Armand Rosamilia...one of the good guys.

Today I am proud to step aside for one of the good guys. Armand has been one of those people in the writing community that stepped out and offered his hand to a stranger. He invited me on his Summer of Zombie blog tour...despite some of the political crap from people who are not big fans of mine. To me, that is a friend...a word that I use sparingly in my life. He has something new hitting the radar, and it is an honor to have him come tell you a little about it. And now...that gruff, teddy bear of a man...Armand Rosamilia

Book Description:

When Michael Zaun takes possession of his late grandfather’s farm, he finds out he inherited more than he bargained for. Dubbed the “Tool Shed Murders,” the details of the deaths of two girls on the property, and his grandfather’s, seemingly by his own hand, are a little murky. Was his grandfather a monster or a hero?

The discovery of his grandfather’s journal awakens within him a new confidence. But what about the demon his grandfather mentioned? Is it real or just the ranting of a diseased mind?

 With the help of his friends, old and new, Michael will find not only the answer to that question, but a new strength within himself.

Interview Questions

1. What was the inspiration for Tool Shed?

The initial idea for the story began many years ago, when I was buying every Leisure Books paperback I could get my hands on. I loved the stories that Don was editing, and they were all classic horror tales. I wanted to someday write a 'traditional' horror tale, with a monster or demonic entity harassing our hero. I originally thought it from the grandfather's POV, with the murders happening on the farm. Then I put it away and began writing a dozen other stories. But while reading The Rising, or one of Brian Keene's zombie books, I came across a point where he talks about dead cows in the field. The line 'The cows had exploded' came to me, and I immediately thought of my Tool Shed idea. I rearranged the story a bit and began writing.

2. What other books in the genre would you compare it too?

I'd love to think my story holds a candle to classic Leisure Books work from John Everson, Keene, Douglas Clegg, and Simon Wood. But those books are amazing, and the period when Dorchester was firing on all cylinders is still my favorite books to read and re-read. I started writing it with them in mind, to be honest. Then, when it all fell down and burned, I decided to find another publisher that I wanted to be associated with. That was Angelic Knight Press. I was lucky because they obviously loved it enough to publish it, and I didn't have it sitting at half a dozen publishers, trying to get sold.

3. Is it a series? Will we get to revisit the characters?

Kind of. There is a longer novel I've written called Chelsea Avenue, 'starring' the elementals as well but set in Long Branch New Jersey beginning in 1987. I'm doing edits on the story and hope to get it ready to make the rounds as well very soon. It's another story that is many years in the making, and another more traditional horror tale.

4. What made you step away from the zombies that populate some of your other writing?

I never set out to be known as a zombie author. I wanted to write horror stories, period. When I wrote Highway To Hell it was only my second zombie story, after the flash fiction piece "Anything But Luck" starring Darlene Bobich (who has been my main character in all the Dying Days zombie stories) and I thought I wouldn't be writing too many more. Wow, was I wrong. The zombie stories struck a chord with readers, and I still find myself adding more and more to the Dying Days universe. But I still write horror stories, and just released a print horror short story collection, Skulls And Bones, that contains nine stories and none of them are zombies. I swear.

5. The main character, Michael, is a large man. No chiseled abs or buff physique there. And yet, he's basically the hero. Why write him that way?

I'm a big guy, pushing 300 lbs. I can relate to the character and his physical limitations, although I'd like to think I'm in better shape than Michael. I didn't want a Vin Diesel He-man in the story. I wanted a group of normal people, and even his best friend is more geek than anything. Characters that are relatable to a reader, instead of buff male strippers hanging out with super-hot chicks. I only do that in my real life. 

Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he eats too much, drinks too much, and doesn't worry about the impending zombie apocalypse. And it is coming. He is the author of many, many stories and novellas (which are all awesome… seriously!), and his Dying Days zombie series is pretty cool, too. He loves talking to fans and friends about horror, zombies, Boston Red Sox and Heavy Metal music. Feel free to e-mail him at armandrosamilia@gmail.com or visit his blog at http://armandrosamilia.com. He also loves speaking in third person.

Season 3 Episode 7

If you follow the Story-sync while watching The Walking Dead, and you participate in the polls, how often do you slap your forehead and scream "WTF?!" 

Tonight opens with Glenn and Merle in a little room. Merle is asking questions and Glenn gives him a solid headbutt in the face (far more painful than displayed on the show I can assure you from experience). Maggie gets to listen as the beat down begins. The question that pops up is "Which torture is worse" One third of the people said Glenn taking the beating was worse than Maggie having to hear it. Really? Punch me in the face anytime. But don't hurt my loved ones. That would be so much worse. It just makes me wonder sometimes who is out there watching, reading, et cetera, stuff in this genre. Sometimes there is a question where you figure it is an absolute 'no brainer'. That was one of them.

The highlight for me tonight was seeing Glenn fight off a walker while taped into a chair. Glenn has been a favorite since his first line to Rick in the tank back in Atlanta. Tonight he solidified himself as equal to Daryl in the bad ass department. He might not have the rugged, bad boy look going on, but he handles his business.

The Governor is starting to really show his true colors. Andrea seems about as clueless as one person can be. And Michonne is holding true to her character. She is perhaps the most realistically portrayed person I have ever seen. She is properly shell-shocked and has come to grips with the harsh reality of what it takes to survive. She did what needed doing in that shack. Some might have a problem with her choice, but it was kill or be killed, and that guy would have been dead a few seconds after he opened that door anyway.

With one episode before the mid-season break, things are likely to get hairy in that next episode. This was a proper set up. Who will take which side in the first showdown between Rick's gang and the Governor's? Daryl, Andrea...and even Merle are up for grabs. Keep the graphic novel on the shelves because I think all bets are off.

The cover for Dead: Siege & Survival!

The new cover came to our in box yesterday. I won't spend a bunch of time yammering, but I am thrilled as always by the work of Shawn Conn, the man who will be responsible for every cover in the DEAD series. And as an added treat, the scene I sent him that he based the cover on...

Shouldering his rifle, Jody exited the empty mess tent. As he walked along the muddy road that led into town, he began to take a closer look at the faces of the men. They looked tired. Many stared at the ground as they walked, their heads hanging as if it were too much effort to keep their chins off their chests. These men were beaten up and simply operating out of programmed discipline.

As he reached the high school, a queasy feeling began to build in his gut. His coffee suddenly felt like it had changed to concentrated acid, and he could feel an unpleasant burning in the back of his throat.

In the center of the parking lot was a hastily erected platform. It looked like little more than a few saw horses side-by-side with a sheet of three-quarter inch plywood on top. It was positioned directly below a sign that used to welcome students to Bald Knob High School—Go Bulldogs! Draped over the sign were two nooses and standing beside them was Captain Gould and Chuck “Slider” Monterro.

This could not be good, Jody thought.

As the men arrived, Jody was struck by just how few of them remained. He began to do a head count. Counting the locals who had been conscripted, there were a total of fifty-three men and women gathered minus the captain and Slider.

It took Jody a moment to register the fact that the two hooded figures beside them were wearing uniforms. This could not be happening. He began to scan the faces of the men, but everybody was so haggard that even familiar faces were hard to recognize. He wondered only briefly if he looked as worn out and beaten as these other men and women.

As he continued to scan the faces trying to figure out who might be under those hoods, his heart began to race. He couldn’t find Danny. He looked back to the hooded figures and tried to see if the body types might match his friend. It was impossible; they had just been eating breakfast and talking. Yet, he couldn’t see Danny anywh—

“What the fuck is this?” a voice whispered in his ear making Jody jump almost out of his boots. And that would have been a feat considering the fact that it felt like his socks had melded into his skin and that the boots were grafted on by way of the filth.

Jody spun to find Danny standing at his shoulder. He resisted the urge to hug the man. However, the look of relief on his face told the story.

“You thought one of those guys might be me?” Danny gasped. “Well I’ve walked the rows and I can tell you who it is. It’s Livius Nedin and Robb Olson.”

“What?” Jody had to bite his tongue and lower his voice. Several heads had turned his way and two of those heads belonged to the captain and Slider.

“A couple of the guys said that three of the civilian conscripts came into their tent and cuffed them while reading from some piece of paper listing a series of UCMJ violations that they supposedly committed,” Danny whispered.

“This just keeps getting worse,” Jody moaned.

“Men of Charlie Company…a-ten-hut!” a large woman that Jody vaguely recognized as one of the local bartenders bellowed. She was decked out in an ill-fitting uniform that looked as if the buttons might pop off at any moment and burrow into somebody’s eye. The spaces between each straining button bubbled out revealing her pale, cottage cheese-like flesh underneath. Her jowls quivered with each syllable and continued to sway just a bit for a few seconds after she spoke.

The soldiers came dutifully to attention. Heads came up and eyes stared straight ahead, but Jody didn’t think they were seeing anything. The captain climbed up onto the sheet of plywood and Jody couldn’t help but wish for it to break along with the man’s neck. Slider and the woman—Jody thought she resembled those pig-faced guards in Jabba’s palace in the Star Wars movie—manhandled each of the hooded men up onto the platform and then each took a place on either side.

“We have among us men who do not feel the need to follow orders…men who would take for themselves…not just of supplies, but liberties with those we are sworn to protect,” the captain announced, using the bullhorn so that everybody could hear him clearly.

Jody noticed both men squirm, but the nylon line used to bind them had secured their arms tightly to their sides and they could do little more than shudder.

“We have been given a solemn duty and I will not have our honor damaged by a few…”

He droned on, but Jody had tuned him out. This was wrong. He knew both of those men well. Neither would do what they were being charged with. He puzzled over the situation until a collective gasp snatched his attention back to the scene up front. Both men had been fitted with his noose and shoved off the platform. The drop wasn’t severe enough to snap their necks, so they flopped at the ends of their lines for what seemed like an eternity.

It was too much. Jody’s coffee had swirled with his stomach acid and created a toxic mixture. Doubling over, he vomited his breakfast all over his filthy boots.

He wasn’t alone.

American Legends: The Life of Sitting Bull by The Charles River Editors
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When I nabbed this, I was expecting some insight to Sitting Bull. I am fascinated with history and always seeking new nuggets to savor. SSadly, this is not as much about Sitting Bull as it is an introduction to the Lakota. I actually learned more about Sitting Bull in [[ASIN:B007MXB4TO The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn]] by Nathaniel Philbrick. If you have even a basic background knowledge, seek something else. If you are looking for a place to start...this is okay.

A Peek at a Geek...

Final edits are almost done on the new DEAD book. Yep, number 5 comes out in a few weeks. Stay tuned for the cover reveal of Dead: Siege & Survival a week from today if all goes well. For now, I will be featuring excerpts throughout the week. 

So, as we left off with Kevin in Dead: Winter, he and Willa were heading back to the country club with the medication he'd scavenged for Valarie, the girl with Down's syndrome who was suffering from hallucinations.

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 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.” Kevin nodded.

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 waste 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 up and tracking something in the distance, 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 a 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 to the 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 it open. 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.

The Walking Dead Season 3 Episode 6

There is a lot of things in the zombie genre that sort of get taken for granted. One of the biggest is the psychological toll. There is so much loss experienced, yet the stories mostly deal with survival. Tonight, we get to see a little bit of the mental damage. Rick is obviously disturbed by what happened and has spiraled into a bit of madness.

In other fronts, we get to see Andrea stray into the firm grasp of the Governor. She continues to show absolutely horrendous judgement in men. The real problem that I have with this aspect of the story line is that the Andrea character was so strong in the graphic novel. They are making this one into a weak version that falls into the sack with every bad guy she meets. First Shane, and now The Governor. It is really a shame because the genre can really benefit from strong female leads. Perhaps we will have to rely on Carol.

Merle chases Michonne and is definitely outmatched. However, when he encounters Glenn and Maggie, you can almost tell the outcome before it comes. That leads to the question...why do people always talk to the bad guys when they know damn well that he/she has nothing but bad intentions?

What remains to be seen is if those two poor suckers end up facing what Rick and Michonne endured in the graphic novel.

All this said, I guess the question that I have is this: Do we expect the story to follow the literature that it is drawn from, or is it okay when it veers way off track as The Walking Dead has done?

So what do you want to know?

I've said it in many posts, I have a comment on my author's bio that I served time, and on our company's web site, there is a disclosure statement. Perhaps the saying about "hiding in plain sight" is true. So, is this going to be some long version of my past? Nope. The bottom line is that I went to prison in 1998 for charges stemming from an accusation of something from 1990.

Here is what I won't do. I won't defend myself against anybody who wants to sling mud. People will say and do what they want, and seriously, there is not a damn thing that I can do about it. What? Did you expect me to snap? To hop in my car and start hunting people down? I don't have time for that sort of thing.

Maybe you are looking for me to spin this long and detailed response about how "I didn't do it." What point would that serve? People will make up their mind. Some have very little mind to make up.

So let's look at two possibilities. Start with the "He definitely did it." Okay. Now, if that is the case, can a person change? Can a person pay for their sins and move forward? Is it possible for a person to be redeemed. (And I am not even including any sort of spiritual transformation, I am just talking about the person's ability to make core changes.) That answer is personal for each individual.

Now let's look at "He didn't do it." Do innocent people go to jail? Is the court system perfect? You probably expect a longer case made here, but why?

Now let's consider a third possibility. "I don't know." Unless you have an eye witness account to share, you can never know anything for certain. So perhaps you take a person at face value and let them show what kind of person they really are. Nobody can wear a mask forever. Their true nature will eventually shine though...for good or bad. 

So, there it is. I will be leaving this post up for a couple of days with out a new one to bump it down the page. If you have any questions...I have always been open to them. But not here. You can email me, or I will even talk with you by phone if you want to ask a million questions and a billion follow up questions.