David’s Comments (group member since Oct 06, 2011)

David’s comments from the The Zombie Group! group.

I can't believe it's 10 years since Goodreads asked Jonathan Maberry and I to participate in this Zombie group. Great to see it's still going strong!

Coincidentally, it's 20 years since I wrote the first novel in my zombie series - Autumn. Autumn went on to spawn a series of sequels and a pretty terrible movie starring the late David Carradine.

I've just released the first book in a new trilogy of Autumn novels - Autumn: Dawn. It's set in the middle of London - one of the most heavily populated places on Earth, and absolutely one of the last places you want to find yourself at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. Please check it out.

You can find out more about the Autumn books (and read a stack of free stories) at www.lastoftheliving.net, and you can find out about me at www.davidmoody.net.

Wow, it's too long since I posted here!

I was active at the beginning of this group as part of a promo with Borders (remember them?!). That was when my Hater and Autumn novels were being released.

Just thought I'd drop back and mention that a new series of Hater books is currently being published and the first, One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning, is available now. The next book in the series, All Roads End Here is out in September. Here's the spiel:

The fewer left alive, the higher the stakes.
Kill the others, before one of them kills you.

Fourteen people are trapped on Skek, a barren island in the middle of the North Sea somewhere between the coasts of the UK and Denmark. Over the years this place has served many purposes—a fishing settlement, a military outpost, a scientific base—but one by one its inhabitants have abandoned its inhospitable shores. Today it’s home to Hazleton Adventure Experiences, an extreme sports company specializing in corporate team building events.

Life there is fragile and tough. One slip is all it takes. A momentary lapse leads to a tragic accident, but when the body count quickly starts to rise, questions are inevitably asked. Are the deaths coincidental, or something else entirely? Those people you thought you knew, can you really trust them? Is the person standing next to you a killer? Will you be their next victim?

A horrific discovery changes everything, and a trickle of rumours becomes a tsunami of fear. Is this the beginning of the end of everything, or a situation constructed by the mass hysteria of a handful of desperate and terrified people?

ISBN: 978-1250108418. Published by St Martin's Press, New York

Shawn... I don't think we're in disagreement here! I thought the script and performances were dire in places. The story had little clear development. That said, I still think it's worth a look because, visually, it's a good movie.

Has anyone seen 'The Dead'? I was really surprised by it. The story and pacing left a lot to be desired, but visually it's incredible. It was shot in Africa and as well as the beautiful locations, it has classic, old-school Romero zombies. Well worth a look.

I feel the same, Marcus. That's one of the reasons why my zombies (in my Autumn books) don't eat anything!

Holden - that's great. Glad you're enjoying Hater so much. Something happens about two-thirds of the way into the book - I don't want to spoil it - which hopefully puts things in a different perspective...

It's not a zombie book, but it is about us versus them. The question is, which are you?

I think Shaun of the Dead is one of the very best 'by the numbers' zombie movies, in that it actually takes the rising up of the dead pretty seriously. The brilliant humour comes from the cast of idiot characters - we're laughing at the living, not the dead.

By contrast, Peter Jackson's Brain Dead is the best slapstick zombie comedy, in my opinion.

I think my favourites must be Romero's original trilogy - Night, Dawn and Day. I try and put his later zombie movies from my mind though...

Hey Steven, are the rumours I'm hearing about Romero and your book true?

Great to meet you here, by the way. As a fellow child of the Cold War, I understand completely where you're coming from in your last comment.

Router - interestingly enough, I've just finished writing the final Autumn novel. One of the characters does exactly what you suggest and hides out in a prison. I think it would be a surprisingly good place to hide if, as you say, you can get inside. They're strong, secure, should be well-stocked with food and medical supplies etc. The main downside as I see it would be the inmates! But if we're talking about an Autumnesque scenario where there's mass initial infection via an airborne virus, it's likely that most of the dead will be safely locked away in their cells.

I also wrote an Autumn short a while back, about a survivor trapped on the wrong side of the bars...
http://www.lastoftheliving.net/en-US/...

Alexis - you're absolutely right, in the Autumn scenario you would have a few days grace to get yourself together and get out of town. The characters don't have the benefit of knowing what's going on, of course, so they mostly panic and do very little when it hits the fan. With the benefit of hindsight, all they'd need to do would be to stock up on six months of supplies (easy enough, with 99% of the population dead!), then find somewhere strong, safe and isolated enough to see out their time until the dead had decayed enough not to be a problem any more.

First off, Holden, I hope you enjoy Hater. Thanks for picking it up.

You're right in that the Hater series is on the fringes of zombie lit. In fact, I don't class it as a zombie story at all (it's everybody else who does that for me). I think it's because, like most zombie stories, it's just about 'us' versus 'them' in its purest form. The human race is split in two, and it's easy to replace survivors and zombies with Haters and Unchanged.

I never intended to write two zombie series at the same time. The genesis of the idea for Hater came from looking at all the divisions people use to separate themselves from everyone else... age, sex, sexual orientation, beliefs etc. etc. I tried to imagine what would happen if a new division appeared (the Hate) which negated all the previous divides and set people against each other in a new way: kids against parents, lovers fighting each other etc. etc.

A long-winded answer to your question, I think. I do love the genre, but first and foremost I love writing about people - their interactions and what they'll do in order to survive.

This probably isn't what you're looking for, Holden, but a group called Darkerprojects did a podcast adaptation of the first Autumn novel a few years back...

http://darkerprojects.com/autumn.php

One of my golden rules for survival would be this... whatever everybody else is doing, I'll do the opposite. I think you'll have to be incredibly selfish to survive. The more people you're with, the more you're likely to attract attention (both from the living and the dead).

Alexis... check out my 'field report' from a bunker we found last year. The weirdest thing is that my wife went to school just a couple of hundred meters from the bunker entrance (which would have been used by the UK government in the event of a nuclear attack), and yet she didn't even know it was there...

http://www.djmoody.co.uk/2010/08/27/t...

I spend too much time thinking about this stuff! Actually, I just turned in a brief 'zombie survival guide' for a genre magazine here in the UK, so I genuinely have been plotting my action plan for the day the zompoc begins.

I think you need somewhere that's:
1. safe but not too isolated,
2. easy to get to but not obvious,
3. the kind of place no-one else would look for.

I have several houses within a mile radius of my home which I've earmarked as potential hideouts (now I'm even scaring myself - I've thought about this too much!). The best is a normal little house that just happens to be in the middle of several acres of local parkland. It's a very central location, but out of sight, and with easy access to shopping centres and the like. I'd use that as my base for the first few weeks, maybe even a couple of months.

Provided I'd made it through the chaos of the beginning of the zompoc, I'd then try and get to somewhere like the Isle of Wight. For those of you who don't know your UK geography, it's a large island off the south coast of the UK. You're going to have a better chance of surviving if you're separated from the bulk of the population by water. On an island you have a chance of getting rid of any zombies and living a relatively normal life again!

Ruby - if you're never on the survivors' side, maybe you should try my Hater books. They're not strictly zombie novels (although people often class them as such). They'll seriously mess with your allegiances!

Ruby... so I'm not the only one working through the video nasty list! The sad fact is it looks like we might be heading back down that route in the UK. The censors seem to be clamping down again...

As far as Triffids are concerned, I think the creatures themselves have a few zombie-like traits. They herd, they're largely silent, they eat human flesh, they're emotionless and driven... Okay, so they're also eight foot talking walking plants, but you get the idea. Some of the imagery in the novel (and the 1980's BBC adaptation - forget the other movie/TV attempts) was really reminiscent of zombie stories: the living barricading themselves in a farmhouse, for example, surrounded by high metal fences.

I have a website for my Autumn series which hosts some 120,000 words of free zombie fiction which flesh-out ('scuse the pun) the novels.

www.lastoftheliving.net

I've had a lot of artists submit illustrations for the site (click the 'art' link), and one particular series of drawings is actually my favourite zombie-related artwork.

Have a look under free fiction at the 'Amy Steadman' stories: six shorts written from the point of view of a walking corpse. The artwork was done by Craig Paton (www.craigpaton.com), and I think it's beautiful. Here are a couple of small examples:






Please visit www.lastoftheliving.net to see more.

Alexis - I deliberately didn't think too much about the cause of the plague in Autumn. There is an explanation of sorts in the third book (Autumn: Purification) but it's left deliberately vague as to whether it's true or just a rumour made up by a survivor.

I set out to write a believable zombie story (which is ridiculous in itself - dead bodies walking... how's that ever going to be believable?!). To make the horror more realistic, I deliberately chose a cast of 'normal' people who react to events in the way I think that I, or any of the people around me, probably would.

The reality is that should something of the magnitude of the virus in Autumn happen, the people who are left alive would have no way of knowing what had caused the catastrophe. Also, with hundreds of thousands of dead bodies after them constantly, working out the cause would be the least of their concerns!

In the books I also wanted to avoid some of the more traditional zombie cliches, so with my virus you're either dead or alive at the end of day one... the infection doesn't get passed through bites or zombie attacks.

Something I've noticed here and elsewhere, is that folks often don't like the idea of intelligent zombies. I have to admit, I'm the same... give me a book or a movie where the living dead are driving cars and chatting to each other, and I probably won't enjoy it.

But what does fascinate me - both as a writer and a reader - is trying to imagine how much the dead remember.

In Romero's Day of the Dead, we had the introduction of the unforgettable Bub who, with 'help' from Dr Logan, began to remember aspects of the person he used to be. In Land of the Dead, he took the concept a lot further with the zombies returning to where they used to live and their old routines.

In Jonathan's new book, Dead of Night: A Zombie Novel, he puts a fascinating new spin on the relationship between the zombie and the person they were before death. In my Autumn books, the dead begin as dumb creatures, barely able to control themselves, but over the course of the series they regain some semblance of intellect (but they don't drive cars or chat to each other...!).

I think the idea that zombies are able to think and remember, but are physically unable to express their fears/thoughts/desires etc. is both fascinating and terrifying. Imagine that - being conscious and remembering who you were, and yet being unable to do anything about it. With no way of communicating, you're trapped in your own body, feeling yourself slowly decay...

Patrick: I sort of answered this in another post earlier, so if you don't mind, here's the same story again:

My first exposure to zombies was Romero's original Night of the Living Dead. I grew up in the UK in the 1980's, when crazy censorship laws meant it was impossible to get hold of any horror movies here (they were banned and labelled as 'video nasties'). A friend of mine's dad ran a comic store, and he brought back a laser disc player (remember those?!) and a stack of movies from a shopping trip in the US. We sat and watched Night one dark afternoon in the middle of winter, while a huge thunderstorm battered the house. Priceless!

I guess my first exposure to post-apocalyptic stories was when I managed to get hold of copies of The War of the Worlds and The Day of the Triffids when I was probably too young to read them. Both stories had a profound effect on me. Triffids in particular has a lot of the traits of a classic zombie story.

When I came to write Autumn, I originally started with an 'empty earth' story - 99% of the population died on page one, and the book was concerned with how the survivors coped. But it was clear pretty quickly that the story needed more, and the logical solution was to reanimate some of the billions of people I'd killed in chapter one! I originally wrote Autumn in 2001, and I've been hopelessly addicted to zombies ever since.

Interesting, Ruby, thanks.

I've spent too long (the last 10 years) writing a series where the dead don't want to eat the living!

Autumn