Zombie Wallpaper
Download wallpaper for your computer featuring David Palumbo’s cover art for The Living Dead by right-clicking (and “save as”) on the images below, or by visiting the Night Shade Books downloads page:
Download Shimmer: The Pirate Issue for Free!
Shimmer publisher Beth Wodzinski sez:
Avast, ye scurvey sea-dogs! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day again. In honor of this most glorious holiday, Shimmer is making the electronic edition of the Pirate Issue freely available, for September 19th only.
Won’t you help us spread the word? Free pirate booty, there for the taking!
http://www.shimmerzine.com/ for all the details.
So go plunder! Booty free for the taking!
Loyal readers of this blog may recall that Shimmer: The Pirate Issue was my first time working as Editor on a project (rather than assistant editor). I had a lot of fun putting that issue together, and I think it turned out really well. If you haven’t read it yet, here’s your chance to find out for yourself!
Steampunk + Cryptozoology = Dr. Roundbottom
Have you been reading the musings of the great philosopher and scientist Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom? I profiled his visionary work for SCI FI Wire today.
Here’s the short version. The website Clockpunk.com publishes new fiction every week, but it’s not just a regular ezine–instead, the site combines web design, photography, and writing all into one creative endeavor. It’s purportedly the journal of a "Dr. Roundbottom" who takes "photonic captures" of strange and unusual creatures and then writes up notes about his adventures. It combines a steampunk aesthetic with an adventurous cryptozoology sensibility.
What it really is, is a one-man show, created, photographed, and designed by SF author Jeremiah Tolbert. He takes real photos then photoshops them to look exotic and strange, thus transforming an ordinary toad into a spear-wielding boggart. The site also has some "choose your own adventure" aspect to it, because readers can post comments in response to the Doctor’s posts, and he will write back in character.
Go check out my interview with Jeremiah over at SCI FI Wire and be sure to check out Roundbottom’s site, clockpunk.com.
Zombie Interview: Catherine Cheek
Tell us a bit about your story, "She’s Taking Her Tits to the Grave." What’s it about?
A trophy wife comes back from the dead and searches for the man who raised her.
What’s was the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?
The idea for this story actually came from the theme of the World Fantasy Con for 2007 which was “ghosts and revenants.” I didn’t know what a revenant was, so I wikied it and found that it was a person who came back from the dead and caused great trouble for the living. It’s that last part that intrigued me. What kind of trouble could they cause?
Book Spot Central reviews The Living Dead
Book Spot Central (formerly Fantasy Book Spot) has a nice review of The Living Dead: “Standout stories in the collection are difficult to choose because this book contains the best selection of zombie fiction I’ve ever encountered. … A satisfyingly thick volume with excellent variety.”
SF Scope on Seeds
SF Scope reviews Seeds of Change, calling it “thought-provoking” and “a pretty good, and pretty fast, read.” Reviewer Ian Randall Strock singles out "The Future by Degrees", "Endosymbiont", and "Resistance," as his favorites.
Books Received
Zombie Interview: Brian Evenson
Tell us a bit about your story, "Prairie." What’s it about?
Explorers from an earlier time travel into a country in which the dead reanimate. They experiment. As time goes on, starving, the narrator watches his companions and friends die and then come back into a sort of half-life, and the prepares for his own end.
What’s was the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?
I’d been reading Cabeza de Vaca’s 16th account of crossing North America after being shipwrecked and also had been rewatching Werner Herzog’s movie _Aguirre, Wrath of God_ which has a brilliant, mad ending. I was interested, too, in thinking about how certain places seem to have a dark but magical quality to them. Where the idea of bodies reanimating came from I don’t know.
Readings of The Living Dead @ the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series
On October 7, 2008, come join me and special guests David Barr Kirtley and John Langan to celebrate the release of The Living Dead. I will serve as MC for the evening, and John Langan ("How the Day Runs Down") and Dave Kirtley ("The Skull-Faced Boy") will read from their stories.
For more information, have a look at the poster Dave created for the event:
The event will take place at the Melville Gallery of the South Street Seaport in New York, NY. Doors open at 6:30 PM, event begins at 7:00 PM. The event is part of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series, which is curated by radio show host Jim Freund.
Zombie Interview: Adam-Troy Castro
Tell us a bit about your story, "Dead Like Me." What’s it about?
It’s a set of instructions, to a hapless protagonist, about how to survive the zombie plague by joining it.
What’s was the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?
The story was my attempt to get into the fabled BOOK OF THE DEAD III, then being compiled by John Skipp and Craig Spector; the tangled history of that volume being what it was, it didn’t see print until the book became MONDO ZOMBIE, by Skipp alone, a decade later.
The question that prompted it was, if Romero-zombies don’t breathe, how do they track their victims? Certainly not by scent! (Zombies smell badly in more than one sense.) If not by scent, how? If we know the method, can we fool them? And from there I got to, what will it cost?