I Will Be One of the Hosts of A Very BOOkish Halloween Treat

On Monday, 15 October, from 9AM to 9PM CDT, numerous writers, including myself, will be hosting A Very BOOkish Halloween Treat. There will be readings, opportunities to chat with the writers, a scavenger hunt, and much more. The details are still being finalized, but the event promises to be more fun than Trick or Treating with the Addams Family.

I'll post all the details when they're available. Please plan to attend.

Review of Twilight of the Living Dead

This week I received one of my best reviews every for Twilight of the Living Dead. It was by my friend and colleague James Masters, author of The Book of Mark.

"Peanut butter and jelly, cookies and milk, ice cream and chocolate syrup. Combinations as classic as those are things of legend. Think of some more, come on, I’ll wait.
 
"Did you?
 
"Great, but there’s probably one combination you may have overlooked. Nazis and zombies. Unless you’re a fan of horror and/or zompoc fiction. The Third Reich has been reanimating dead people in film, literature, and even video games. So with all of that out there in the open, how does the story written by Scott M. Baker stack up against the rest of the horde?
 
"Really well. The story is based around a group of Nazi soldiers and civilians that sought refuge in a tower. It’s set during the final days of World War II. Beset on all sides by enemies (quite literally), the surviving Germans struggle with how to survive and whether or not being captured by the Allies would be better than being ripped apart by the undead.
 
"In the same fashion as most zompoc, there is a power struggle between the human survivors. Unlike most zompoc literature, however, both sides are Nazis. What Baker does well in his tale is blur the lines of morality when bringing the Nazis to life. The reader will be rooting for the undead to tear the German soldiers apart, but will also feel sorry (slightly) while thinking that.
 
"Baker also locks in the historical setting with excellent use of detail and dialogue that will make the reader visualize themselves in that tower with the Nazis.
 
"The pace of the story is well timed as well. At no time does the story feels like it’s dragging. Either there’s vivid description about what is happening or there’s intense action that fuels the story right to the ending. The reader won’t fall asleep while reading Twilight of the Living Dead.
 
"If I had to offer one criticism about this story, and that’s if my leg is being pulled, it would be about the ending of the story. While I will not spoil it for you, I will say it’s a bit predictable. Having said that I will also say that it in no way deters my feelings about this tale of Nazis and the undead.
 
"Whether you’re a zompoc fan, an alternative history fan, or just a reader with an appreciation for the horror genre you’ll derive pleasure from reading Twilight of the Living Dead written by Scott M. Baker.
 
"I won’t guarantee that you’ll get as much pleasure as one of his zombies biting into the flesh of a member of the Luftwaffe. I’ve only read the Twilight of the Living Dead. I’ve never bitten into the flesh of a member of the Luftwaffe so I don’t have an accurate comparison. That doesn’t change the fact that you should definitely go out and find this literature gem and devour it (not literally)."

Pictures Associated With Twilight of the Living Dead Available on Pinterest

As with my most of my earlier novels and novellas, I've created a Pinterest page with photos associated with Twilight of the Living Dead. So, if you loved the novella and want to enhance the reading experience, please click here.

Twilight of the Living Dead Has Been Released

April 1945. World War II in Europe is entering its bloody finale. Berlin has been invaded – not by the Red Army, but by an army of the living dead. The zombie outbreak has ravaged the capital, leaving as the only survivors those who sought refuge in the city’s three fortified flak towers. 

Oberst Dieter Bock, commander of the Tiergarten Flak Tower with thirty thousand civilians under his care, faces the dilemma of watching everyone slowly starve to death, attempting a mass breakout through the hordes of the living dead, or deserting his post and making his way to safety with his lover Margarethe.

The decision is made for Bock when a failed rescue attempt to save the Fuhrer leads to the flak tower becoming the final battleground between the living and the dead.

This novella also contains the short story “Lebenden Toten at the Gates” about Wehrmacht soldiers battling Soviet zombies at Stalingrad. 

Twilight of the Living Dead can be ordered here for only $1.99.

New Hampshire's Emerging Writers Has Been Released

A little bit later than scheduled, but New Hampshire's Emerging Writers: An Anthology has been released. New Hampshire's most promising up-and-coming authors have the chance to share their own words. Covering a wide array of genres and topics, these young talents will amaze you. Containing one essay per writer, this anthology is a compelling introduction to the great wordsmiths of tomorrow. There are some excellent writers and stories in this anthology, including my own work "Recognition," which details a living dead outbreak from a zombie's point of view.

Z Publishing's "Emerging Writers" publications are part of an experimental series designed to match readers looking for new voices with up-and-coming authors looking to widen their reader base. The publisher likes to refer to publications in this series as "sampler platters" of writers and genres, such that readers can quickly and efficiently discover talented authors that they may otherwise have never heard of as well as compelling genres, topics, and themes they may never have given a shot before.

You can pick up your copy of New Hampshire's Emerging Writers: An Anthology, or any of the other state anthologies in the "Emerging Writers" series, at Z Publishing or on Amazon.

Twilight of the Living Dead Available for Pre-Order

April 1945. World War II in Europe is entering its bloody finale. Berlin has been invaded – not by the Red Army, but by an army of the living dead. The zombie outbreak has ravaged the capital, leaving as the only survivors those who sought refuge in the city’s three fortified flak towers. 

Oberst Dieter Bock, commander of the Tiergarten Flak Tower with thirty thousand civilians under his care, faces the dilemma of watching everyone slowly starve to death, attempting a mass breakout through the hordes of the living dead, or deserting his post and making his way to safety with his lover Margarethe.

The decision is made for Bock when a failed rescue attempt to save the Fuhrer leads to the flak tower becoming the final battleground between the living and the dead.

This novella also contains the short story “Lebenden Toten at the Gates” about Wehrmacht soldiers battling Soviet zombies at Stalingrad. 

You can pre-order Twilight of the Living Dead here for only $1.99. The official release date is 17 September. 

Let's Not Forget My Older Works: Novellas and Anthologies

Nazi Ghouls From Space -- January 1945. The Allies have crossed the German border. In a desperate effort to avoid the inevitable defeat, the Third Reich develops a long-range rocket capable of striking the United States. Three German soldiers pilot the capsule, volunteers who agreed to test fly the craft to ensure victory for the Fatherland. However, a technical malfunction propels them into orbit with no way to bring them home.

July 1947. The capsule plummets back to Earth and crashes in the isolated flats of the New Mexico desert. What returns are not the bodies of the three German soldiers lost in space for over two years, but something far more ghoulish. When an unsuspecting rancher opens the hatch to check inside, he unleashes on America the reanimated bodies of the test pilots who are now living dead creatures that crave human flesh.

"Scott Baker has done it again. Great blend of concepts and a truly spooky tale on all levels! The details Baker includes here will please History buffs and horror fans both." -- Filmfreak

Dead Water -- When the crew of an oil platform off the Virginia coast rescue a survivor from a lifeboat adrift at sea, they inadvertently release a zombie virus aboard their rig. As the crew is rapidly transformed into the living dead, the captain must find a way to stop the infection before it can spread to shore, even if that means sacrificing those on board.

Cruise of the Living Dead: A Zombie Anthology --  An outbreak of the living dead aboard a cruise ship. Cannibalism among the survivors of the rising. Steampunk reanimates. These are some of the nightmarish scenarios that Scott M. Baker has written about. Now most of his zombie-themed short stories have been pulled together in Cruise of the Living Dead: A Zombie Anthology. The stories include:

"Cruise of the Living Dead" - Carissa Banning, a cruise ship's medical officer, finds herself at ground zero of a zombie outbreak when an infected family aboard ship spreads the virus through the passengers and crew.

"Rednecks Shouldn't Play With Dead "Things" - Sam Grodin and his buddies think they stumbled across the ultimate hunting experience when zombies attack their campsite. However, when these zombies fail to behave the way they do in the movies, Sam and the others realize they have bitten off more than they can chew.

"The Hunger" - Janet Simmons has been roaming an apocalyptic wasteland for months avoiding the living dead and trying to find enough food to stay alive. When she stumbles across another survivor, she suddenly finds herself in a human eat human world.

"Last Flight of the Bismarck" - Victorian adventuress Scarlet and her male companion Chappy thought they were taking a trans-Atlantic flight in Germany's latest airship, The Bismarck. When they discover that the Bismarck is actually being used as a delivery device to infect the Northern United States with steampunk-enhanced zombies, they engage in an epic battle with the living dead in the skies above New York City.

"Is Anyone Out There?" - An isolated survivor of a zombie outbreak uses the Internet to contact family and friends before the world comes to an end.

Incident on Ironstone Lane and Other Horror Stories --  A washed up writer comes home to find his wife being raped and seeks revenge. A cuckolded husband leaves his family to die in a blizzard. An Iraqi war veteran picks up his weapon one final time to defend his home from an alien invasion, and faces his most terrifying enemy yet. These are just some of the demented musings of horror writer Scott M. Baker. This collection includes all of his non-zombie themed horror stories, including four that have never been published. So if torture porn, attempted murder, sewer monsters, and alien invasions are what keep you up at night, then read on.

"Incident on Ironstone Lane" – Tom Bowen has gone from one of the most recognized writers in horror to being a washed up loser. The only thing he cares about now is his wife, Brenda. When Tom returns home to find Brenda being raped by Wayne Hoskins, the town thug, something inside of him snaps. Tom develops a demented new interest and Wayne realizes how sick and twisted a horror writer can get.

"Denizens" – After a botched robbery attempt results in the death of the shop owner, Jack Randall and his friends try to evade the police by escaping through the sewers beneath Washington D.C. However, the justice that awaits them underground is much more horrific than anything humans could devise.

"Baby It’s Cold Outside" – Raymond Kim’s manhood has been stripped away by a shrew of a wife and a spoiled son who doesn’t respect him. Every day Raymond prays for death. When the family car goes off an isolated country road during a blizzard, leaving Raymond’s wife immobilized with a broken leg, he sees the perfect opportunity to get rid of his family with no one being the wiser.

"The Emblem" – Reptilian-like monsters invade Pennsylvania, quickly overpowering the National Guard and establishing a beachhead. With reinforcements still days away, Iraqi war veteran Steve Preston joins a local militia to repel the invaders. During his first contact with the enemy, Preston discovers the awful truth about the alien’s intentions.

"Entertainment of the Gods" – What if man did not shape his own destiny, but was merely a plaything of the Gods?

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” – When the Queen realizes that her vengeful stepdaughter Snow White wants to remove her and take over the kingdom, she has Karl the huntsman take Snow White into the forest to place her under a sleeping spell. The Queen’s attempts at keeping peace in the realm unravel when Snow White is befriended by seven unwanted misfits who come to her defense.

Let's Not Forget My Older Works: Yeitso

Yeitso -- Veteran detective Russell Andrews has seen the dangers of big-city life: rape, murder, gangs. It's not a place he wants to raise a teenage daughter on his own. After his divorce, he moves with her to serve as the sheriff of a sleepy New Mexican town. But the desert has dangers of its own--deadly secrets that eat men alive. Secrets growing in power. Andrews comes face-to-face with a thing out of myth, a force without a name in the modern world. The Navajo, though, call it Yeitso.
 
"Scott M. Baker builds tension and explores characters like a seasoned pro, all before offering them up as dinner for some of the creepiest crawlies you'll experience on the page. Yeitso is the perfect blend of small town quirk and pulpy monster madness that will leave you cringing and wanting more!" -- Ryan C. Thomas, author of Salticidae and Hisser
 
"Yeitso brought me back to those glorious Saturday afternoons of my youth watching Creature Double Feature." -- Peter Schwotzer, Famous Monsters of Filmland

Let's Not Forget My Older Works: The Rotter World Saga

Rotter World -- Eight months ago vampires released the Revenant Virus on humanity. Both species were nearly wiped out. For Mike Robson, the situation could be far worse. He’s joined up with a small band of humans and the last coven of vampires who are riding out the zombie apocalypse in an old fort along the coast of southern Maine. The group’s uneasy alliance is strained by the arrival of the creator of the Revenant Virus. He claims there is a vaccine that will make them immune to the virus, but it’s located in a secure underground facility five hundred miles away. To retrieve the vaccine, Robson leads a raiding party of humans and vampires down the devastated East Coast. Yet none of the horrors Robson has faced match what awaits in the underground facility…

Rotter Nation -- Despite being nine months into a zombie apocalypse, life had taken a fortunate turn for Mike Robson and Natalie Barzagan. Not only had their group retrieved the vaccine for the Zombie Virus from the underground military facility at Site R, they had found love with each other. That optimism is short-lived. When the group returns to its camp, a rape gang has destroyed the compound, murdered their friends, and kidnapped one of the young women. With everything they have achieved now destroyed, Robson makes the fateful decision to split his group. As he organizes a desperate attempt to rescue their friend from the rape gang, Natalie leads her Angels through a rotter-infested nation to bring the vaccine to the government-in-exile on Omaha. Both groups soon discover that everything that has happened to them up to now cannot compare with the horrors they are about to encounter.

Rotter Apocalypse -- The zombie apocalypse is about to reach its inevitable conclusion, but not before it unleashes a few more nightmares on Natalie Barzagan, Mike Robson, and Windows. After breaking away from the rest of the group, Natalie and her Angels succeeded in getting the vaccine to the government-in-exile in San Francisco where Natalie joins the military effort to clear the West Coast of the living dead. Robson destroyed the rape camp that had kidnapped Windows, but not until after she had escaped. Along with the remaining vampires and a band of camp stragglers, he sets off to build a new compound. Windows and the ten-year-old girl she rescued from the camp are taken in by a kindly widower who gives them the opportunity to start over and heal their wounds, emotional and physical. Just as Natalie, Robson, and Windows are settling into their new lives, each will be confronted with a final life or death decision that will decide their fates.


“With Rotter World, Scott M. Baker pulls out all the stops in a zombie thriller that is brutal, violent and terrifying. Definitely not for the faint-hearted.” — New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry, author of Patient Zero

“Think there are no new or original zombie authors? Think again. Scott M. Baker provides an exciting voice and fresh outlook on the undead. Fun, compulsive reading.” — Brian Keene, author of The Rising and City of the Dead

“Scott M. Baker writes in the tradition of J.L. Bourne and Joe McKinney. Fans of thriller writers like Brad Thor will also find powerful, welcome similarities in Rotter World.” — Scott Kenemore, author of Zen of Zombie

“Scott M. Baker has managed to bring together the best of what I love about end of the world, vampire and zombie tales in one glorious story. If you think zombie and vampire stories are overdone and there is not anything new you can do with them, Rotter World proves that theory wrong.” — Peter Schwotzer of Famous Monsters of Filmland

Let's Not Forget My Older Works: The Vampire Hunters

I've been so preoccupied with my current WIPS (two novellas, a screenplay, and novels three and four of my young adult post-apocalypse series under the name Josh Matthews) that I've neglected my older children. So before they place me in a cheap nursing home, I'll be spending the next few weeks pimping my earlier works and hopefully introduce them to my newer fans.

Drake Matthews and Alison Monroe. Their names are as legendary as their battles with the vampires that plague Washington D.C. Now, for the first time, all three novels in The Vampire Hunters trilogy are available in one book. The Vampire Hunters Omnibus begins with the first battles between humans and the undead in the nation's capital and concludes with the final apocalyptic conflict to determine which side will hold dominion over the earth.

The Vampire Hunters -- As former Boston cops, Drake Matthews and Alison Monroe thought they had experienced it all... until they found themselves tracking down a serial killer who turned out to be one of the undead. Stopping him cost them their careers and almost their lives. Thanks to an influential and anonymous benefactor, Drake and Alison find a new job ridding the streets of Washington D.C. of the vampiric threat terrorizing the nation's capital. Only this time, Drake and Alison are not facing a single vampire but an entire nest led by Ion Zielenska, one of history's most evil and twisted masters. As the vampires indiscriminately prey on humans, seeing them as nothing more than food to satiate their hunger, they create a wave of violence that threatens to engulf the city. Orchestrating the carnage is Antoinette Varela, the mistress of the nest, who realizes that for the nest to survive the hunters must be eliminated. However, when her vendetta turns personal, the hunters find themselves in struggle they are not prepared for.

The Vampire Hunters: Vampyrnomicon -- Within the vaults of the Smithsonian Institute lies the key to finding the Vampyrnomicon, the Book of the Undead, that contains the history and secrets of the vampires. According to legend, whoever possesses the book can establish a vampire nation on earth – or destroy the undead once and for all. With an opportunity to end the war against the vampires so close, Drake Matthews is determined to find the book. But the vampires also want the Vampyrnomicon. When Master Chiang Shih and her coven of the most powerful and dangerous vampires arrive in Washington to claim the book as their own, the hunters find themselves facing their most dangerous enemy yet. With the stakes so high, so is the ferocity of the struggle.

The Vampire Hunters: Dominion -- Lost for centuries, the Vampyrnomicon, the Book of the Undead, is unearthed and with it the terrible secret of the vampires’ origins. The book's discovery gives vampire hunter Drake Matthews the means to defeat Chiang Shih and her nest. It also provides Chiang Shih with the knowledge required to make vampires immortal. When Chiang Shih raises an army of the undead and establishes a vampire nation in Washington D.C., she cripples Drake and his hunters. Driven by vengeance, and with his ranks swelled by unlikely allies, Drake leads the survivors back into the infested city. With the fate of humankind hanging in the balance, hunters and vampires wage the final apocalyptic battle in the streets of Washington to determine who will hold dominion over the earth.

"Those that know me and follow my on-line work know that I am a vampire fanatic. By that I mean real vampires, the undead creatures that prey on humans for survival, not the glorified sissy boy vampires that keep getting shoved down our throats. If you’ve read Justin’s Cronin’s The Passage and Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain, you will absolutely love The Vampire Hunters.” -- Pete Schwotzer of Famous Monster of Filmland

"Scott M. Baker's The Vampire Hunters is a gut-wrenching, fast-paced horror thriller that takes you from the back streets of Washington to the rat infested sewer systems below. You cheer for both the hunter and the hunted as the author rains battle scenes with stomach turning death and destruction around every corner." -- Fangoria

Cover Reveal for Twilight of the Living Dead

As promised, here is the cover reveal form my upcoming novella Twilight of the Living Dead. Many thanks to Shannon Perrine for her epic artwork.

The release date is tentatively set for 15 September. I'll post more details soon.