Butcher Knives and Body Counts

I have an essay in this upcoming nonfiction anthology, and we now have a look at the cover!

New Interview

Over at Living Dead Media - check it out!

BON JOVI!

At the NEW Meadowlands! (I wonder how long they get to call it that?)

Awesome show! "Jumpin' Jack Flash" was a nice touch. Fireworks were a great touch. And at least JBJ can still sing (unless there was some lip sycnhing hanky-panky, which I had to wonder about, given how glitzed up the whole background projected images of him and the band were). Some of the projected animation was fun, like for "We Weren't Born to Follow" and "Work" (both of which I'd never heard before - don't think I'll rush out and buy them, but their foray into socially conscious music seemed okay -not a big stretch, just some working class blues slathered with their usual optimism - think Springsteen without an ounce of desperation and with a pound of glammy, shrill hope heaped on top).

And for once - a teenage girl standing next to me, instead of my usual concert neighbor - a big, tattooed guy who smacks me in the head with his hairy elbows all night, and/or alternates hits from a crushed soda can bong, with telling me I'm his best friend and only I understand him. No, the teen only gyrated fairly tastefully, with only very light pokes from her more or less hairless elbows. I feel so - refreshed! - after a concert, for the first time!

10 Questions with Romero

And a great bunch of questions they are, from 10 different people, over at TIME magazine online!

And please note this one quotation (the tenth question) which is something I kept underlining in GOTLD:

"My zombies will never take over the world because I need the humans. The humans are the ones I dislike the most, and they're where the trouble really lies."

Back from Book Expo America!

And what's with all the anti-Obama books? Sheesh - every time I'd turn a corner, there's another one. I guess someone figures to make a buck off the Tea Baggers, but it seems like the wrong crowd to be trying to sell books to. But, well, capitalism finds a way.

Saw the nice folks at the HWA booth - Gary Frank, Ellen Datlow, and Jonathan Maberry. Chatted to them briefly, as I was trying to take in as much as possbile between handing off my name badge to the missus, who also wanted to walk through. I mostly wanted to get as much contact info as I could for foreign publishers and graphic novel publishers, as those are the two areas (along with films, of course) where I'd like to sell rights, if I could figure out how.

Took the missus to Uncle Nick's Greek Cuisine after. Wow - Greek really isn't my favorite ethnic food, but my wife doesn't really like asian the way I do, so I compromised, and it was probably the best Greek food I remember.

So not a bad day overall.

First Non-Zombie Novel!

For those of you who just like my writing, and don't necessarily need to read about the voracious dead tearing people limb from limb, I'm announcing that my very zombie-free novel, Closes at Dusk, will be published in 2011 from the fine folks at BELFIRE PRESS. Check out their other great products and I hope you enjoy this foray into non-zombie literature.

And So It Begins

Every journey begins with one step!

I just wrote Chapter One of Pale Gods, my sixth novel. 2300 words.

I've talked about it before, but to try to describe it again: it's a zombie version of Moby Dick, the way The Lion King is a lion version of Hamlet - if you know the original, things take on a new meaning(s), but the story stands on its own and doesn't use any of the same words or characters or plot actions.

I even got to work in analogs to two minor characters that I hadn't been planning on - Elijah and Charity! Go me!

Always feels good to start!

Review in Fango Online!

A nice little write up of VALLEY OF THE DEAD over at Fango online!

Naming Characters

For the new novel! Always takes me a while, as I have to have them "just so" before I begin.

Great Review!

ZOMG - Somebody over at Skull Salad Review really "gets" it about VALLEY OF THE DEAD!!!

Thanks! I'm so thrilled by this review! It's the kind you want, when you write something you fear your "regular" fan might not "get"!!!

Another Great Contest!

This one brought to you by the nice folks at

ZOMBIE COMMAND - Check it out!!

Bottom Feeder

BOTTOM FEEDER! How could this not be 100 kinds of AWESOME!

(Well, lots of ways, but we'll go with "100 kinds of AWESOME!" for now.)

Telemarketing

Requires a certain, very low, but still ascertainable, level of intelligence. For example, this is NOT how you want the call to go:

"May I speak to Kim Paffenroth?" (struggles with last name, lots of other voices in the background at the boilerroom)

"Speaking."

"You're not Kim Paffenroth. You're a guy. Put Kim on the phone."

"You're gonna call me at my home and argue with me about my mother fuckin' name? WTF? Fuck you."

I think I want Gary Busey to play me in the film version of my life. The whole scene would've gone so much more colorfully. He would've said the same lines, but then he would've hopped in a 1970 Gran Torino, driven 900 miles to the call center, arrived in a peyote and tequila haze, taken a dump in the company's foyer, screamed something in Spanish while snorting a line of coke off the floor next to his dump, then been Tazered, thrown up and passed out.

Great Article on Jesus

In The New Yorker, of all places, and not for Easter (when you usually see a bunch of such articles).

Searching for Jesus in the Gospels

Nice review of scholarship, nice plugs for various books out now (though I can't quite fully get behind the idea of ANOTHER book by Ehrman, which the article's author admits is just another version of the SAME book!), nice history of interpretation (greatest two line summary of Arianism ever), nice appreciation of Gospel stories. So, definitely worth the 20 minutes to read it.

Lots o' Fake Blood!

If the backyard, handheld cam and lots of Karo syrup and food coloring are your ingredients for film enjoyment, then enjoy this masterpiece - Claw Hammer Zombie Kill!!

Romero Interview!

Nice new one with George, talking about Survival of the Dead especially, over at Suicide Girls. Check it out!

Book Sales

My German publishers reports their edition of DYING TO LIVE (Vom Überleben unter Zombies) is now at #7 on Amazon.de in the HORROR category! That's pretty good, considering it's not one of those really little subcategories you get on Amazon USA, like "Post Apocalyptic Zombie Fiction." It's pretty easy to hit #7 in that category!

Thanks in part to the awesome efforts of Gary Klar (see my entry a few days ago) to talk up GOSPEL OF THE LIVING DEAD, it's numbers have surged in recent days! Nice to promote my academic AND zombie writing at the same time!!

And VALLEY OF THE DEAD has surged higher than it's ever been so far!

So, steady as she goes!

(PS: Up at 5am yesterday and today to give early morning exams! Two more exams to go! Tired!)

Random Stuff

Big box of copies of the German edition of DYING TO LIVE came in the mail today! Boy they look cool!

My wife saw the subtitle of the German of D2L2 and translated it as "The Tragedy of Zombies" which sounds better than my translation of "The Sadness of Zombies."

Nice write up for VALLEY OF THE DEAD over here!

Dawn of the Dreadfuls

I hadn't seen this! It's a hilarious trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls!

Germans Love Me!

Kind of a favorite son, it seems! They've already plowed ahead with D2L2 and produced the cover!

And BTW: my great grandparents were German immigrants who couldn't speak English (and who couldn't read or write anything). Now I write zombie books that are translated into German. Some karmic circle has been closed, I think.

First German Review of D2L!

I'm like the David Hasselhoff of zombie fiction! No, not because of my physique. Not because of the awesome videos you can find on YouTube of me drunk and eating a hamburger. But because Germans LOVE ME! (And Justin Bieber doesn't know who I am, either!)

But, here's the review!

"Ich habe das Buch heute in einem Rutsch gelesen und kann jetzt, wo die Eindrücke noch frisch sind sagen, dass es mir sehr gut gefallen hat. Die Atmosphäre ist sehr dicht, durch die vielen Beschreibungen wirkt die Geschichte zum Greifen nahe. Dem Autor ist es gelungen, die apokalyptische Welt, die von Zombies beherrscht wird, so farbig zu gestalten, dass man das Buch kaum aus der Hand legen kann und unbedingt weiter lesen möchte. Es erinnert beim Lesen auch an einige Zombiefilme, zB. 28 days later, was trotzdem nicht negativ ist. Ich kann es nur empfehlen."

And the I-Google mechanical translation:

"I have read the book in one go today and can now, when the impressions are still fresh to say that I liked it very well. The atmosphere is very dense, by the many descriptions of the story seems close enough to touch. The author has succeeded in the apocalyptic world dominated by zombies make, so colorful that you can hardly put the book out of his hand and absolutely want to read more. It also remembers reading some zombie movies, for example. 28 days later, which still is not a negative. I can recommend it."

And the Winner Is...

George Peyton is he winner of the VALLEY OF THE DEAD contest. I'll be sending him a nice package of zombie miscellany, including the chapbook THIN THEM OUT.

George is an especially appropriate winner (though I didn't know it till after the random drawing): he is one of the developers of a new version, the Limerick Inferno! Check it out here at his website.

Back from Mo*Con

And feeling a bit melancholy, apparently.

The really tall young man to your right, next to the scrawny little hair ball you may know as your professor, or as a zombie author, or however you know me - he was the most generous, kind, gentle person I've ever known. He died shortly after we graduated from high school. That he deserved to live more than I do, that he would've been a better son, father, citizen, and Christian - all that seems, to me, beyond dispute. I can only try to take that fact as a challenge to me to be better in everything I do, rather than an inducement to despair. But I struggle with that weighty, bitter observation every day.