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The Colony Saga
i.e., Let’s Talk Zombies

Okay, short bit about me (so’s y’all know I’ve got street cred, yo): I’m an indie author.  I write spec-fic: sci-fi, fantasy, horror.

Mostly horror.

I’m a produced screenwriter (two horror movies), member of the Horror Writers of America, and have been one of Amazon’s Most Popular Horror Writers for most of the last year.  I’ve written about ghosts, vampires, serial killers, demons, devils.  If it goes bump in the night, I’m interested.  But one thing I’ve never done is a multi-volume work. 

Until now.  And it’s a zombie story.

Usually when I write, I can tell pretty much how long the book’s going to end up being.  But when I started writing The Colony Saga, I discovered to my chagrin that the first two plot points took over two hundred pages to cover.  And that was because I was trying to do something a bit different with my zombies. 

In most zombie stories, the zombies are essentially interchangeable with a force of nature.  They are an earthquake, or a series of twisters, or a tsunami.  They are there to be dealt with as an additional problem in between the “real” story issues: a marriage on the rocks, a group of plucky survivors who have to deal with the power mad/rapey governor/priest/ex-biker/whatever who lives nearby and wants what they have.  The real questions aren’t about the zombies (“Where did they come from?”  “How do we get rid of them?”), they are about the people.  So the zombies become a stumbling block in service of the author.

Concerned Husband: Honey, let’s sit down and talk about our marital problems.
Spunky Wife: You just haven’t understood me since we lost little Timmy.
Concerned Husband: But I’m here now.  Let’s figure it out.
Spunky Wife: Okay, let’s –
Zombie Horde: Rowrrrr!
Concerned Husband: Oops!  Gotta get outta here!
Spunky Wife: I know!  We’ll figure out our marriage after this brief survival episode!
Zombie Horde: ROWRRRR!
(three weeks later)
Spunky Wife: Good thing we found that abandoned military installation and weapons cache!
Concerned Husband: I know!  Should we talk about our marriage now?
Zombie Horde: Rowrrr!
Spunky Wife: Headshots rule!

I wanted to do something different.  I wanted to create a world where zombies are THE ONLY problem.  Where you don’t have time to really get into a bitch-slap fight with your neighbor, because time is all too precious.  If you argue, you die.  That’s it.  But that meant I had to create a whole different kind of zombie.  A kind of zombie immune to typical “zombie killing” methods.  Headshots won’t work.  Setting ‘em on fire isn’t an option.

And the zombies had to have a reason.  Most zombie stories are, again, about a natural event.  Even the viral zombies that are so in vogue now are at heart a natural event, in the sense that nature has fought back against humanity overstepping its bounds.  So the zombies become a sort of modern wrath of God.  A crucible to burn away the impure – morality plays on a massive scale.  But never really explained beyond that.

I wanted zombies with purpose.  I wanted them so scary that there literally appears to be no way to stop them.  I wanted survivors who were at their cores good people, willing to put aside differences in order to try to save not just themselves, but the human race.

And I wanted to do the one thing that no zombie story has ever really done, to fully address the most horrific aspect of zombies. 

As to what that is… well, I gotta keep some secrets in reserve.  But there are things worse than dying.  Worse than not staying dead.

Zombies are a lot of fun to read, and a lot of fun to write.  Whether I’ve accomplished my mission of creating a completely new kind of zombie is something that I can’t answer – I’ll have to leave that to my readers.  But it’s taught me a lot about horror, about the nature of community, and about the things that are truly worth fearing.

The Colony: Genesis (The Colony, Vol. 1):
Kindle
Paperback

The Colony: Renegades (The Colony, Vol. 2)
Kindle
Paperback

—
Michaelbrent Collings is a #1 bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His bestsellers include Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, The Loon, and the YA fantasy series The Billy Saga (beginning with Billy: Messenger of Powers). He hopes someday to develop superpowers, and maybe get a cool robot arm. Michaelbrent has a wife and several kids, all of whom are much better looking than he is (though he admits that’s a low bar to set), and much MUCH cooler than he is (also a low bar). Michaelbrent also has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings and can be followed on Twitter through his username @mbcollings. Follow him for awesome news, updates, and advance notice of sales. You will also be kept safe when the Glorious Revolution begins!

I’m about to run off to a long family reunion / vacation thing. So, me on the internet might be scarce. Though, I always have Twitter and my phone. The cat / house sitter has the usual instructions to text me daily cat pictures and to spoil them rotten. In the meantime, here’s a link round-up: an interview, an announcement, a photo, a release!

First up, I was interviewed on Jim Knipp’s blog.

Rogue Games has announced my book, Colonial Gothic: The Lost Colony.

David Mitchell and his brother did a horror photo based on my In a Gilded Light collection story “Finishing Touches.”

And a reminder that my Coins of Chaos anthology is released on Oct 15 while I’m away.

I’ve never met Matt but I gotta give it to him… I love this book trailer. It’s the kind of book trailer I’d like. Give it a look.-JLB

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The Correct Response is “Whoa”

by Matthew Warner

As in, “Whoa, baby. That looks awesome.” As in, “It looks so awesome, I gotta buy that book right the hell now.”

That’s the reaction I want you to have to my new book trailer about The Seventh Equinox, coming Nov. 6 from Raw Dog Screaming Press. (Hopefully, you’ll remain that enthusiastic after you read it.)

Did you know someone owns the term book trailer? Yep. It’s a service mark, registration #2868140, duly recorded at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But that doesn’t stop hordes of writers from creating videos about their novels and calling them “book trailers,” as if they’re on par with trailers at the movie theater.

But here’s the rub. Most of them suck. I’m sorry, but they do. They’re text-heavy, too long, and they look like they were made with PowerPoint in less than 15 minutes. But you get what you pay for, and most writers don’t have the dough to hire actors and CG artists. I’m not saying I do, either. Not usually. In fact, I’m certain I blew all my future royalties several times over when I collaborated with Darkstone Entertainment to make the 2.5-minute video linked below. But I’m happy to do it in the interests of recruiting new readers, hopefully ones who will stick with me for life. I have another job to keep me in whiskey, so I don’t mind raking all my writing income back into advertising. My publishers don’t seem to mind, either.

For this trailer, it helped to have a target audience firmly in mind. The Seventh Equinox is set in the fictitious city of Augusta, Virginia, based on my home of Staunton. I didn’t set it in the real Staunton because I wanted some leeway in my descriptions of geography and government, and also to insulate me from potential libel suits. In my book, the sheriff is an alcoholic, bigoted redneck, while the real-life Staunton police chief is anything but.

Anyway, I still want locals to buy my book, because its descriptions otherwise ring with regional flavor. That’s why a Staunton landmark, the Clock Tower, appears on the book cover. And that’s why, when I wrote the trailer script (which you’re welcome to read here), I loaded it with Staunton landmarks, such as Betsy Bell Mountain. During the three-day shoot, I even revised it to include more local landmarks, such as the Gypsy Hill Park band stand and the iconic DeJarnette buildings.

The other thing I did differently with this trailer was to load it with multiple settings and story lines, more like a real movie trailer. My previous three trailers for Blood Born were each confined to one or two locales. That made this one three times as hard to make. Read more about the sausage-making at The Seventh Equinox‘s production blog.

So, what did I learn from all this? New ways to nervously pull my hair out when production problems sometimes cropped up. I also learned I should keep my mouth shut when an actress is working herself into an emotional state at my request. (Major kudos to actress Elle Clark for crying real tears.)

The jury is still out on my main questions, which are: did it help to target a local audience, and was the more cinematic writing style worth the trouble?

Maybe you can help me figure it out. In the meantime, enjoy (book trailer link)!

Matthew Warner‘s new novel, The Seventh Equinox, comes out from Raw Dog Screaming Press on Nov. 6, 2013. Preorders receive $2 off.

The quieter I am online, the more heads-down I am on a project. I’ve been working my butt off, knocking projects off my list left and right. Mostly, it’s been KEYSTONES, Karen Wilson Chronicles book 3 and Shattered Shields, a Baen anthology I’m co-editing with Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I’m on the final push of the anthology. After I finish that, I’m going to be working on Colonial Gothic: Roanoke.

There’s also a couple of things I’m working on that are under NDA that are super exciting but definitely not sharable right now. Someday. Hopefully someday soon. I’m pretty jazzed about one in particular that’s come about because I was the GoH of GothCon 2013. Sometimes, I live in a state of total, constant amazement.

I’m also doing things like volunteering with the HWA and also volunteering at the local Boys & Girls Club on creating/running their haunted house. It’s not writing work but its good work nonetheless.

With Lily shifting to her own amazing, awesome work, I did hire a new minion—Chris Ward—who will be referred to as The Minion or Chris or Chris the Minion depending on my mood at the time. Pretty happy about this. He will be working for me and for Apocalypse Ink Productions.

Now that it is October, the month of All Hallows Read, I’d like to recommend a couple of scary books for you.

IN A GILDED LIGHT by me. It gave the first five reviewers nightmares.

FAMISHED: THE FARM by Ivan Ewert. Gentlemen ghouls from the creation of the US.

DARK HARVEST by Norman Partridge. A wonderfully creepy book.

AMERICAN ELSEWHERE by Robert J Bennett. It’s very much like Stephen King meets Lovecraft. So worth a read.

I’ve never met Louise but I follow her archeology blog because she’s always got something interesting going on. I’m pleased to hear about how she used her work and love of history to come up with her debut novel, Fire and Sword (Amazon US, Amazon UK).

—

First of all, a big ‘thank you’ to Jennifer Brozek for her invitation!  Deciding what to write has been quite a challenge:  I wondered at first if I should talk about why I actually write historical fiction, when my background as a reader and a writer is  grounded firmly in science fiction and fantasy.  But I’ve decided instead to focus more closely on the plot of my debut novel, Fire & Sword (published by Hadley Rille Books)  and the research which underpins it.

History is littered with drama and intrigue, undertaken by a plethora of sometimes quite unsavoury individuals.  And yet I chose to write my novel about a relatively unknown individual who is hardly mentioned in the national story.  Why I took this difficult path and the work involved in pursuing it is what I’d like to talk about today.

I live in Renfrewshire, just west of Glasgow. When I started writing Fire and Sword, it seemed practical to write a story set close to home, mainly because I was unemployed at the time and the wealth of on-line archival resources that we have now was unheard of. 

The local history books were full of inconsequential details along the lines of, “See those Semples?  They were dodgy characters, always feuding.  See those Montgomeries?  They were a right bad crowd, always feuding.”  After wading through page after page of this kind of stuff, I must admit I found myself wondering how I’d ever find something worth writing about.

Then something caught my eye.  A brief passage, referring to John, 1st Lord Sempill.  I can’t remember the exact wording, but it went somewhere along the lines of, ‘His father Sir Thomas Sempill died defending the King at the Battle of Sauchieburn in June, 1488, and a year later John was made 1st Lord Sempill.’

Now, King James III was murdered after Sauchieburn, which meant that John Sempill’s father was killed while fighting on the losing side.  This meant that his son and heir, John, was back in favour with his successor James IV just a year later. 

I was intrigued.  I continued my research, and learned that the constant feuding was invariably an aggrieved response to specific political events.  By weaving together the national picture with the local historical accounts, I unearthed a story which was very interesting indeed, but much was inference and supposition.  As a historian or an archaeologist, I couldn’t take the next step which linked all this together. 

But as a novelist, I could.

The facts formed a rigid framework around which I had to build a story, but everything else depended on the characters.  The process of creating characters who seemed realistic and compelling and true to their time was another major challenge.  With some individuals, including John, I didn’t even know their date of birth.  Some major detective work ensued.  How many siblings did they have?  Who were their closest relatives?  What did they achieve in their lives? Who did their children marry? 

In John’s case, he was the only son in a family which included at least three girls.  While his father was clearly allied politically with the Cunninghame clan, John became increasingly linked with their local rivals, the Montgomeries.  The Montgomeries and the Cunninghames were at each others’ throats in nearby Ayrshire.  But during John’s life, while he was Sheriff of Renfrew, these same two families maintained a peaceful co-existence.

I like to think that John, 1st Lord Sempill was ahead of his time.  While most of his contemporaries were happy to feud and burn, John was a builder, a supporter of the arts.  His legacy includes one of the few privately funded collegiate churches to be built in the west of Scotland, a site which still can be visited today.  He was, in effect, a true Renaissance man. 

Even the most accomplished of historians can’t give John much of a voice or an identity.  With just a scattering of charters to his name, his was a fleeting presence in a world dominated by much louder, more strident personalities.

But a novelist can take a leap of inference, and travel to places that the historian or archaeologist can only dream of.  And what an adventure it has been, trying to accomplish this in a manner which is entertaining to the reader, while remaining plausible and convincing and sympathetic to the facts!

—
Louise Turner’s debut novel Fire and Sword is set in late 15th century Scotland and has recently been published by Hadley Rille Books.  For further information about Louise and her work, see www.louiseturner.co.uk.

First, there’s still the Jay Lake Process of Writing giveaway that includes the limited JayWake hardback edition of the book.

Then there is What Fates Impose GoodReads giveaway. I have a story in this. “A Card Given” is set in the Karen Wilson Chronicles universe.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

What Fates Impose

by Nayad Monroe

Giveaway ends September 22, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Jay Lake’s Process of Writing is officially out! Of course, we, at Apocalypse Ink Productions, need to have a contest for it. Link this page on Facebook, twitter, or your blog between now and September 30th to be entered into a contest to win the last signed and numbered limited JayWake hardback edition of Jay Lake’s Process of Writing, complete with Howard Tayler’s artwork. You will also receive a JayWake pin and a JayWake smooshed penny. This contest is not limited by geography.

If your entry is on Facebook or on your blog, post that link on Twitter directed to @ApocalypseInk or contact us through email at contest@apocalypse-ink.com

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Sample Tweet:
Just released from @ApocalypseInk – @Jay_Lake’s Process of Writing. Win the JayWake edition! http://bit.ly/13fXDMg #contest RT to win.

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Sample Facebook status update:
New from Apocalypse Ink Productions, Jay Lake’s Process of Writing. Now available in physical and e-book formats. Win the JayWake edition! http://bit.ly/13fXDMg

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What will you win? We’re glad you asked. Take a look.

Hardback limited JayWake edition of Jay Lake’s Process of Writing. #47/50 and signed by Jay Lake.

The smooshed JayWake penny gifted by Janna Silverstein.

The JayWake pin designed by Howard Tayler and gifted by Minerva Zimmerman.

Is it possible to have worked on a book for nearly 30 years?  No, strike that… a lifetime?

You see, my novel Shirewode will be released on 09 September, the second book in a duology of Robin Hood.  It is singular amongst other recent retellings of the legend, in that it melds the hard edge of historical fact with the undeniable myth and magic of a vanishing primordial forest.  It also has high romance straight from the original ballads… with a subversive and timely twist, of course.

And time has haunted these books.  It’s been a bloody long haul to get here, to this place where I have two actual novels in my hand instead of promises, and good reviews in print instead of well-meaning reassurances. The duology originally began over thirty years ago as a trilogy called Greenwode, on the verge of contract with an SF/F publisher.  The main editor of that imprint died, and in the fallout a lot of things that were going to happen, didn’t.  It was the beginning of a run with very, very bad luck on so many fronts–and we all know luck is a big factor in publishing.

I retreated from the field, done in.   But the writing still lay in wait.  Other books were written, shared amongst comrades, put away in the files.  And amidst them waited what would become Greenwode and Shirewode, patient outlaws in ambush.  These manuscripts, gift from a childhood of pretending to be Robin Hood… of hunting and running wild over ploughed fields and through thick forests, of shooting arrows and falling in ponds, of climbing trees and chasing cousins and half-wild ponies that stood in for Sheriff’s Men…

Well, these manuscripts were determined to be my debut upon a battlefield where I never again thought to stand.  I’m no longer a starry-eyed twentysomething, and it was on mere chance and whim I pulled the trilogy-that-was from my file cabinets and thought about rewriting them… then did rewrite them.  A lot.  Then, in a process so lacking the chaos of my previous encounters that it felt like the fates were, finally, aligning beside instead of against, publication… happened.  A copy of Greenwode sits in glorious colour upon my shelves.  Not too long ago I got my just-as-glorious copy of Shirewode.  End, yet merely another beginning, Shirewode sits on my shelf next to its mate, right between Heinlein and Herriot…  and what fine company is that?

So.  I spent some years railing at whatever gods would listen (still do, sometimes), but it all comes down to this:

I’m writing better books than I was thirty years ago.

Shirewode, and Greenwode, and whatever books come after are, perhaps, the books they intended to be, all along.

This the evolution of the first line of my newest Karen Wilson Chronicles background story. I don’t know if the last version of the sentence is the final version but I’m happy with it right now.

The meeting place was a large, unnatural boulder. (Too passive.)

They met in the shadow of a large, unnatural boulder. (Active. Better but who is “they”?)

The Grey Lady and Sees-the-Wind met in the shadow of a large, unnatural boulder.  (Good. Who is meeting but why?)

The Grey Lady and Sees-the-Wind met in the shadow of a large, unnatural boulder on the anniversary of the Pact.  (Better but… meh.)

The Grey Lady and Sees-the-Wind met in the shadow of a large, unnatural boulder that marked the beginning of the Pact between the Makah tribe and the Fair Folk. (Great. Who, where, why, culture.)

As announced on the Evil Girlfriend Media Facebook page:

Jennifer Brozek joins Evil Girlfriend Media
 
Evil Girlfriend Media is pleased to announce that Jennifer Brozek has joined our editorial team. Jennifer brings expertise in writing, editing, and publishing to the company. She will be working on a project due out spring 2014. For more information on Jennifer, check out her website: http://www.jenniferbrozek.com/.