Tag: Zombies

Book Review: Death Warmed Over

Erin Penn

Amazon Cover - Death Warmed Over

Book Cover from Amazon

Death Warmed Over (Dan Shamble, Zombie PI Book 1) by Kevin J. Anderson

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

Ever since the Big Uneasy unleashed vampires, werewolves, and other undead denizens on the world, it’s been hell being a detective—especially for zombie PI Dan Chambeaux. Taking on the creepiest of cases in the Unnatural Quarter with a human lawyer for a partner and a ghost for a girlfriend, Chambeaux redefines “dead on arrival.” But just because he was murdered doesn’t mean he’d leave his clients in the lurch. Besides, zombies are so good at lurching.

Now he’s back from the dead and back in business—with a caseload that’s downright unnatural. A resurrected mummy is suing the museum that put him on display. Two witches, victims of a curse gone terribly wrong, seek restitution from a publisher for not using “spell check” on its magical tomes. And he’s got to figure out a very personal question: who killed him?

For Dan Chambeaux, it’s all in a day’s work. (Still, does everybody have to call him “Shamble”?) Funny, fresh, and irresistible, this cadaverous caper puts the PI in RIP … with a vengeance.

 

MY REVIEW

A typical urban fantasy detective – the twist on this one is the PI is a Zombie and one of his cases is investigating his own death.

What I loved about the story: This PI doesn’t work just one case, but a dozen cases at a time. He isn’t a down-and-out Noir PI trying to climb into or out of a bottle. He just happens to have been killed recently. Other than that, he has a good set of friends, a solid job, and a smart girlfriend. Unlife promises to be as good as living had been.

With the dozen or so cases, Mr. Anderson doesn’t need to create false trails and red herrings. There is so much going on, of course Dan Chambeaux has a time uncovering the big bad’s case since he also has to work on all the other cases which pay the bills. I think this particular aspect of the story is more real than most detective stories I have read.

What I didn’t like about the story: Several times the author repeats information from the chapter before. About 1/6th of the book is repeats. Now in order to do the investigation, the PI does have to review the evidence to see if he is missing anything. Sometimes going over the information with friends lets him see the problem from a different perspective. If I was editing the book, I would recommend cutting about half of the repeats.

The chapter endings usually complete a mini-story within one of the PI’s cases, which makes picking up and putting down the book easy. If you read about 2 to 3 chapters at a time during a commute or between errands, the repeats may not bother you at all. I tend to swallow books whole – in this case I bought and finished the book the same day.

Overall a good story and solid start to a new series. Also works fine as a stand-alone.

Book Review: I, Zombie

Erin Penn

Amazon Cover - I Zombie

Book Cover from Amazon

* Someone is Murdering the Dead. *

I, Zombie by Doris Piserchia under the pen name of Curtis Shelby

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

When the girl from the asylum drowned in the lake that night, she thought it was the end of her life, but she was wrong.

With robots at fifty thousand dollars a unit, it was far more economical to use corpse labour – all it took was a two-thousand dollar animating pack in the brain, and a zombie worker, under the direction of a helmeted controller, could do just about anything except think.

Or so everyone said. But in the zombie dorms at night, with only the walking dead for roommates, things were not as they should have been. The girl from the asylum seemed to have more mental ability, not less, and someone was trying to kill her. Kill a dead girl?

Maybe there was more to heaven than an afterlife of manual labour in the company of a bunch of stiffs!

 

MY REVIEW

One of my favorite books of all time, I don’t know how many times I have read it. Picked it up back when it was first released in 1982 at an airport to keep from getting bored on a plane. (now available on kindle – yeah! … because my original paperback is Beat Up(tm).)

Interesting psychological study. Pretty cool worldbuilding with the Frogs and the Zombies (deceased humans with brain packs to work them). Actually excellent worldbuilding, the layers to the Zombies and the world trying to translate that over to the mentally disturbed. Layers upon layers with the brain pack technology and the Frog culture.

Then the action adventure with fights in front of a furnace and problem-solving mysteries with someone murdering the dead and the ice world melting, keeps everything moving at a fast pace.

This book is one of my happy places.

NOTE: Curt Selby is the pen name of Doris Piserchia, so “Curt Shelby” appears on the cover but you will now find the book under Doris Pierchia’s real name for the kindle.

Flash: 50-Word Prompts (7, 8, 10 & 11)

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of wpclipart.com

Third of four postings from the 50-word Flash Friday, where 12 prompts were given to writers for mini-flashes. The prompts were words or photos, and the flashes were limited to fifty words.

Today’s flashes are the stand-alone flashes based on word prompts. I think “Arms” was my favorite prompt; so many different meanings to the word. I tried to go with a non-traditional definition of the word for a romance writer. I wanted to attempt twisting the word away from standard after seeing what other people did with the prompt “Thong(s)”.

 

PROMPT SEVEN: Arms

“That is a lot of guns.” Bambi whispered, staring at the armory. Why on earth had Mason assembled all this? Shaking off the fear-factor, Bambi reached for an automated assault weapon. The zombies were about to get some hurt on. (words 40)

 

PROMPT EIGHT: Casablanca

The next clue was “White House.” George spent hours searching the local video stores political tape selections with no luck. The last store had the great presidential speeches next to classical black and white. Duh! He pulled the Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman movie out and found a new post-it-note. (words 50)

 

PROMPT TEN: Fig Roll

“Fig rolls follow a tradition starting in ancient Egypt with fig-paste stuffed pastries” The professor droned on. Abdul groaned. He needed to update his persona, which meant college in the twenty-first century. He had hoped a culinary degree would avoid the history he had already lived through. (words 47)

 

PROMPT ELEVEN: Myriad

The future. Must be so easy for those who couldn’t see it. Melusine froze. Myriad uncomfortable paths lay ahead. Choosing quickly, she moved on the one denying her love for a year. Staying still would have killed too many people, although it meant meeting Douglas tomorrow. (words 46)

(first published 2/8/2013; republished new blog format 3/19/2017)

Editing Rant: Copper Pennies

Erin Penn

Fingers Holding A Penny Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of Gualberto107 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What do your characters know?

So last editing rant I went off about Know Your Topic. You don’t want to lose readers because you presented parasailing or embroidery incorrectly. If you don’t know the topic find someone who does: topic experts, beta readers, at least a research librarian whom you are keeping in chocolates and coffee.

Equally important be aware of what you character knows.

This isn’t limited to the more common Point of View (POV) main character (MC) limitations; you may know character B dyed her hair yesterday, but MC doesn’t know yet so describes character B as a blonde. Don’t get me wrong, as an author making certain you only let your MC work from the information known to them rather than to you as the writer is essential. And challenging.

But you also need to limit them on what they are familiar with. Having a twenty-fourth century engineer know how to use a twentieth century keyboard to input information into a computer system is improbable.

Or a twenty-something person forty years after the zombie Apocalypse comparing the scent of blood to new pennies. Yes, this is a common comparison to the point of being clique. But someone born after coins stopped being minted isn’t likely to know what new pennies smelled like.

A person who has never seen the shore would not understand what the salty breeze meant.

Someone who had never been off a spaceship isn’t only going to be shocked by no sky – no walls is as big an issue. And the ship isn’t breathing. Could they even sleep at night? No mechanical noise means “we are all about to die”. How long does it take for the panic to wear off?

Back to the Smell of Blood – as an editor I couldn’t rewrite the line about new pennies. But I did find an article on the scent of blood. If you are describing lycanthropes, vampires, or just have splashes of blood throughout your manuscript you may want to follow the link to Writeworld – “Describing the Smell of Blood”. (AMENDMENT  on 10/24/2019 (original post 11/8/2016) – The link for the Writeworld article  is now dead. Search on “describing the smell of blood”, there are a lot of resources now.)

(sigh) … And it is research like this that puts writers on watch lists.

WRITING EXERCISE: Create a scene (500 words or less) where your WIP character describes a common day item on your desk s/he is not familiar with and what the actions are taken to discover its use.

Author Spotlight: Jake Bible

Erin Penn

Z Burbia Amazon Cover

Book Cover from Amazon

If one combined all the energy of a four year-old, the charming arrogance of a sixteen year-old, and the plain crazy of an eighty year-old paranoid dementia patient and sprinkled in some ADHD, mech zombies, and medieval space stations, you may begin to understand who is Jake Bible. He writes from middle grade to adults, horror to fantasy, thriller to science fiction. Whatever comes out of his blender mind gets put on paper. A lot of it – the man publishes six (or more) heart-pounding books a year.

I am not kidding about the mech zombies, the Apex Trilogy starting with Book 1: Dead Mech. The blurb reads: “Hundreds of years after the zombie apocalypse decimates the world, human civilization has put itself back together again. Their secret weapon against the zombie hordes: the Mechs. Massive robotic battle machines. But what happens when a mech pilot dies in his mech and becomes a zombie?”

And the medieval space station can be seen in the Reign of Four. Other series include Dead Team Alpha, Z-Burbia, and ScareScapes (middle grade), just to name a few. Mr. Bible nails the horror, the gooshy, pus-flowing, zombie-filled horror, even if the bodies don’t stay down – you think the creatures had claw hammers to dig those nails out. 

He presently resides in North Carolina and can be seen at various conventions in the area. If asked on a panel how to fix a dragging portion of a book, his response is always “Blow something up.” with a gleeful grin.

His website is: Jake Bible Fiction and his podcast is Writing in Suburbia (unscripted, NSFW – has very mellow voice, tends to have rants about writing).