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So nobody shot me
I'm still not feeling terrific but on the mend after falling over with unknown lurgy on the weekend. It was probably what the office has been sharing around for a few weeks. The coughing started fairly far away from me and moved closer and closer until I was doing it myself, then actually became ill on the weekend. Well enough to go to work on the Monday - and isn't that lousy timing - but barely above zombie class among the morning commuters.
I've been making a study of zombie literature since getting the eeepad in January and discovering that Kindle was part of the package. I used to think that ebooks were the same as appeared in the shops, i.e. published by publishers, having been edited and rewritten along the way. Not so. I've found out what most e-readers will already know, that there is a thriving indie press, charging anything from nothing to three dollars or so for one to read their self-published epics. Among these, there is a huge supply of stories about the zombie apocalypse!
I've read a few of these before discovering Kindle. Ironically, I began with one of the best of them, the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant, which is probably not really a zombie apocalypse story at all. Unlike the majority of the indie stories, it takes place decades after the Rising and basically concerns the psychological changes in our species, once we're no longer the top predator. There's also Carrie Ryan's books beginning with The Forest of Hands and Teeth, also in a future world which survives an apocalypse in its past. Present tense, those, which I find an amazingly annoying writing style. It blocks the story for me.
There were two other books I borrowed from the library, one British and one American, but since I can't remember their authors or their titles without checking deep into my files, they'll have to stay anonymous. The American one was of the "small town overrun by zombies" subgenre and the British one the "band of survivors cut off from everything" subgenre. There is also Justin Cronin's The Passage, which probably couldn't be counted as a straightforward zombie story either. His creatures are a quite original concept.
I'll have to read a few more before deciding anything definite about the indie stories. They range from Contagious by Emily Goodwin to the aforementioned White Flag of the Dead by Joseph Talluto and the Hollowlands stories by Amanda Hocking. I'm at the moment making my way through James Cook's No Easy Hope, slowed down by the author's irritating grammatical lapses. After each bit of dialogue, he writes this way:
"I went off to clean my guns." He said.
Over and over Cook does this; never having learned that the last two words are not a separate sentence and don't have to be upper case! There are a few other lapses which could have used an editor but that oft-repeated one is badly spoiling my enjoyment of what could be a fairly reasonable story, with good characterisation; something which seems to be a problem for the college-aged Goodwin, who is clearly writing a superhero-version of herself fighting the hordes of the undead, leading fellow survivors to safety and attracting all the cute guys. So far, that seems to be a trend with the indie apocalypse writers. The stories are all first person, all with a protagonist of the same gender as the author, amazingly heroic and skilled with weapons. It's not just Star Trek that features Mary Sue or Mark Sam.
Amanda Hocking (Hollowlands, Hollowmen) has actually made it into print from starting off with giving away her first story on Kindle. I've seen hard copy books by her in shops. Unlike some of the others, she knows her grammar, mostly. There are some mistakes which I'm prepared to allow as typos, but overall, not bad. One reviewer of the books complained that they were unrealistic because the group of survivors has a lion with them, in America, but having heard a lot about the number of big cats kept as pets in that country, I don't find it unusual at all that the travellers should have encountered a lion tied up in Las Vegas which turns out to be an effective zombie hunter. :-)
Btw, my television conked this evening from unknown causes, which is why I'm online actually doing something. It's annoying, since I wasn't fiddling with it at the time and checked to make sure nothing has worked loose, so have no idea what's going on. You'd think if civilisation had ended, the Internet would have conked also. Or maybe not..... Anyway, either I find out how to fix it or I do without it for awhile and hope the withdrawal isn't too bad. Yes, I can watch things on computer, but the fascination of just sitting there in front of the box and letting it happen can be quite addictive.
I've been making a study of zombie literature since getting the eeepad in January and discovering that Kindle was part of the package. I used to think that ebooks were the same as appeared in the shops, i.e. published by publishers, having been edited and rewritten along the way. Not so. I've found out what most e-readers will already know, that there is a thriving indie press, charging anything from nothing to three dollars or so for one to read their self-published epics. Among these, there is a huge supply of stories about the zombie apocalypse!
I've read a few of these before discovering Kindle. Ironically, I began with one of the best of them, the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant, which is probably not really a zombie apocalypse story at all. Unlike the majority of the indie stories, it takes place decades after the Rising and basically concerns the psychological changes in our species, once we're no longer the top predator. There's also Carrie Ryan's books beginning with The Forest of Hands and Teeth, also in a future world which survives an apocalypse in its past. Present tense, those, which I find an amazingly annoying writing style. It blocks the story for me.
There were two other books I borrowed from the library, one British and one American, but since I can't remember their authors or their titles without checking deep into my files, they'll have to stay anonymous. The American one was of the "small town overrun by zombies" subgenre and the British one the "band of survivors cut off from everything" subgenre. There is also Justin Cronin's The Passage, which probably couldn't be counted as a straightforward zombie story either. His creatures are a quite original concept.
I'll have to read a few more before deciding anything definite about the indie stories. They range from Contagious by Emily Goodwin to the aforementioned White Flag of the Dead by Joseph Talluto and the Hollowlands stories by Amanda Hocking. I'm at the moment making my way through James Cook's No Easy Hope, slowed down by the author's irritating grammatical lapses. After each bit of dialogue, he writes this way:
"I went off to clean my guns." He said.
Over and over Cook does this; never having learned that the last two words are not a separate sentence and don't have to be upper case! There are a few other lapses which could have used an editor but that oft-repeated one is badly spoiling my enjoyment of what could be a fairly reasonable story, with good characterisation; something which seems to be a problem for the college-aged Goodwin, who is clearly writing a superhero-version of herself fighting the hordes of the undead, leading fellow survivors to safety and attracting all the cute guys. So far, that seems to be a trend with the indie apocalypse writers. The stories are all first person, all with a protagonist of the same gender as the author, amazingly heroic and skilled with weapons. It's not just Star Trek that features Mary Sue or Mark Sam.
Amanda Hocking (Hollowlands, Hollowmen) has actually made it into print from starting off with giving away her first story on Kindle. I've seen hard copy books by her in shops. Unlike some of the others, she knows her grammar, mostly. There are some mistakes which I'm prepared to allow as typos, but overall, not bad. One reviewer of the books complained that they were unrealistic because the group of survivors has a lion with them, in America, but having heard a lot about the number of big cats kept as pets in that country, I don't find it unusual at all that the travellers should have encountered a lion tied up in Las Vegas which turns out to be an effective zombie hunter. :-)
Btw, my television conked this evening from unknown causes, which is why I'm online actually doing something. It's annoying, since I wasn't fiddling with it at the time and checked to make sure nothing has worked loose, so have no idea what's going on. You'd think if civilisation had ended, the Internet would have conked also. Or maybe not..... Anyway, either I find out how to fix it or I do without it for awhile and hope the withdrawal isn't too bad. Yes, I can watch things on computer, but the fascination of just sitting there in front of the box and letting it happen can be quite addictive.
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