Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Zombie Axiom Giveaway... IS OVER!

That's right! 

I'll start sending copies of THE ZOMBIE AXIOM, Book I of the In the Time of the Dead Trilogy, to all 10 of the winners today.

As you can see from the image below, it has the original cover. That means it's a limited edition win! And, of course, it will be signed.


 Here's the link:


Monday, November 30, 2015

Why are Zombies so Darn Popular?


                Good question. Why are they so popular? You would think that as a guy who has invested the time into writing a trilogy based on zombies, I would have a response waiting to fall from the tip of my tongue. The truth is; I kind of didn’t when I started putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be). But as time went on, I was asked this question more and more and I’ve finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, into thinking it over. So here it is. It should be interesting… or at least moderately amusing.  
                To start with, I think there are two things involved in the modern concept of zombies that makes them so popular in our society. The first is the idea of zombies themselves, and the ancient human motivator that these monsters have always embodied since someone first dreamed them up: our fear of the unknown- which in this case, boils down to our fear of death. This fear is the driving force behind so many things in our lives that we hardly recognize its existence until we actually sit down, take stock, and be brutally honest about our motivations for doing the things we do. In the case of zombies, though, it’s pretty easy to see. They’re dead, they’ve been somehow brought back to some sort of pseudo-life, and they shamble around trying to kill living people. They’ve got everything needed to scare the crap out of us: Death- oh no! Corpses- Gross! And death- oh no! Trying to kill me- Run away! Death- oh no!
Death, death, death.
All of this “death” stuff is very scary for us human creatures who are so instinctively concerned with life and living. The idea, the fear titillates us. And we love to be titillated.
                The second element to the popularity of zombies comes in the form of our fascination with the apocalypse that generally accompanies their presence. Now, let’s be fair, this fascination with the apocalypse has always been present in human societies to some degree (think Ragnarok in Norse mythology, the floods in Greek, Christian, Sumerian, etc… myth stories). Our modern experience with it is therefore nothing special, but where does it come from? Well, the answer to that is based on- you guessed it- our fear of death! All of these stories, from floods to earthquakes, to a bunch of giants coming down to smash us into bloody pulps, are ways for us to categorize, make predictable, the idea of death, of our mortality, so that we’ll feel better about the whole scary business of not having coffee or beer anymore.

                Now, if you take zombies (Death- oh no!) and the apocalypse (Death in large numbers- oh no!) and combine them, why, you get a perfect storm of fear and anxiety. But never fear. These are stories. And we are all living a story, the story of our lives. In that story, we all have a main character, the person who looks back at us in the mirror. And the main character in stories usually survives any crazy scenario nature or bad screenwriters can throw at them. So, that person in the mirror will survive! Right? That one person is the hero, they’ll be the one to live while everyone else gets swarmed by- insert your apocalyptic event. That’s how we picture it, isn’t it? And there’s nothing wrong with that. It helps us get through the day and gives us something to think about while we’re on the bus to work, or while we’re at work snapping circuits together or flipping burgers or… whatever. So go ahead zombie apocalypse, give it your worst. I’m not afraid. 

Thursday, October 1, 2015

The Eternal Undead is OUT!

Book III, THE ETERNAL UNDEAD, is Here!


You can click on the link below or on the sidebar to the right to snag one!

That's not all, either. The Blog Tour for the book also starts today! The first stop is a spotlight where you'll find an excerpt from the book, a giveaway, and other stuff. Here's the link: T's Stuff 

Check it out!



Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Blog Tour Starts October 1

That's right! 

The blog tour for THE ETERNAL UNDEAD starts on October 1



Don't miss it! There'll be a bunch of guest blogs and interviews... Should be fun!

Monday, September 28, 2015

Cover Reveal- THE ETERNAL UNDEAD

Here it is! The cover for my next book, The Eternal Undead!



They thought they had escaped.

The battle for Washington DC is behind them, and the last remnants of the human race have fled from their undead enemies to a remote Caribbean island where they try to salvage what is left of humanity. But even here, the zombies have come. Led by the architect of the holocaust, an invading army wreaks havoc trying to acquire the one thing that can stop them, and the one thing a small contingent of soldiers knows they must never get.  

Join with Sasha, Terrance, Virgil, and the little girl, Max, in an all or nothing gamble as they fight down the road to either salvation or horrible defeat in the thrilling conclusion of this series.

And if you want to pre-order, you can head to Amazon!

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Cover Reveal on September 28... and some interior work

That's right! 

The cover reveal for THE ETERNAL UNDEAD, the final book in the "In the Time of the Dead Trilogy," will be on the 28th of September. So head back here then and see what the new cover will be. 

In the meantime, here is the final illustration from the book that I'll be posting before the book hits the shelves on October 1. 

Enjoy!


Friday, September 4, 2015

Giveaway for THE WARRING DEAD

ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT!
Signup on Goodreads to grab a signed copy of The Warring Dead.
There's only 5! So do it before it's too late!


Friday, August 28, 2015

Coming Soon!


I just got word from the publisher! The Eternal Undead will be hitting the shelves October 1!
I'm working on the cover now, so stay tuned for the cover release. 

Friday, July 10, 2015

New Interior Art for THE ETERNAL UNDEAD

Greetings everyone! 

It's summertime! The warm weather is here, and with a much needed vacation now behind me, I'm hard at work on the interior illustrations for the third book for my "In the Time of the Dead" trilogy. There will probably be about ten illustrations inside the book, and I've just started on number eight, so they'll be done soon... hopefully by the end of the month. In the meantime, checkout another of the pieces:


I'm anticipating an October release for the book, probably right around Halloween. 


So stay tuned! 

The Eternal Undead will be hitting the shelves soon!

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Final Interior Piece for "The Eternal Undead"

Sorry for taking so long! This image has been done for a while now, and I've only just remembered that I promised to put it up here when it was. I am seriously forgetful about things like this. 

Anyway, here it is! It will be the first image you hit as you read the book.

Enjoy!



Wednesday, May 13, 2015

An Update... And Some ART!

It took about eight days, but I've finally finished the read-through of the manuscript for my latest book, "The Eternal Undead," which is the conclusion of the "In the Time of the Dead" trilogy. I'm glad to report that while doing so, I didn't feel the need to rewrite huge portions of the thing, or cut out large swaths of text while pounding my temples asking, "Why the hell did I write this garbage?"

Whew.

And now, I've got to send it off to my agent and my readers for their input. So have I finished reading the thing... at long last? 

No. Definitely not. 

But I can say that I have a bit of a break from it for now and I can focus on the interior images. You can see, below, the start to the first one readers will encounter as they read the book. It's a different style than the those in the other books, one that I am really digging. I'm about halfway done. When it's finished, I'll throw it up here for your perusal. 

Enjoy!

 

Monday, May 4, 2015

This is the Week

Here I am. This is the week that I get to check out my book again. I've purposefully kept away from the tome for exactly one month so that I can check it out with a pair of fresh eyes, and today is the day that I re-read it for the final time before I send it off to my agent and readers. 

For those of you who want to know what is going through the mind of a writer (or really any creative person who has made something from nothing), I found this interesting piece that pretty much encapsulates it:

1.- This is awesome.
2.- This is tricky.
3.- This is shit.
4.- I am shit.
5.- This might be ok.
6.- This is awesome.

For every sentence I will be reading over, for every paragraph and chapter, those six steps will be going through my mind one right after the other... hopefully. Hopefully I will land on number six at the end. We shall see. 

Monday, April 6, 2015

This "Month on the Shelf" Business

One month. One single, solitary month. What to do, what to do...

Let me tell you what there is to do. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I was going to use this period of time when my book is finished and sitting "on the shelf" for a month (a sort of self-imposed break I take, which, when it is over, allows me to read the work again with fresh eyes) to start work on the art for the interior and cover of said book. 

And that I have done! For the cover piece, I've hammered out a few dozen thumbnails, decided on one, arranged my models, and even started my sketch. I would show you what I've got so far in that department, but the cover is supposed to be this cool surprise, you know, there's usually this big "cover reveal" day where the cover is displayed and people "ooh and ah" over it, or mostly just shrug and then click on a video where some cute puppy falls asleep next to some equally cute baby.  

Such is life.

But what about writing? I've heard that writers need to write every day. Since I am fairly new to this writing business, I of course hear things like this and immediately start to feel inadequate, thinking, "Oh my God, I haven't written a friggin' thing all day! I'm fooling myself. I suck." So to alleviate this feeling of incompetence, I've decided to start writing short stories in the morning. At first, I thought it would be difficult to come up with ideas for stories, but it actually didn't take long. I just sat in my living room with the kids playing upstairs, sipped coffee, and stared out the picture window. It was nice. Relaxing. And lo! I now have five ideas for short stories that I'll be hammering out over the next month! 

I'll keep you posted as to how they're coming along. Right now, I'm doing research on the first one. I haven't decided on a title yet, but it takes place in 1920's America. There's a milkman, his daughter, and a crow. Weird combination, but there it is.   

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Book 3 is DONE!

... and now let me qualify that sensationalist title. What is really "done" is the first draft for book three of the "In the Time of the Dead Trilogy." And by "first draft" I mean that I have written 100,000+ words, there is a beginning, middle, and an end, and it seems to be reasonably kick-ass.

With that said, I am now in the process of reading through the whole of the manuscript, checking for any little (or big) issues that may present themselves. This means things like, "Do I really need a comma there? Would that guy really say that?" and "Wait a minute, what day is that happening on? How could they get to the location they are in that short amount of time?" as well as, "Oh man, I completely do not remember writing this, did my kid get on my computer and hammer out these pages?" 

You know, stuff like that.

In a few days, after I'm done this read-through, I get to put the sucker on a shelf for a month! That's right, one month! And then, after that, I get to pick it up, dust it off, and attack it with a fresh mind... or as fresh as its going to get- which actually means it has a slight amount of moss growing on it along with an old, withered man in a loincloth walking around inside, banging on its walls with his cane, saying, "This sucks, sonny. Oh, yes, she sucks!" 

From there, I get to send it off to my readers and my agent. 

Now, lest you think I am sitting back and taking my leisure in those thirty days, let me assure you that I am only sort of doing that. In those intervening days, I shall be working on the cover and the interior pieces for the book. So... stay tuned! I'll be putting some artwork up here in a bit! 

Later gaiters. 

Friday, March 20, 2015

The Thing with Blogging

Ye gods, blogging is tough. 

Is it, though? I mean, you're a writer. You've written novels. You're writing one now. What's so big about writing a blog?

It's just... the TIME! You don't understand. It's just hard to think about sitting down to write a novel all day and then, somewhere in there, think about having to sit down even longer to write something in a blog. And it's not just the writing. It's the thinking up content; something that's going to be interesting for people to want to read. And what's the use anyway? Are my thoughts really so awesome, someone out there in the world wants to read them?  

Blah. Blah. Blah. Just write and stop complaining. 

I'm explaining. Not complaining.

Sounds like complaining to me.   

What you've just read is the conversation I have in my head when I think about blogging. I'm constantly going back and forth on whether it is worth having a blog when I have all these other ways of connecting with readers. There's the big one, Facebook, and then there is TwitterInstagram... and all the others. It's exhausting to think of trying to keep up with providing content for all those sites, writing and researching for my current and future books, doing the illustrations for those books, on top of blogging. It's just... yeah. A lot.

So is it worth it? Not really sure. I read everywhere that in order to have any kind of writing career, you NEED to blog. Is that true? Let me know your thoughts. As you can see, mine are engaged in a heated debate with no real decision in sight. But wait... here I am, blogging... that's gotta tell you something. Right?