soundcloud.com/jig-n-eddie/zombie-life-podcast … THOROUGH REVIEW OF
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Blog of the Living dead: Aftereffects: Zombie Therapy-- The Book Review
Blog of the Living dead: Aftereffects: Zombie Therapy-- The Book Review: Just finished up "AfterEffects: Zombie Therapy" by Zane Bradey . The synopsis of this novel is unique, and intrigued me immediately....
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sirens Call Publications releases their first
Anthology titled
“Childhood
Nightmares: Under the Bed”
Twelve
tales of nightmares. Twelve talented authors. One book – Childhood Nightmares:
Under the Bed. Delve into the remembered horrors of a child’s mind; where
teddy’s morph into monsters and the small sliver of light is enough to reassure
you. Just don’t blame us if your forgotten fears well back up to the surface…
Those whispered tales of monsters hiding under the
bed, or of the demons lurking in the shadowy corner where we dare not glance
for fear that seeing them will make them all too real. Oh, how the innocent
landscape of a child’s imagination lends fertile soil to horrors ready to be
sown on the slightest of sounds; the tales and the terror they wreak on our
youthful minds never quite leaves us.
We asked the authors in this collection to reach into
the forgotten recesses of their twisted minds and share with us the tales of
nightmares that can only thrive in the hidden corners of a child’s imaginings;
the bogeyman under the bed, the outlandishly fiendish creature lurking in the
dark, the slight murmur of sound coming from the hall… did you close the door
completely?
Explore the myriad terrors that only a child can twist
from nothing into some ‘thing’ in the span of a single rapid breath. Do you
dare delve into your own memories? Perhaps you’ll start sleeping with the
lights on again...
Tell
us, who is Under the Bed?
Contributing Authors: Colin F. Barnes, Nina D'Arcangela, Phil
Hickes, Amber Keller,
Kim Krodel, Lisamarie Lamb,
John McIlveen, Kate Monroe, Brandon Scott,
Joshua Skye, Julianne Snow,
and Jack Wallen
Explore a copy of Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed as either an
eBook or in print format available at:
Peruse
excerpts of selected stories that have haunted us since reading Childhood Nightmares: Under the Bed:
‘The Confession of a Confirmed Has-Been’ - John
McIlveen
“I behaved for the first three months. I simply observed the Hansons’
way of life, as I had with the two previous families. In my condition I witness
traits and habits often unnoticed by people in a more physical state, like
Scott's insistent nose picking and compulsion to wipe his findings on my
fireplace, or Bruce’s fixation with himself. If he spent any more time flexing
in front of a mirror, I fear he'd get himself pregnant.
I do grant people the privacy of their bedrooms and the facilities,
I’m not immoral - though discovering that Karen roams the house in nature's garb
when alone was pleasing. I may be dead, but I’m still a man.
My condition is also what allows me to view Kimberly with utmost
anonymity. In my spectral cloak, I track Kimberly about the house, watching as
she involved herself in childhood fantasies, oblivious to all else. I walked
with her through the garden, rejoiced with her, celebrating each discovery with
open-eyed wonder. I wallowed in that beautiful youthfulness that fades as we
become involved in the trivialities of adulthood…”
‘Excess Baggage’ - Lisamarie Lamb
“And now Nigel could see someone. A small, round man in a pair of
white trousers and a deep blue shirt, sweat circles staining his underarms, his
stomach straining the buttons running down his chest, down his stomach. The
man’s curly dark hair rippled in the sunlight as he bobbed his head up and
down. He was peering out of a small gap between two houses. He was smiling,
beckoning to Nigel; and when Nigel moved towards him his smile began a grin,
all teeth and harmless joviality.
Nigel went to the man against his better judgment. He went against
his worst judgment, feeling strangely calm about it all, despite thinking he
had wandered far too far, into a bad area. Into the sort of area a tourist
shouldn’t go. And he had been caught. He felt rather stupid about the whole
thing, and rather sad about leaving Maggie and Bob. But there was a certain
inevitability about it all.
Even if Nigel couldn’t quite remember why…”
‘Timothy’ - Joshua Skye
“Quivering from fear, her teeth rattling in
her little head, hands trembling, she stared into the deep darkness to catch
any movement; the twinkling of an eye perhaps. Anything to let her know where
he was, out there in the darkness. There was nothing for a long time.
“Where are you?” she muttered in a squeaky
voice. Something moved in her peripheral vision. She turned. Fast, but not fast
enough. Perhaps it was nothing more than a shadow that had just blended with
the dark. “Timothy, you stop it. You stop it right now.” She tried to sound
like her mother, to mimic her authoritative tone, but it hadn’t worked. Her
voice had cracked and it trembled with her apprehension. “I know it’s you,” she
whispered, more to herself than to him.
She started to cry, she couldn’t help it.
Her tears streamed down her tiny face and there was a lump forming in her
throat. She had to fight to swallow; she had to fight to breathe.
Timothy began to mock her. “Timothy, please.
Stop it, Timothy! Go away, Timothy.” The sinister, scratchy voice seemed to
come from everywhere, the shadows, the darkness, under the desk, from behind
the stuffed animals, under the bed…”
Wait
more? Please visit the Sirens Call Publications
web site for an extended preview available for download.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
The Zombie: Undead vs. Contagion
The classic George Romero film “Night of the Living
Dead” breathed life into our understanding of what a zombie is. Romero captured
all of the basic human elements of fear. His monsters were the embodiment of
that which we fear the most. The fact that we see the zombies literally rising
from the grave in a cemetery, not just figuratively, reflects our mortality.
When I watched this film as a kid it struck the same chord for me as the
proverbial things that go bump in the
night.
The feeling of hopelessness, being outnumbered, and
overwhelmed combined with the threat of becoming one of the monsters after death
cultivated our heightened sense of being the prey (or simply…made us consider
what it would be like to be the prey, for a change). We are so far up on the
food chain and so disconnected from the natural order of things that we have no
real connection with being the hunter or the hunted anymore. Romero was able to
tap in to our primal fears, capture our imagination, and allow us to put
ourselves in the place of the characters.
A thick fog of desensitization fell upon our
society in the years after Romero’s work of art. Films were colorized. Stunts,
visual effects, and computer generated graphics caved in our imaginations and
left the work up to our eyes and ears rather than our minds. We became unafraid
of the proverbial boogeyman. This was a gradual process at first, but with the
explosion of technological advancements, the
film industry’s ability to illustrate demons and ghouls in vivid detail ruined
the public’s ability to be entertained by a good story if it lacked the new
enhancements of the digital age.
I don’t mean to say that none of the movies made
with these elements are good, although I do personally enjoy classic films over
most of the flashy modern versions. What I will point out is that if you took
away the glamorous high definition gore and graphics and compared them side by
side to the classics, many of them would not stand a chance. The technological
advancements in the film industry are more often used as a crutch than they are
an augmentation to a well developed story.
Where did we go from there? In reverse, I believe.
The zombies of our past were turned into something people could finally be
afraid of again. They were given life. We saw the birth of the contagion
zombie. Society became too smart and desensitized to fear something that they
couldn’t believe in, such as corpses rising from their graves to walk the earth
and devour the living. The nightly news was filled with more terrifying stories
than our theatres, until someone had the idea to combine the two. With pandemic
after pandemic being broadcasted over the airwaves by credible government
agencies, threats such as H1N1, bird-flu, and SARS became the new monster under
the bed. It scared us, because we became able to place ourselves in the role of
the victim. Once again, our good friend the zombie, albeit in a much different
form, came back to haunt us.
Where are we headed, now that this virus-infected
zombie format appears to be the norm? Are we doomed to watch this storyline be
regurgitated and enhanced by computers until it no longer registers on our fear
meters? I hope not. I don’t think history is repeating itself in this way. In
fact, I think it is quite the opposite. It has been a pleasure to watch the
excellent writers behind the Walking Dead series bridge the gap between these
two opposing characteristics. By going back to the age-old “undead” zombie, yet
utilizing the raw talent of make-up artists and filming techniques, we have been
able to witness a new hybrid. This is, first and foremost, a good story with a
well developed plot and a strong set of characters. The special effects teams
and film crew do a fantastic job of augmenting a great story, without stealing
the show. When the two come together, it becomes a best of both worlds
scenario.
Another unsung set of heroes who are bringing us
back to our roots are the independent film makers. Many of these films are made
with a low-budget or, at times, practically no budget at all. Revenue is
generated for filming through campaigning with various social media outlets and
good old-fashioned fundraising efforts. I like to think that it’s the hard work,
dedication, and the fact that this is a labor of love for these folks that are
the reasons why many of these films are so great. By having limited resources,
we see creativity at is best. I can only imagine that George is proud of these
efforts to take us back to a place that could have been so easily lost.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
Zane Bradey's short story "The Watcher" featured
in this month's The Sirens Call. The cost of a subscription is $6 for 6 issues.
They are a great group with an awesome product.
http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/ezine.htm
http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/ezine.htm
Monday, April 9, 2012
Carole Gill Official Author Blog: Monster Face Off By Julianne Snow!
Carole Gill Official Author Blog: Monster Face Off By Julianne Snow!: I am so honored to be stopping on Carole Gill’s site as a part of my book tour for Days with the Undead: Book One. As a huge fan of hers, I ...
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