Chapter 13

Skipped back to Chapter 13, which came to 2500 words, 23,400 words total.

I'll wait till the intervening chapters are done to send packets to the betas, so they read it as the final product will stand.

Car Repair

Blown bulb in the tail light! $6 to replace! Woohoo! Gonna put that in the book as cheapest car repair EVAH! And - no ticket! I spotted it myself and scooted to the shop! Go me! Oh, and they checked and aired up the tires for free (which is a constant hassle with this car - the rims are always rusting or bending and creating slow leaks - never mind if I hit a pothole and tear the sidewall).

Haunted Attraction

Some of my misguided coreligionists have apparently been trying to subvert and close down this haunted attraction:

THE DUNGEON OF DOOM OF ZION, ILLINOIS

So if you're in the area, please consider talking a walk through and supporting another fine establishment that deals in scares and imagination and is of no real threat to those people who understand that imaginary things AREN'T REAL!!

New(ish) Reviews!

Carole Lanham dug some up!

David Moody on THE WORLD IS DEAD!

Sam Christopher on HISTORY IS DEAD!

Somebody Dies on HISTORY IS DEAD!

Kim Set to Go LIVE on Zombies Week!

Pop over to super cool pop culture site In Media Res!


My entry will be live on Thurdsday, but there's zombie goodness all five days of the week! Today's entry contends that modern zombie fiction and film is a contemporary version of an earlier generation's racist trope of the Yellow Peril - barbaric, subhuman hordes bent on raping white women, who should choose suicide over surrender, while white men should choose genocide over any less violent reaction to the supposed threat.

Horror Realm Report

A nice one from Zombies and Toys, including pics and brief "What if..." interview questions with me and a couple of the other guests! Check it out!

Sniffly Scene

2200 words
20,900 words total

I jumped all the way forward to the end of D2L3 to work on the denouement scene. Here's the kind of paragraph I like to write!

"She sat beside him – close, with her shoulder touching his. She thought of when her dad had died – it was before all this craziness, when death was just loss and emptiness and pain, when it was confusing for those reasons, and without any of the further mess they had now. She remembered how you didn’t – you couldn’t – really talk about it, but you just needed someone close, a body touching yours, and that was enough, even though it wasn’t really enough and you still hurt so much inside you thought you’d die yourself. But words would’ve just made it worse, putting your empty head more at odds with your overfull heart and tearing you apart even more inside. So they sat there for what seemed a long time without speaking."

All pronouns - so you all still don't know who's died!

And let me say - I am working hard to create the greatest Christ-figure in all of Western literature! Kid. You. Not. It's gonna happen. And in a zombie novel, too! Oh man am I psyched!

Darwin vs Some Guy

Kirk? Cameron? Somebody I'm supposed to remember and don't.

http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic/12872

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM0oBuhTLRI

And I'd post my reply on Shocklines, but... as a perceptive man called it recently, it's a "cesspool."

Or, perhaps more accurately, it's people chest-thumping to show they're the "right" kind of Christians or atheists or horror fans or real men or whatever.

Screw that. If you come here more than once, you know what kind of Christian or man I am, and you're decided if that's "right" enough for you.

But here, in my house, here goes again:

Reading a bunch of books by non-Christians (Plato, Sophocles, Voltaire, Darwin [though I still think, deep down, he'd think of himself as a "Christian"] and who knows who else) convinced me to become a Christian. And no, not because I saw how wrong they were - but because I saw how right they were, and how that fit into the "Christian" worldview that was forming in my mind 25 years ago.

And, at the other end of the spectrum: not a day goes by that I don't read about the antics or inane ideas of someone stridently proclaiming their "Christian" beliefs that I don't think of quitting.

There you go.

EDIT: Yeah, yeah, I posted. Maybe I need a recovery program. Now I feel dirty.

Sonic Drive-In!!

It was the hang out for teens when I was in high school in New Mexico. I think there was one in South Bend when we lived there, though there were many more of a local chain called Bonnie Doon. But I have only seen the occasional one since on road trips far from home. But for the last seven years, our cable company runs ads for them constantly - and these ads make it look far more mouthwatering than it is - and I couldn't get to one!

And now I find one in Kingston, NY, just 20 miles from my home? I'm so there! I mean, even though I kidded my spouse that I'd be there for breakfast three days/week and late night snacks 4 days/week - not quite that often! But definitely some of the time!

Inexorable March to 100 Reviews!

Well, it's sort of more like the "stalled" march to 100 reviews of D2L on Amazon.

So let's kick start this.

1) Post a review on Amazon of ANY of my books.

2) Send an email to D2LContest@hotmail.com claiming your review.

3) When D2L hits 100 reviews, I'll pick a winner, who will be able to choose either of the two rare chapbooks (of which I only have a couple copies left) - Orpheus and the Pearl, or Thin Them Out.

Yay!

Dreaded Academese

It's usually dreadful, but once in a while you come across some gold (usually in a quote from a primary source) in the dross -

"God is all-powerful not by arbitrary power but by the strength of wisdom" (Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, 9.17.32)

Google News Down = Zombie Apocalypse

CSMonitor reports Google news outage with that headline!

You see - everything bad (whether it's banks or viruses or the Internet) is being phrased in zombie terms. I'm afraid those of us on the zombie bandwagon were so far ahead of the curve on this one, that we've long since lost track of you in our rear view mirror!

Welcome Our New Friends and Sponsors!

Nice folks I met at HorrorRealm!

HorrorFestOnline.com - lots of horror film news!

FantasticHorror.Com - online zine with stories, links, blog, forum, and news!

Visions Magazine Online - lots of paranormal investigations and info!

Zombies and Toys - not as narrow as the name implies, undead news of all kinds - film, book, comic book, con, whatever!

Passive Aggression?

I wonder if there's some study to show this is more prevalent than before. Of course, I guess it was never diagnosed until recently, and even now it mostly passes under the rubric of "dickishness," so there's probably no way to check. I can't remember the last time someone told me to fuck off (which would be the antithesis of passive-aggressive), but it's every day that someone ignores me, doesn't answer an email that is marked as kinda sorta important (and often is a matter of their responsibility), or conveniently "forgets" a commitment - all behavior that is blatantly passive-aggressive.

Of course, I suppose blogging w/o naming names is also passive-aggressive, so here's my nod to that oh-so-prevalent personality disorder!

And okay - I won't name names, and there are PLENTY of other people who are guilty of this, but I'll say the proximate cause of my rant is once again the book review section I edit for a scholarly journal. I tell reviewers six months, I don't even bug them or think anything of it if it takes a year - but some ignore repeated email reminders for THREE YEARS after they agree to write the review. They make no excuses, answer no email reminders - just silence. Classy.

Almost to 100 Reviews

D2L has nearly 100 reviews on Amazon. Thanks to all who posted - earlier on, some of your comments even went into the making of D2L2. Let's try to get five more to break into triple digits!

Protect Your Computer!

Some rather hilarious ads!

Dokken vs Chicken that Fights back!

Dokken and exploding Chicken!

Back from Horror Realm!

What a whirlwind tour! Lots of driving, but the good part was meeting all the fine folks at Permuted, many of them for the first time!

Of course, hanging out with old friends like Kyle and Dr Pus is what one looks forward to the most, and never disappoints.

The reading panel was great. People seem really into VALLEY OF THE DEAD and I'm gonna read from that at the next couple cons, I think, since it went so well.

Didn't sell nearly as many as I did in Toronto, however: I still think the economy is so bad down here that people are much more reluctant to part with money than our Canadian friends! So let's clean this place up and get back on track! (Because I just got my first Iona check of the new year - and going over the numbers, calculating that it should've gone up because I went back to full time this year, and got a minute cost of living increase, I now see that it actually had a "negative increase" - the take home went down, since the cost of benefits [mostly health insurance, thank you Republicans and Blue dogs!!!] went up so much.)

Horror Realm

I'll begin the first leg of my trip to Horror Realm Con (formerly known as ZombieFest) here in a few hours!

Wish me luck, and I hope to see lots of people there!

First WORLD IS DEAD Review!

What great timing from the fine folks at Fangoria.com! Thanks for the great review and I'm glad (though not surprised) that you liked most all the stories!!

Chicken Feet!

They love them!!

I used to go to this chinese restaurant in New Haven. (I think it was callled Great Wall, like about half the chinese restaurants in the USA.) And I'd always be the only non-Chinese person there. (Which I always think is a good sign.) And I'd look at the next table and see this big pile of ... chicken feet. Never seen that elsewhere. But now I see it's pretty normal!

Great Interview!

Part of an ongoing series at Robert Kent's website, in which we're all asked the same seven questions. It was cool!

Plans for Horror Realm

It's this weekend! And it's a long drive, so I'll be leaving early. I'll stay with my awesome friend, Dr. Eric Plumer of the University of Scranton, who has his own book out about Dan Brown.

Then first thing Friday morning, it's off to HORROR REALM!!

Things open there 4pm Friday, 10am-7pm Saturday, and 11am-5pm Sunday. I hope to see lots of you nice folks there!!

Yellow Submarine Remake

Ugh!

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15828.html

I would admit that in the abstract, seeing the original in 3D or in IMAX sounds kind of intriguing - trippy, in the lingo current when the original came out. But a remake? Probably going to be ugly, loud, garish. If anything, it was always the innocence of the original that I loved (admittedly, I saw it as a child first, so I associate it with childhood).

More Proofreading

Don't know how late I can stay up - but on to the Eighth Circle!!

Attack by giant owls? WTF? (Had to have some analog to Geryon!)

UPDATE: Ah - the pimp! Maybe my favorite male sinner after the Epicurean! And I know the simoniac and soothsayer are coming up!!

UPDATE: OMG! I have one of the characters speak a line from King Lear! That's pretty slick, sneaking it in there like that!

UPDATE: Ah - the mass crucifixion! Nothing quite says "Welcome to Hell!" so clearly, does it? And oh my stars and garters - the Bushisms I put in the mouth of the lead executioner! Crackin' me up all over!

FINAL UPDATE: And thus, we beheld the stars! And awww - it's a nice ending. Sniffly and nice.

Again, my apologies for its tardiness, but I know you all are going to say "Wow!" when you read it.

ZOMG!

Just read the first zombie attack from VALLEY.

Wow. I write some brutal stuff when I'm in the mood. I mean, that's a lot of blood and stuff. Mostly stuff.

You all who bought the book - you're in for a treat when it arrives in a few weeks. (And I apologize for the delay as well!)

UPDATE: Sitting here, blubbering at the emotional scene. Wow.

UPDATE: I'd forgotten how bad the Indecisive are! They deserve what they get! (Or more precisely, what Dante and I gave to the accursed wretches - take that, sirrah!)

UPDATE: Just got to where the monk explains how zombies are like the damned, and it fits so well, w/o sticking out as needless theologizing! Go me!

UPDATE: OMG the Francesca character! Dare I say it? As good as the original?

UPDATE: Oh the gluttons! Kind of perfect for a zombie story! And what a line, that they were "full of emptiness"!!

UPDATE: Oh, I know you won't believe me - but I'd forgotten the spokesman for the gluttons! He's hilarious! And I'd forgotten I'd litted in a Cerberus like creature, too! You'd think I knew what I was doing!

UPDATE: Ah - the Epicurean! Now him I remember! What a cad!

UPDATE: OMG - the River of Blood! I even remembered to put that in!

UPDATE: No! I'd totally forgotten the images of the BVM I put in the Circle of Suicides! Wow - that was unexpected, but man did it work right!

UPDATE: I certainly had not forgotten the Burning Plain, or the Blasphemers. But now I'm soaked in tears. That was something.

But now, off to make dinner. I might do some more late tonight.

Final Proofreading

For VALLEY OF THE DEAD.

And wow, I hadn't looked at it in a while. It really is my best thing yet. I didn't know I could write that good!

Chapter 9

(coincidentally!)

2600 words
18,700 words total

Rollin' rollin' rollin'!
Keep them doggies rollin'!
Though they may be strollin'!
Rawhide!!

9

Think a steampunk version of Terminator. Also think of lurching from one impossible set-piece action sequence to another, with no attachment to the characters, and little rationale for what's happening, other than that it'll look cool when it does. Why does The Machine make a robot pterodactyl and a robot worm (as opposed to other devices)? See above. Why are these made of cloth and wire, and appear only to be slightly larger than our heroes, when there seems to be plenty of scrap metal everywhere to use in building them? So the heroes will have a chance at defeating them. What is the quest they're on, exactly, except to give spiritual rest to their comrades who fall during the quest?

I think a "good" Tim Burton movie works (like Edward Scissorhands or The Nightmare Before Christmas) when the idea (even if it is just about as simple and straightforward as the one here) somehow sustains 90 minutes worth of plot, and is populated by characters whom we feel sympathy and/or humor for. This one just didn't, even though I suppose "let's put sentient dolls in an apocalyptic landscape that resulted form WWI continuing with steampunk Terminator robots until every human was dead," is no less thin than "let's have people from Halloween Land invade Christmas Land," or "let's have a guy with scissors for hands move into a creepy suburb." The magic wasn't there this time, is all I can summarize it as.

Flatliners

Cool movie. I don't think I've seen it since its theatrical release.

But you know that part in where Kevin Bacon goes back to make amends with the girl he teased in elementary school? And she basically tells him to f*** off? Yeah. I like that part of the movie, 'cause it feels realistic, emotional, and well acted by both people. But man that feels bad in real life, when you're the Kevin Bacon character. Oh, well. Not much to do about it at this point.

New Writing Technique?

Nothing too extraordinary, but I'm trying it out.

As you all may have noticed in D2L2, or as you'll see in the upcoming Closes at Dusk - I've been trying alternating chapters from different POVs. So far I've always written them sequentially, as they'll appear in the final work. Now that the POVs are separating to their various places in D2L3, I'm going to try writing a few chapters of one POV in a row (even though those will be broken up and intercalated with the other POVs).

I'll see how it goes!

Zombie Awareness!

From the website of the International Association of Emergency Managers, their annual meeting (Tuesday, November 3, Breakout Session #4) will address the following:


2:00p-3:00p Zombie Attack: Applying Emergency Management to Attacks by the Undead
Presenter: Scot Phelps, JD, MPH, Paramedic, CEM/CBCP/MEP, Associate Professor, Connecticut State University.


Objectives:


1. Explain how to use contemporary media to as a teaching tool.
2. Illustrate zombie subculture and lessons emergency management can learn.
3. Discuss social implications of the "unknown unknowns."


Sometimes emergency management professionals take our job too seriously! Using parody to teach application of emergency management concepts, this presentation will present the concepts in a humorous way, using the threat of zombie attack to illustrate serious points. Based on the zombie preparedness subculture (see http://ww2.zombieinitiative.org) and recent zombie movies like 'Shawn of the Dead' and '28 Days Later', we will seriously (well, kind of...) discuss how the a dedicated emergency manager can apply the effective strategies before, during, and after a zombie attack against civilization.

More Funnies!

Okay, the people of Walmart site was pretty funny, you got to admit.

But Joyce vs. Beckett at golf? ZOMG - now that's funny! This might beat Monty Python's philosophers playing soccer.

The Fans from the Motley Crue Concert!

Remember how I couldn't quite think of a polite term for them!

Well, I still can't ! But I can illustrate!

Here's where they all went to the next day (or came from earlier the day of the concert)!

Amazon Sales Ranks

It's funny. If you go to my Amazon author page, you'll see all my books (horror and theology both) listed according to sales rank.

As of this evening, The World Is Dead (still not officially released, but up for preorder) has already passed all my theology titles.

Kinda makes you think, huh?

Subtitle Redux

The last choice didn't get any votes and the first two were tied, and I just thought of another one, so I redid the poll! Also, please note the wordplay - life/light, rights/rites - all of which concepts play into the plot, so I'm happy with the choices.

 Subtitle for the new Dying to Live novel?

• 
  
  Mortal Light


• 
  
  Dead to Rights


• 
  
  Last Rites


• 
  
  Darkness in the City of Light

view results
Free vote poll

HUGE Announcement(s)!!

And...

I can't say them yet.

Because I have to wait. For them to be final. And wow, is that killing me!

Not the "quit your day job" type big, but pretty big.

And so, I wait!

And now, so do you!

See, before you weren't waiting. Because you had nothing to wait for. But now you do!

Chapter 8

1600 words

16,100 words total

Random Rants

Before braving the supermarket again!

1) Stuff White People Like! (First a book, now a blog and a Facebook quiz and I'm sure it'll be available in other forms too!) I'd thumbed through (and laughed) at the book at an Urban Outfitters the other week, but looking closely at the list, I'm surprised there's absolutely NO nod toward blue collar, white "culture" - no NASCAR or wrestling or 80s Metal. (And I can tell you from last Friday - or indeed, any Friday I go to a concert - that there were 30k white people jammed together on that soggy mountain side.) The list is white, liberal, NE or Californian, college grad culture. Which is fine, but it makes me think more about what's really being made fun of (besides my demographic, which again, is fine). I think if you made fun of the NASCAR crowd, it'd be perceived as potentially mean-spirited, like you were calling them hillbillies or inbreds - in other words, they wouldn't be the target audience, though they'd be the target of the mockery. (And I guess Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy get away with it because they are identifiable as part of the target demographic.) But if you make fun of liberals in a book that's probably mostly read by liberals, then that's okay. Which it is - I think mockery should usually be w/in a group and not outward directed.

2) How much do teenagers EAT?! Wow. I guess ours only eat once in the day, but once they get home, it's nonstop! -

3:00pm - "snack" (looks a helluva lot more like a meal to me - usually a frozen pizza or Hot Pocket or pasta)

5:00pm - "snack" (looks more like a snack - apple or pear or nuts)

6:30pm - dinner (where they eat as much as I do)

8:00pm - "snack" (looks like yet another meal to me, usually with pasta or rice or a continuation of dessert)

And what's with all the carbs?! Is that even good for them?

Which, of course, is why I'm off to the supermarket again!!

Van Jones?

Oh yeah, Obama's quite the Stalinist despot - you can tell by the way that certified clown Glenn Beck can force administration officials to resign.

All right, saying bad things about white people isn't nice. But how about we force everyone who's called the president a racist, or said he's going to kill grandma, or he'll put parents in reeducation camps - how about they all have to resign too?

Chapter 7

2100 words
14,400 words total

I do so get into the zombies' thoughts, more than their shuffling and biting. Dare I say it - it might be fun to write a vampire story, with monsters who have the full use of their mental faculties!

Gasp! (Duck! Run for cover!)

Smart Zombies Play Dumb!

Writing a scene where my smart zombies have to play dumb, so that the people won't kill them. But I got to be careful, or it looks too much like the scene in Shaun of the Dead where the people try to "pass" as zombies!

Rue Morgue #93

The issue of Rue Morgue now on newstands has a great little write up on VALLEY OF THE DEAD!

Can't really show you anything from it, since the current issue isn't online, but if you're in a store, check it out. Monica did a great job with questions, and with reading the story and making some interesting observations w/o spoilers. Thanks!!

Subtitle for New Novel

The third installment in the Dying to Live saga needs a subtitle! Mortal Light has been my working subtitle, but I've also thought of Love and Death and Darkness in the City of Light. Then last night I thought of Dead to Rights, which is also kind of cool (though it's the title of a new mystery novel, and of a video game). So I thought I should have a poll! The voting form is below and in the sidebar.

What should be the subtitle to the third volume of the Dying to Live saga?

• 
  
  Mortal Light


• 
  
  Dead to Rights


• 
  
  Darkness in the City of Light


• 
  
  Love and Death

view results
Free vote poll

Valley of the Dead Reviews

I think I'll put them all in one spot, so I know where they are later. We may need some for blurbs for the trade paperback release. And in the meantime, there are still a few copies of the limited edition over at Horror Mall. I'd love to sell out of that one.

Dark Scribe Review

Horror World Review

Horror Fiction Review

Dread Central Review

New Book Trailer!

Carole's trailer inspired me to go back and update mine, to include new releases! Thanks!



COOL!!!

The Blue Word

A fantastic zombie story by Carole Lanham, in The World Is Dead, now with this nifty trailer:

Kim - In the Kitchen All Day? What?!

It all started when I went to get groceries. I stopped by the little farm stand down the road, on the way to the supermarket. I thought I'd get a few things. Then I saw these big containers of overripe plum tomatoes. And huge bags of sweet peppers. And I remembered I'd made a note that I'd bought a whole braid of garlic and hadn't used much, and there was also a bunch of parsley in the fridge that was looking limp. So I thought, "Hey, it's time. Everyone tells me you've got to try spaghetti sauce made from scratch. You'll never buy Ragu again." So I got all the stuff. And I've been in the kitchen a couple hours now. Chop, chop, snip, snip. This had better be good. It's supposed to yield like four quarts, and I'm running some canning jars through the dishwasher now.

Back from Crue Fest!

I'd never heard Godsmack before. Just kept seeing their tshirts at every concert I went to. They were pretty good.

The setting and weather were tremendous - what a great outdoor venue! (It was at Montage Mountain, Scranton, PA.)

And the Crue? Great stageshow. Maybe the best pyrotechnics I've ever seen. They not only had big flashpots, but these things that shot out sideways and seemed to light the risers on fire for a couple seconds. Very nice for "Shout at the Devil" and "Wild Side."

Now, it was a great show, don't get me wrong, but hearing Vince "sing" is more painful even than Joe Elliott. Going to see these older bands, I think I'm forgiving when it comes to the singer, as I know it must be hard at this point. I'm not going to complain. But you got to make an effort. You can't "sing" every other word of the lyrics (where your "singing" consists of speaking the words, often in a rhythm rather different than the original song), then hold the mike out over the crowd for the chorus - for EVERY SONG. Do it for a couple to save your voice, but you got to try to belt out some of them at least.

And the crowd? Wow. I actually don't know the politically correct term for what I'm thinking of right now. But hey - they were having a good time, and if you can shake your money maker at age 40, 30 lbs overweight, drunk and high, in public, slipping on all the mud and spilled beer you're gyrating in - hey, God bless you.

From the Fox News Website

A reader comment (on the proposed Presidential address to school kids):

"Our children are grown - should this have happened when they were in school I would have kept them home or had them attending an alternate class - I would have been at the school to see them in an alternate class or would have taken them home - they are still my children and my responsibility to see that they are not fed a bunch of garbage. Remember Hilter took over Germany by reaching the children and having them turn in their parents.THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN HERE!!!! "

Obama is going to teach children to turn in their parents - for what, exactly? And to whom? And where will these hapless parents be taken, pray tell? And if Obama has all this power, why are you able to spew such venom about him 24/7, w/o black helicopters swooping in to take you to a reeducation camp? If he's some mad megalomaniac in charge of every aspect of American life, why can he not pass any legislation? Why has he not seized all your guns, as you constantly fantasize he's going to do? And Hitler directly or indirectly led to the deaths of 50+ million people, so how dare you malign the memory of the dead with this rhetoric?

Or, in other words - how bat shit insane are these people who read and write this stuff?

Sometimes I get down. Last night I was thinking of Ted Kennedy, and how every time we liberals praise him, we have to preface everything with "Well, of course he was a lousy human being, but..." Same thing when we say something good about Bill or Hillary or Bobby or JFK. Hell, Jimmy Carter is probably the most Christian president we've ever had, with not a whiff of scandal about him, but even with him we have to start by saying, "Well, of course he was a lousy president, but..." It's like we start out every sentence by apologizing! But the right - no apologies there! They're just more loyal than us - you've got to give them that. You don't see them saying "Well, of course Rush is a pill popping fiend..." or, "Well, even though Dick shot his friend in the face..." No, their heroes most certainly do NOT have feet of clay as far as they're concerned. And when we bash the other side, the rhetoric's different, too: I may have called Dick a fascist, but I know I never said he was Hitler, or that he was gonna brainwash our kids into turning against their parents. Because that's just insane. Sorry, it is.

And the scary big difference between right and left, a difference that's almost like an elephant in the room? Several of the heroes of the left have been shot dead in public after constant vilification. I tried myself to overlook this and think, "No, that's crazy, that'll never happen. This is America. We elected a black president. We're over all that insanity and violence." But if there are people who think Obama is trying to talk their kids into turning their parents into the authorities for thought crimes, you have to wonder - if they're crazy enough to believe that, what else are they crazy enough to do?

I'll pray for this president.

Too Sexy for My Shirt!

Not anymore! Not once I'm sporting this fine apparel from ROB HALFORD!!!

Stop by Rob's new website and show your support for the one, the only, METAL GOD!!!!

Amazon!

The World Is Dead now available on Amazon!!

Let's start buying it people!

The HAL2000 Email Filter

My email filter's scaring me a little. It puts all the pro-Obama stuff in my inbox, and puts all the anti-healthcare-reform stuff in the "junk" folder - which is exactly where I want both those categories of things, but the scary part is I don't remember telling my email filter that. How does it know? What else does it know about me? What other email am I not getting because it decides I don't want it?

ZedWorld Covers FanExpo!

What great coverage from our friends at Zed World Blog!

Previous posts include two of my incoherent ramblings!

First, I hypnotized Kelly Armstrong with the eschatological knowledge bomb I wield!
(And I think the long hair is kinda rockin' in that pic! Usually I think it looks kinda lame - but there it's kinda halfway between a young Ben Franklin and a pre-old age Jesse Ventura!)

Then Zed World Blog went all one on one with moi and made me tell the real story!!

Hey - people were asking me about that panel all weekend, so I guess it went well! Thanks all!

Big Announcement?

Don't know yet! Might be! Have been contacted by someone with what SEEMS like a big announcement, but am checking it out right now! Check back here tomorrow!

Countdown!

Keith's having more and more people from my blog on his Countdown!

First he had Max Brooks of World War Z fame (last week).

Then last night he mentioned this clown, whom I blogged about last month.

I'm au courant!

World Is Dead!

Big box of them came in the UPS truck today!

But I still don't see them on Amazon! (Sorry!)

But at least I'll definitely have some at Horror Realm!

ZOMG It's like PINKBERRY!!!

Those of you who know of my obsession with Pinkberry may rejoice with me!

A Robek's Juice, whose tart frozen yogurt is pretty close to Pinkberry's, just opened right next to work!!! It's actually not quite as tart as Pinkberry (too bad), but is the most creamy brand I've tasted (a good thing), not at all grainy and icy like some of the other chains.

Winner!

The signed Valley of the Dead ARC goes to Meghan Retzlaff!

Storage!

Perfect for zombie apocalypse - under bed storage locker, fire proof, holds 32 rifles and 70 handguns plus ammo!!