A new bad "guy" for Dead: Siege & Survival

Tomorrow I will be handing the reins over to my favorite curmudgeon...Armand Rosamilia, This guy is a straight shooter and definitely somebody you can hang out with over a cup of coffee (or a beer for the consumers of alcoholic libation). However, today it is my pleasure to introduce you to the newest villain in the DEAD series. So, settle in and meet Major Wanda Beers...

Hanover, Ohio—Major Wanda Beers looked back at the column marching alongside the few vehicles that they were still able to maintain. The fuel tanker would need to be topped off again very soon, she thought, if the gas was still even any good.

She turned her attention back to the front. The blue piece of cloth fluttered from the street sign indicating that they were still on the right track. That idiot Paul James better not screw this up; she grimaced at the idea that her entire outfit was at the mercy of possible one of the stupidest men she had ever met in her life.

He had been one of the first to sell out his group during their last stop. He had been under some delusional state of mind that the military could help his wife. The only help for that snarling, drooling, walking sack of guts was a bullet in the head.

Once the appropriate arrangements were made for all the supplies to be loaded up and all the willing recruits had been conscripted, the rest of the citizens were forced outside of the walls of their little barricaded outpost.

Wanda had taken great pleasure in throwing this particular group out into the wild. This was one of those gated communities full of people who bitch and moan about the military, protest their actions, and elect politicians who don’t have a problem cutting defense spending so that little Johnny can go to school and be a juvenile delinquent. They all drove around in their Hybrid cars and chanted things like “No blood for oil!” What did they care? It wasn’t like those rich pricks or any of their children would ever serve. None of them would ever hold a dying friend in their arms that had just had his lower half blown off by an insurgent’s IED.

The day before they were set to leave she had informed Paul James that his daughter would not be joining them on the journey. The girl was positively useless. She had failed in every task assigned and done nothing by cry and complain when they had placed her on kitchen duty. The only other choice was to put her with the whores who serviced the soldiers. He had absolutely refused.

Wanda had created the “Brothel Brigade” early on. As a student of history, she knew that it had been common in the ancient times for armies to have useable whores travel with them—usually in the rear, and they normally performed other menial tasks like laundry and such to earn their place. Apparently what was good enough for the father was too good for the daughter—Paul had been put in rotation with the men and women in the brothel tent after he had proven to be loyal but useless. Sadly, he wasn’t much better as a whore.

Paul had come to her tent the night before they were prepared to roll out. He said that he knew of another outpost. He admitted that his group was just getting ready to approach them with an offer of joining forces. Ironically, they were concerned with the possibilities of raiders coming along and trying to take over their happy little homes.

He went on to say that this other group had even fewer people, but that they seemed exceptionally well organized and supplied. He didn’t want to reveal the location unless he had assurances that his daughter would be allowed to remain with the group. He said that he would even take a second job to pick up her slack. She could have brought his useless daughter Mary in right then and held a knife to her throat to convince him to talk, but she was feeling generous that day.

“You and your daughter will go with you,” Wanda decided. “A group might be hesitant to take in a lone man. She will help soften them up. You will leave blue strips of cloth as markers and an indicator that you have made contact.”

She could roll with the direct frontal assault, but she didn’t want to waste precious manpower if it was not necessary. Having a man on the inside was the perfect Trojan horse scenario. He would gain this new group’s trust, and then open the gates to allow their access.

Yesterday, one of her scouts returned and reported that blue banners had been spotted. She had slapped herself in the forehead with her palm when she looked on a map and determined the direction led straight to the Longaberger Golf Course. This little tidbit of information had put her on a higher state of alert. There was the possibility that this group might be better prepared and actually led by somebody who knew what they were doing.

When the next round of scouts returned to report that a military vehicle had been spotted, Major Wanda Beers actually considered cancelling the run. She decided to risk one scout who would attempt to get inside the wall and observe.

Four agonizing days passed and her people were starting to run low on supplies—keeping a hundred and thirty-five people fed was no easy task these days—when the scout returned. Yes, they were very well fortified against the walking dead, but there were no signs of soldiers anywhere. In two days of observation, the only people seen coming and going besides Paul James and his useless daughter were a couple of young females and one male who was often seen using a set of crutches.

The sun was just coming up…somewhere. Here, it was a solid blanket of dark clouds that threatened snow. They stopped at the front entrance to the country club. There were several vehicles in place as a barricade. No sense adding to the chaos by allowing the possibility of zombies to come in during their assault.

Major Beers sent her men and women over the wall. Like any commander worth a damn, she climbed over with the first wave. All the concern turned out to be for nothing. Besides her Trojan horse, all they discovered were three young females between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, one male with a severe leg injury that looked to have received expert attention, and a severely disturbed black girl with Down’s syndrome. 

A peek at a new vignette for Dead: Siege & Survival

One of my favorite parts of writing the DEAD series is the vignettes. These snapshots actually started as an idea to give global snapshots of a world in the grips of a zombie uprising. I had no idea that some of the most loved and hated characters would come out of these snippets. I can't begin to express how tickled I get when I receive an email quoting Juan. Some of these stories have grown beyond anything I anticipated. I will continue to write these vignettes as my own little guilty pleasure. What started as something I did as a lark has become an integral part of this DEAD world. It is with pleasure that I offer up this little peek at the newest vignette story line.

Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK—Victoria Kirkpatrick, Vix to her mates, set the shovel down and stared out across the lightly snow-covered grounds. A few months ago, there had been thirty-seven of them hiding out in the Audleys Wood Hotel. Now there were seven, and she didn’t think any of them would make it through the next few weeks.

She blamed Nigel Longstreet and that vile little rat-faced woman, Claudia Jones. Kneeling beside the mound of dirt she had been working at busily since just before dawn, Victoria fought back the tears that had been threatening to spill all night and into the morning.

“You stupid, wonderful man,” she whispered.

Her husband was underneath all of the cold earth she knelt beside now. And it was all Nigel’s fault. He had been the one to insist that they venture in to town for supplies. She had argued, saying that the city was thick with the walking dead and their best bet was to search the outlying areas. They would not find a concentrated amount of foods and such going house to house, but nobody had listened.

When volunteers were asked for, Ivor, her husband and the one thing she had known she could rely upon, had stepped forward. He and seven others set out with empty packs and three rolling carts that they pulled along using a shoulder harness. Ivor was the only one to return. He was empty handed…and covered in blood.

Nigel had flown into a fury about how “careless and foolish” Ivor had been in returning to their sanctuary. “Those monsters could be following you! You may have brought death to us all!”

Weak from blood loss and obviously in the final stages of the infection before he turned and became one of the undead, Ivor had enough energy and spirit left to land a punch with enough behind it to knock Nigel out cold.

The handful of survivors that remained all stood in silence for a moment, and then erupted in a very un-British display of emotion. The cheers and yells were a sign that Nigel’s reign as the self-proclaimed leader of the group had come to an end.

Claudia had stepped forward and looked as if she were going to strike Ivor from behind, but Victoria had moved in between the two. The women locked eyes for just a second. Obviously Claudia saw something that made her step back.

“If you touch him…I will kill you.” That was all Victoria said.

She had no idea that two more members of the group had stepped up behind her in support. Nobody could be sure if that had been what caused Claudia to backpedal and then flee the room, but the fact remained that she had, and Nigel had followed behind once he finally came to.

By that time, Ivor had succumbed to the infection and closed his eyes as a living person for the last time. Victoria had been at his side in their room when a long exhale rattled his once sturdy frame.

“Stupid lummox,” she said through the tears. Then, she drove a metal trowel through his forehead.

Despite the fact that it was still dark, she wrapped her husband and love of her life in the sheets and stitched the ends shut. After that, she dragged him down the hallway and out into the open grounds of the hotel.

A wave of nostalgia hit her as she stood under the glow of a full moon that was amplified by the light dusting of snow. This was the hotel he had taken her to the day he asked her to marry him. She knew something was up when they pulled into the main entrance of the luxurious hotel. Places like this were not usually to Ivor’s liking. He was more at home in a small pub with a few blokes, a full pint, and some chips. Even their dates up to this point had been out of the ordinary. She still remembered their first date. Ironically, it was to see the local American flag football team, the Zombie Horde, in action. She had the time of her life that evening being with a man who had encouraged her to just be herself and “the world be damned.”

Now, here she was, committing his remains to the ground. All because of the bastard Nigel. Nobody had listened to her. Of course, she blamed herself. She knew better. One of her passions before this whole nightmare began all those months ago was reading. Her favorite guilty pleasure was zombie fiction. Truthfully, her interest in the zombie was due to a misplaced assumption centered on that first date. The team name had been Zombie Horde. She mistakenly assumed Ivor was a fan of zombies; when in truth, he was addicted to American football in any form.

Still, she had read well over a hundred titles in that particular genre. One thing she felt qualified to give advice on was what to do and what not to do in this undead world. Sending a few of their people in to town was a monumentally bad idea.

When the first cases appeared in Basingstoke, she had been the on duty nurse at Parklands Hospital. She had been at the central nurse’s desk sipping at her tea and reading when the woman had stumbled through the doors. The front of her blouse was a crimson mess and she was clutching her neck with blood-slicked hands.

Before Victoria made it out from behind the desk, the woman had collapsed to the floor. Grabbing the phone, she had paged the emergency doctor and security. By the time she had pulled on rubber gloves and returned her attention to the down woman, she was back on her feet. Her head moving with jerky fits as she seemed to scan the room. When those eyes turned Victoria’s way, her body suffered a massive chill. They were covered in a milky film that was shot full of black tracers. When it opened its mouth and let loose with a low moan and began moving towards her with outstretched arms, she had no doubt what this was.

“Oh bloody hell,” was all she managed to utter.

She ran back behind her counter and looked for anything that might be used to defend herself. Finding nothing, she made a decision. Victoria ran out the fire exit. She saw a few dark shadows in the car park as she searched frantically for her own vehicle. That ride home had been terrifying. When she burst through the door, she found Ivor asleep in his favorite chair, television droning.

He hadn’t even questioned her when she woke him and told him what she witnessed. The next several weeks were a blur. She had refused to seek shelter in one of the locations mentioned on the telly, telling her husband that those places never fared well in her books. It proved true as each of those locations fell in the first few days.

With a few friends and neighbors, they had done okay for a while. Then they met up with Nigel’s bunch and joined forces. At first, things had been okay, but soon, it became clear that Nigel was set on being the leader. Since he had the only gun—a fact that he never was quite clear on how it had ended up in his possession since it was a Glock 17 in a harness that had police markings, but it was clear that this man had absolutely no ties to law enforcement.

Eventually, the suggestion was made to check out the Audleys Wood Hotel. Practically empty, the place had been easily cleared out. It was fortified and its secluded location was very helpful as they hastily erected a barricade around the central grounds. That was the first, last, and only suggestion of hers that had been heeded.

Looking up into the gray sky, the first few flakes of a new snow were drifting on the morning breeze. Victoria rose to her feet, wiping what she vowed to be her last tears from her eyes, she returned inside. Things were going to change…she owed Ivor that much.

I hope you enjoyed this raw form of the newest vignette. 

The first chapter of Dead: Siege & Survival is in.

It would be very unfair is I didn't include an excerpt of the first chapter from book 5 of the DEAD series--Dead: Siege & Survival. I could do some sort of build up...but honestly, you have probably already skipped ahead and started reading. On a personal note, this is raw and unedited, also...I have put down just over 6,200 words in the first two days...

Enjoy.

Kevin leaned out the door as the Snow Cat rumbled to a halt. The dazzling brightness reflecting off the snow hurt his eyes. Every time he closed them, he saw spots. Still, he didn’t need perfect vision to see that there was big trouble up ahead.

“I guess like the ride is over, Kevin,” Willa said as she shut down the motor. “Grab your bags, looks like we’re hoofing it from here.”

Kevin didn’t say a word. There wasn’t really anything to say. He looked at the herd that packed the breadth of the highway up ahead. Even from as far away as they were, he could hear them moaning and crying. There was one other noise under it all. It took him a moment to realize what he was hearing.

“The snow,” Kevin whispered.

“What?” Willa asked as she shouldered her pack and buckled the weapon-laden webbed belt around her slender waist.

For some reason, Kevin found that simple action amazingly sexy. He had to shake off the inappropriate thoughts starting to bloom involving her wearing only that belt dripping with blades and a few more exotic hand-to-hand items.

“You can hear them walking though the snow,” Kevin said with a nod towards the approaching mob.

Willa tilted her head slightly and peeled back her tight-fitting knit cap. With one finger, she tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. Kevin couldn’t help but stare.

“Hey,” Willa said with a big smile, “you’re right.” She tugged the hat back down. “Not much gets past you does it?”

There were a few seconds of silence between them as Kevin struggled to banish the thoughts in his head. The only sounds carrying on the cold winter breeze came from the approaching wall of undead. He shook his head clear and focused on the situation…and Aleah.

“The best choice for us would be to head north. The river should be that way. If we can come across a bridge at any point, I say we take the opportunity to make the move.”

“You lead the way.”

The rest of the day was spent in relative silence. It didn’t seem that the herd saw them. If they did, they chose not to pursue. The zombies they did encounter were usually singles or small groups. Kevin continued to insist that they only engage the ones that took an active interest in them.

“You ain’t worried about bringing a bunch of them with you on our heels?” Willa asked at one point.

“We have so many places we will be ducking in and out of that I just don’t see the need for the waist of energy.”

At one point just after they had crossed an open field and began winding through a scattering of trees, Willa grabbed Kevin’s shoulder and motioned for him to keep quite. She swung a crossbow off her shoulder and placed a bolt. Bringing the weapon to her shoulder, he looked around for what she might be taking aim at in the general direction she seemed to be focused. All he saw was snow…and more snow.

With a thrum and a hiss, there was a puff of snow about twenty yards away. Willa clapped her hands and bounded off to retrieve her prize. Reaching down, she stood and waved plump rabbit in the air. Five more times that day, the ritual was repeated. Four of those times resulted in a dead rabbit.

As it began to grow dark and the first snowflakes of the evening began to fall, Kevin spotted the shadows indicating a scattering of residences. He veered off course, searching for the first intact home.

Luck was with them as the very first home they came to looked to have all its windows and doors. As an added bonus, the picket fence surrounding the front yard was in excellent condition. At first, Kevin thought the residents might still remain. He discovered that he was only partially correct as he drew close enough to see the large front window. It was smeared with filth, a clear indication that a zombie (or two) was inside.

“Let’s go around back,” Kevin whispered when he came to a stop across the street from the two-story home.

“You see something?” Willa let her crossbow slip down her shoulder and into her hands.

“Nope.” Kevin shielded his face with his hands to cut back the glare. “But I don’t want our tracks to just advertise where we went. It’s bad enough that anybody who wanted to could follow us, but if we circle around back of the house and make tracks to each of the five houses in this little area, it will help me relax.”

“You are something else,” Willa said appreciatively.

Kevin headed around the side of the house, his face turned away to hide the blush and the grin. All his life, he had been the awkward one…the geek…the nerd. Now, he had the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen waiting for him back where he currently called home while he was out in the middle of nowhere with another very pretty woman who lavished him with compliments and openly flirted with him. Not to mention the fact that he’d had to fend off the advances of a teenaged high school cheerleader that he’d saved from a horrific situation.

It took them about a half hour, but Willa did exactly as he asked and they eventually had tracks all over the place; each house in the area had multiple sets of them leading to and from.

When it came time, Kevin pulled a small case from his own bag and made short work of the locked door. He drew his sturdy machete and nodded for Willa to open the door. Slowly and cautiously so as to make as little noise as possible, she turned the knob and pushed open the door. There was a tearing sound as the weather seal and the door, gummed together from any combination of not being used for months during the hot summer and now this freezing winter, separated. Then…the metallic rattle as the door chain reached its end and kept the door fast—open no more than a few inches.

A second later, the stench of rot and death hit them both square in the face. Kevin staggered back and shook his head, but Willa stumbled as if struck by something physical. The sounds of her retching were met by a low moan from the other side of the door.

I hope you enjoyed the excerpt. Also, I wanted to congratulate April and Michael. Since April was a runner-up but responded so quickly, I saw no harm in writing them both in... Thanks to all who entered. I honestly expected one or two and was humbled by the response. 

Camp NaNoWriMo...and "Oh, the HORROR!"

Today starts my quest to write book 5 (wow...already on book 5!) in the DEAD series. This one is titled Dead: Siege& Survival and might give Dead: Winter a run for its money in the realm of dark. I will start warning people now...there will be some VERY unpleasant moments ahead for some of the characters as winter tightens its grip on a world overrun by the undead. The complete lack of infrastructure is something not to be taken lightly. I won't give away too much here, but I have been doing my research on things like hypothermia and The Donner Party. Stay tuned...this will be THE ONLY place you will find some raw excerpts.

In other news...I have a special offer. Anybody who comments on today's post and says "PICK ME!" will be thrown into a random drawing to be a guest character in my DEAD world. I will even let you choose the role of hero or villain. You will have no say in how your "namesake" is depicted or how long he or she will live. However, if you want to see your doppelganger appear in the pages of Dead: Siege & Survival...now is your chance. You must respond today (August 1, 2012) because I will be writing the Geek story today and "you" will be included in the  Vignettes section.

I would like to apologize for that horrifying image. I did warn you that it would be part of today's post. Kinda like a car accident that you can't look away from isn't it? Yes, after suffering a serious knee injury that I do not have the insurance to take care of, I sat around and gained almost 55 pounds. That is NOT okay. SO, knee injury or not...I have committed myself to returning to the P90X program. While I will probably not be super strict on the dietary part...I will be changing my eating habits considerably. 

After day one (Chest & Back and Ab Ripper X) I can say that I am in terrible shape. I have ballooned up to 259 pounds and here were my numbers. (For those not familiar, you do 2 rounds of every exercise): 

Standard Push Ups: 18/12  Wide Front Pull-Ups: 4/3  Military Push-Ups: 12/7 Reverse Grip Chin-Ups: 3/2 Wide Fly Push Ups: 16/11 Closed Grip Overhand Pull-ups: 3/2 Decline Push Ups: 12/7 Heavy Pants: 12 reps 17#/10 reps 17# Diamond Push Ups: 5/4 Lawnmowers: 12 reps 17#/12 reps 17# Dive-Bomber Push-ups: 6/5 Back Flys: 10 reps 17#/10reps 17#. Ab Ripper: 10 reps (of 25 for the full program).

I give huge credit to my wife, Denise, for stepping up and joining me. I will not post her numbers because those are her business. I am posting mine because the "shame factor" will hopefully motivate me. From having a 315# flat bench, 225# incline, and to hit 400# squats and deadlifts for reps of 20...to this. It is just not something I am very happy about. I won't bore you with all the workout details...but I will post the occasional update and I hope my friends will chime in with their support from time to time.

Aoife, my Border Collie, is very supportive...plus, I am like her own personal salt lick. The only time it gets a bit tricky is when she wriggles underneath me during push ups and tries to lick my face. So, that brings me to today's Olympic challenge...this one is easy. Do a cartwheel. Now imagine doing it on a balance beam. What a great performance by the women's gymnastics team!

Tomorrow, D.B .Tarpley will helm the ship and I will announce my Day 1 word count. Don't miss it.

Anthologies, NaNoWriMo and a word to my friends.

This month has been a busy one for me as an editor. I have some of my first "outside" contracts under my belt now in addition to my own work at May December Publications. I will admit to not being perfect, but I am constantly reading and studying and doing my best to improve. Also, when mistakes are pointed out to me, I make it a point to address them. I want to revisit some of our older titles because I have learned so much since we produced that first anthology--Eye Witness: Zombie. I did not realize until this evening as I sat down to put this together that I have edited 13 anthologies that are currently in print, with a few more coming out this year. The biggest thing that I am still in awe of is the fact that so many talented writers send the result of their hard work to ME! I can't list you all here, but I want to thank every single author who not only has appeared in an MDP anthology, but simply taken the time to submit. Whether or not you were selected, I still appreciate your hard work.

That is the good part. Sadly, there has to be a balance. Perhaps it is because we are starting to offer a few bucks here and there, but we are seeing a considerable amount of submissions when we announce our newest projects. The good side is that I am seeing some amazing stuff. Sometimes I read a story and I honestly can't believe that the author sent it to ME. Some of you are so amazingly talented. Even better, you read the submission guidelines and so everything is neat and orderly. A few of you have gone so far as to have an editor clean up your work before submission. It is so nice to read a clean submission. Sadly, there is also the polar opposite of that scale. What would possess you to think that your third-person zombie western fits our first-person vampire anthology? Or...and this is a REAL example that I saw several times.when we put out a call for FIRST TIMERS and you have an Amazon Author page with a half-dozen titles...are you just that dense? Can you write, but some malady struck you so that you can't READ? I am not going to harp on this today...but I will say this--if you aren't able to read the submission guidelines, I won't be reading your story. The end.

So, if you are sitting there with your panties in a bunch...chances are, you are part of the problem. So let me pose this to you. If your boss told you to do a project a specific way and you threw those suggestions out the window and just did it "your way" and ended up getting sacked...whose fault is it? And if you think I would do it out of some personal spite, you are not paying attention. I have no idea who writes the stories I read for any given anthology until after all the submissions are read and scored. I don't play favorites. Funny thing, I could despise your being, and if your story scores high, you would make it in based on talent. We will never change that aspect here at May December Publications.

Okay, enough of the soapbox. Nobody really wants to read a thousand word rant. And if you do, there are plenty of nutjobs to oblige that need. I want to take a second to announce for those who don't know that I am choosing the August Camp NaNoWriMo to write (or get a good start on) the fifth book in the DEAD series--Dead: Siege & Survival. However, I have also decided to participate in their sponsor program. So, if you are so inclined, donate to support the cause. 50,000 words in the month of August is not so bad, but my goal is closer to 100,000. I need to log over 3,000 words a day and my personal goal is 3,500 for a total of 108,500 words. I hope I have your support, and just as importantly, I hope some of you will decide to support NaNoWriMo. You can do so right here from this blog if the mood strikes you.

As I wrap up today, I want to take a few minutes to address some people in my life that I am very fond of and probably have seemed distant from lately. The funny thing about deciding to pursue my dream of being a full-time author and editor is that I actually have less free time than when I did this AND held a day job. The reason is simple; there is no safety net. If I tank...if my books don't sell...the electricity is shut off. I'm not making Stephen King money. In fact, if you broke me down hourly versus what I make in a month, I am barely beating out a Third World sweat shop. I hit the ground running around 6AM and can often be found at my desk after midnight. That is Monday through Saturday. It would be Sunday, but we made a choice in this house to commit to family time on Sundays. There are no computers on in this house until after 7PM. We (Denise and I) read, go for hikes, take walks, and basically tune out the world. I am determined to make it doing what I always dreamed of doing. Sadly, I have had to cut out a lot of "hanging out" time. This first year is crucial. I miss some of you terribly because I have made so few real friends in my life, but I hope you will be patient and wait this out with me. I promise that I haven't forgotten you, and very soon, things will get better. I won't necessarily have less work, but I will be able to allow myself the chance to breathe. Right now, I feel like if I take a moment, this whole thing will dry up and blow away. I understand that is irrational thought, but it doesn't make it any  less real in my head. I will try my best to say "Hi" and socialize every so often, but I have issues that are my own and I have to work hard right now because that is how my mind works. I know for a fact that I wouldn't be where I am without the support I have received from some of you who are reading this page. Don't think I am not aware...and never feel that those of you who have embraced my books and taken the time to introduce yourself to me are not important. I WOULD NOT BE HERE WITHOUT YOU!!! I have called some of you friend...and that is a word I don't toss out there on a whim. So, my friends, be patient with your slightly crazy writer friend. This really is harder than it looks.

Tomorrow, Dana Fredsti will be here. Yep, an honest to goodness DEADITE from Bruce Campbell's Army of Darkness. How many of you just quoted your favorite line? "Well hello, Mister Fancy Pants!" She is also a writer AND a cat lover. She will tell you all about it on Friday. Don't miss it.