and the fragile peace brought forth by the band of daimyo will be shattered forever as the nation plunges into chaos. Only one group of elite warriors stands ready to save Japan from certain destruction: the Zombie-ryu.

Comprised of samurai and ninja who have banded together forming a rag-tag band of ronin, they scour the countryside for zombies and dispatch them with courageous and outlandish battles.  Each of the nine warriors is lethally adept with a different weapon.  

Shigoko (“secret talk”) is a sixteen year old girl who longs for a life of adventure, but was born into the family of a farmer.  She lives alone with her father and their most prized possession is an old samurai sword.  Late one night, her family’s farm is attacked by zombies and she only just manages to escape, fleeing alone into the dark night.  When she stumbles into the camp of the gnarled ronin Fudo and his squire Nishi, her life changes forever.

ZOMBIE-RYU is written like an episodic TV series –  25,000-word adventures, each with its own episode arc, that weave together to become part of the greater story arc for each “season.”  Season One will consist of twelve episodes with a new episode released each month.

Merz’s Lawson Vampire series has been riveting adult horror fans for years now and I suspect Zombie Ryu will do the same in the young adult space.  We’re only two episodes in, so there is plenty of time to join Shigoko on her quest to stop the seemingly endless ranks of zombies bent on destroying her beloved Japan.

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

Shamblers.  Zombies.  Beaters.  The Living Dead. 

They might be known by a dozen different names but that doesn’t detract from their popularity in the slightest.  Just a week ago the third season of AMC’s hit television show The Walking Dead aired to record numbers.  From Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin to Sophie Littlefield’s Aftertime, zombies are alive and well in horror today and this list wouldn’t be complete without a few books dedicated to the animated dead.

 I’ll admit upfront that I’m not a huge fan of zombie fiction.  So much of it is the same tired plot regurgitated over and over again.  I even swore once that I’d never write a zombie novel of my own – an oath that went by the way side the moment I came up with a concept for an alternate WWI steampunk zombie novel – namely because of those similarities.  Every now and then, however, you come upon a novel about the walking dead that restores your faith in the subgenre by delivering something new, something fresh.  Today’s selections fit that bill.                     

THIS DARK EARTH
John Hornor Jacobs

The land is contaminated, electronics are defunct, the ravenous undead remain, and life has fallen into a nasty and brutish state of nature. Welcome to Bridge City, in what was once Arkansas: part medieval fortress, part Western outpost, and the precarious last stand for civilization.

A ten-year-old prodigy when the world ended, Gus is now a battle-hardened young man. He designed Bridge City to protect the living few from the shamblers eternally at the gates. Now he’s being groomed by his physician mother, Lucy, and the gentle giant Knock-Out to become the next leader of men. But an army of slavers is on its way, and the war they’ll wage for the city’s resources could mean the end of mankind as we know it.

Can Gus become humanity’s savior? And if so, will it mean becoming a dictator, a martyr . . . or maybe something far worse than even the zombies that plague the land?

Jacobs uses multiple viewpoint characters to tell the story of a group of survivors trying to make their way in the world in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.  The story isn’t really about zombies, at least no more than Frankenstein is really about the animated dead, but focuses instead on the human reaction to the tragedy and the age old question of whether they will rise above their base nature for the good of the many or sink into depravity and ruin for the sake of the one. 

I greatly enjoyed Jacobs’ debut novel Southern Gods earlier last year and find that he delivers an excellent sophomore effort in THIS DARK EARTH.

Our second selection for today takes the classic concept at the center of all zombie fiction – the battle pitting the living against the dead – and flips it upside down with a refreshing approach to the subgenre.

THE DISHONORED DEAD 
Robert Swartwood

In a not-so-distant future, the world has devolved and most of the population has become the animated dead. Those few that are living are called zombies. They are feared and must be hunted down and destroyed. 

Conrad is one of the animated dead. A devoted husband, a loving father, he is the best zombie Hunter in the world. But when he hesitates one night in killing a living adult, his job is put in jeopardy. Instead of being outright dismissed, he is transferred to a program so secretive even the Government would deny its existence — and where Conrad soon learns a startling truth about how his own son might be in danger of becoming a zombie. 

As living extremists become more emboldened and blow up a Hunter Headquarters, as a power-hungry Hunter becomes more enraged and will stop at nothing to gain absolute power, Conrad begins to question not just his profession, but his own existence. And before he knows it he is on a journey of self-discovery, remembering a past he was forced to forget, and soon finding himself not only a hunted man, but a man who must now save both his son and the entire world.

In this unique take on the zombie genre, the walking dead have won the apocalypse and are considered the normal society on earth while the humans are considered zombies and are being hunted to extinction.  The hero, Conrad, is zombie hunter working for a secretive branch of the government, doing his best to avoid the threat posed by internal politics while watching for zombie sympathizers on the outside.

Swartwood’s writing is solid and he does a nice job of ratcheting up the tension and stakes throughout.  The book would be worth reading just for the unique take on zombies alone, but thankfully Swartwood delivers a well-written tale that makes the experience all the more valuable.

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we’re going to be spending the next two weeks looking at some of my favorite horror reads for the Halloween season.   For those of you just joining us, note that I won’t be covering the classics (Poe, Lovecraft, Stoker, etc) or the bestselling favorites (King, Koontz, Rice, etc) but will be focusing instead on some writers and books that you might not be familiar with or may have even overlooked.

We started our series by looking at two fabulous coming of age books and today we’re going to focus on two terrific vampire tales.  I’m not talking about the shiny, sparkly Twilight vamps nor your oversexed True Blood variety of bloosuckers.  To catch my attention, vampires need to be pretty damn vicious and we find them living up to that requirement in both of today’s selections.

13 BULLETS
David Wellington

All the official reports say they are dead-extinct since the late ’80s, when a fed named Arkeley nailed the last vampire in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise.

When a state trooper named Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment-who else? He’s been expecting such a call to come eventually. Sure, it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkeley knows what most people don’t: there is one left. In an abandoned asylum she is rotting, plotting, and biding her time in a way that only the undead can.

Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the fed made it plain that there is only one way out. But the worst thing is the feeling that the vampires want more than just her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can’t guess; a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won’t say; a reason she has to find out-or die trying.

Now there are only 13 bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only 13 bullets between us, the living, and them, the damned.

Way back in 2007, author David Wellington released the first of what was to become his five-book series featuring state trooper-turned-vampire-hunter Laura Caxton, 13 BULLETS.  I didn’t discover it until around 2009 or so but when I did I went from one volume to the next as quickly as I could.  There is nothing seductive or enticing about these vamps.  They are vicious killing machines and that’s just the way I like them.  Wellington weaves a hard-driving tale full of explosive action filled with characters that are down-to-earth and authentic in every way, making it one you don’t want to miss!

Earlier this year Crossroad Press released the 25^th anniversary edition of the novel that kicked of the splatterpunk movement back in the late nineteen eighties.  I’m talking, of course,  about John Skipp and Craig’s Spector’s THE LIGHT AT THE END, a fan favorite and my second of two recommendations for vampire novels worth your time and attention.

THE LIGHT AT THE END
John Skipp and Craig Spector

The newspapers scream out headlines that spark terror across the city. Ten murders on the New York City subway. Ten grisly crimes that defy all reason — no pattern, no m.o., no leads for police to pursue. The press dubs the fiend the “Subway Psycho”; the NYPD desperately seeks their quarry before the city erupts in mass hysteria. But they won’t find what they’re looking for.

Because they all think that the killer is human.

Only a few know the true story — a story the papers will never print. It is a tale of abject terror and death written in grit and steel… and blood. The tale of a man who vanished into the bowels of the urban earth one night, taken by a creature of unholy evil, then left as a babe abandoned on the doorstep of Hell. Now he is back, driven by twin demons of rage and retribution.

He is unstoppable. And we are all his prey… unless a ragtag band of misfit souls will dare to descend into a world of manmade darkness, where the real and unreal alike dwell in endless shadow. A place where humanity has been left behind, and the horrifying truth will dawn as a madman’s chilling vendetta comes to light…

 This was the first of six collaborations that Skipp & Spector did together.  I enjoyed most of them, but this one will always be my favorite.  With more than a million copies in print, you might have caught this the first time around but I’d recommend going back and giving it another go.  Even after twenty-five years, it’s excellence still shines through.

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Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Great Undead War series, and the Jeremiah Hunt trilogy. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, and a multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee.

You can find him online at Shades of Reality.