E-Book Versions of The Vampire Hunter Series Now Available on Kindle, Nook

Some of you have noticed that the links to the e-book versions of The Vampire Hunter series have been removed.  This is because the e-books are no longer being distributed by Shadowfire Press.  However, Pill Hill Press has purchased the electronic rights to the books and has distributed them for downloading via Kindle and Nook.  Below are the links for the e-books.

The Vampire Hunters -- Kindle edition and Nook edition

The Vampire Hunters: Vampyrnomicon -- Kindle edition and Nook edition

Reminder: I'll Be a Guest at HorrorFind in Gettysburg 2-4 September

I'll be attending this year's HorrorFind Convention not just as a fan, but as a guest.  If you're at the convention, please drop by and say hello.  Below is my schedule.

Friday, 2 September, 5:30pm – 6:30pm:  Authors Christopher Golden (moderator), Tim Lebbon, Jason Gehlert, Scott Kenemore, Jeremy Wagner, and Scott M. Baker discuss why the dead just won’t stay dead, and why the literary zombie craze is far from over.

Sunday, 4 September, 2:00pm – 3:00pm:  Reading - Jeff Burk and Scott M. Baker (I will be reading from my upcoming novel Rotter World)

Sunday, 4 September, 3:00pm – 4:00pm: Book Signing - Scott M. Baker, Brent Abell, and Ryan Clark

Sunday Bunnies

No, I'm not chubby.  I'm well-rounded, thank you very much. 

Posting on Zombo's Closet

On 22 August, Zombo's Closet posted my latest in a series of articles on how to write a novel.  This posting is titled Finding a Publisher or Literary Agent, Part II.  Please drop by Zombo's Closet and check it out.

Interview from Read Horror

Please check out my latest interview in Read Horror's Meet the Writer section.

RIP Jimmy Sangster

Hammer Films screenwriter Jimmy Sangster (1927-2011) passed away on 19 August at the age of 83.  Sangster is best known for writing the adaptations for such Hammer classics (and personal favorites of mine) as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) as well as a long list of other credits.  Check out the official notice from Hammer Films here.

Sunday Bunnies

Daddy's back, and he brought the camera with him.  Maybe if we ignore him he'll go away.

Sunday Bunnies (A Day Early)

Good.  Daddy is going on vacation for a few days. Now we can relax and not have to worry about him taking any candid pictures.

Posting on Zombo's Closet

On 12 August, Zombo's Closet posted my latest in a series of articles on how to write a novel.  This posting is titled Finding a Publisher or Literary Agent, Part I.  Please drop by Zombo's Closet and check it out.

Review of Rise Again

Title: Rise Again

Author: Ben Tripp

Publisher: Gallery Books

Date: 2011

Pages: 371








Blurb:

Forest Peak, California. Fourth of July. Sheriff Danielle Adelman, a troubled war veteran, thinks she has all the problems she can handle in this all-American town after her kid sister runs away from home. But when a disease-stricken horde of panicked refugees fleeing the fall of Los Angeles swarms her small mountain community, Danny realizes her problems have only just begun—starting with what might very well be the end of the world.

Ben Tripp punches you hard in the gut on the first page of Rise Again and keeps you reeling for the next three hundred and seventy pages.

The novel focuses on Danielle Adelman, the local sheriff of a small mountain community where the biggest challenges of her life are dealing with tourists from Los Angeles who descend on the isolated town for the 4th of July celebration and facing the personal demons she brought back with her from Iraq. All that changes when authorities in nearby towns warn her that a swarm of tens of thousands of people from Los Angeles are heading in her direction, each one infected with a virus that makes them run and scream uncontrollably until they drop down dead, and who infect anyone they come in contact with. The mass of crazed civilians pass through Forest Peak, turning the panicked tourists into screaming madmen. When the dust settles, Danny and a handful of survivors are faced with picking up the pieces of their lives and figuring out a way to deal with the thousands of corpses littering the streets of Forest Peak.

The situation goes into full FUBAR mode when Danny intercepts a recorded communiqué from a weather station that broadcasts the same message repeatedly: The infected dead will rise again.

Ben Tripp’s first foray into zombie literature is a stunning success. The character studies of average people trying to survive the end of the world are flawless. The action and tension are relentless. Those that survive the initial outbreak must contend with surviving in a world without rules and law in which there are dangers far greater than the zombies, mainly the privatized army of the Hawkstone Corporation and the unknown entity that even the living dead fear.

Rise Again is zombie apocalypse fiction at its best. Ben Tripp is now on my must-read list.

This book gets five out of five rotting zombie heads.

Good News for Authors

There was in interesting article in today’s The New York Times about the publishing industry (see Julie Bosman’s “Publishing Gives Hints of Revival, Data Shows”) which offers encouraging news to authors. According to a survey that was released 9 August by BookStats, the publishing industry generated net revenue of $27.9 billion in 2010, an increase of 5.6 percent over 2008. One of the strongest growths was in the adult fiction market, which witnessed an 8.8 revenue increase in the last three years.

E-books jumped from 0.6 percent of the total trade market in 2008 to 6.4 percent in 2010, with the strongest sales in genre titles (romance, mystery, and thrillers). In 2010, 114 million e-books were sold. Hardcover books and trade paperbacks saw slight drops in the market shares.

The article also noted that many publishers are experimenting with various multi-media products that go beyond the traditional book.

What this means for us authors is that the market is still vibrant and very much alive (unlike the creatures I write about). So, as my friend Clint says: "Write or die!"

Sunday Bunnies

Let's get a few things straight. One, I'm a rabbit, so I don't smile.  Two, even if I could, I'm not going to smile for "cheese."  Carrots, maybe. 

Postings on Zombo's Closet

Zombo's Closet has posted the third and fourth installments in my series of articles on how to write a novel: What To Write About, which was posted on 25 July, and The Mechanics of Writing, and which was   posted on 5 August.  Please drop by Zombo's Closet and check them out

Review of Movie Madness

Title: Midnight Movie

Authors: Tobe Hooper and Alan Goldsher

Publisher: Three River Press

Date: 2011

Pages: 310







Blurb:

The Good News: Director Tobe Hooper has been invited to speak at a screening of Destiny Express, a movie he wrote and directed as a teenager, but that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. And Hooper’s fans are ecstatic.

The Bad News: Destiny Express proofs to be a killer… literally. As the death toll mounts, Tobe embarks on a desperate journey to understand the film’s thirty-year-old origins—and put an end to the strange epidemic his creation has set in motion.

This is one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time, and that is meant as a compliment.

The plot is simple. Tobe Hooper’s first film, Destiny Express, a horribly amateurish production made when he was a teenager and which has been lost for thirty years, is mysteriously discovered. When it’s played at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, the fans go wild – literally. Everyone who watched the movie becomes infected.  Some people turn dangerously violent.  Others become obsessed with sex, satisfying their insatiable appetite with anyone they can find while spreading an STD that causes the infected to ooze blue.  The unlucky ones devolve into self-mutilating zombies. As the outbreak spreads across the country, Erick Laughlin, a film critic who attended the showing but did not watch the entire movie, figures out the connection between the epidemic and the film and attempts to enlist Tobe in an effort to set things right. Unfortunately, mankind's future may lie in the director's past.

[A note to the readers: One of the reasons I picked up this book is because several reviewers compared the sex scenes to those of Ed Lee, which appealed to my dark side. That is not the case. No one writes sex scenes as perverse as Ed. However, that should not detract from the overall appeal of Midnight Movie.]

The story is told in first person narratives, journal entries, newspaper articles, e-mails, blogs, and Tweets. While the premise of the book is off the wall and completely irreverent, Tobe and Alan make it work. The characters range from the likeable (Erick and his girlfriend Janine Daltrey), to the sympathetic (Janine's sister, Andrea, who transitions from virgin to sex addict after watching the movie), to the utterly obnoxious (Dude McGee). Tobe’s narrative rants about himself, directing, and the movie industry in general are worth the price of the book alone. Don’t worry if the plot seems to ramble along in a disjointed orgy of violence and sex for the first two hundred and fifty pages; it’s meant to be that way. For those who want a nice, tight ending, there's no need to worry.  The authors wrap up the story nicely in the last thirty pages and resolve all the unanswered questions.

Midnight Movie is a fun novel and a must-read for any Tobe Hooper fan.  I give it four and a half out of five blue-oozing rotting zombie heads.

Reviews of The Vampire Hunter Series

Last week, Sonar4 Landing Dock Reviews posted reviews of the first two books in The Vampire Hunters series.  The review described the series as "a story that could have been cute vampire pulp and turned it into an action packed thriller with character driven details that draws the reader in" and "strongly recommend[ed] the series for anyone who enjoys good stories that are action packed" or who enjoy "dark vampires."  Please check out the reviews of The Vampire Hunters and The Vampire Hunters: Vampyrnomicon as well as all the other reviews.