Authorsday: Jamie Friesen

Blurb; Tokyo. Sydney. Beijing. Cairo. Paris. Rome. New York. Los Angeles. One by one, the world’s great cities fell to the zombie plague. What chance does a small, non-descript city in Canada like Edmonton have? The world as we know it is finished. Civilization has collapsed and humanity is on the brink of extinction. Billions of people are dead, victims of a horrific plague. Bi-weekly paychecks, Tim Horton’s double doubles, men’s league hockey and cheap winter vacations to Cancun. That was the life Xander Barnes had known for years until a pandemic swept the globe. Efforts to slow its spread or develop quarantine zones, in many cases were too little, too late. Nowadays, life consisted of avoiding the plague victims, ghouls who had an insatiable appetite for human flesh and finding enough food to survive day to day. How long can one ordinary man survive in a world gone mad?

Excerpt; Fire lashed out from the base into the horde of approaching infected. Mortar bombs exploded over the infected heads, sending dozens of sharp razor-like fragments down into the skulls of the infected. In some cases, it killed them, in others, it was nothing more than a mosquito bite. The handful of heavy machineguns opened fire, spraying hundreds of rounds of lead into the group, each round tearing off a limb of an infected person in the front, then continuing on into the infected behind it and tearing off one of their limbs too. The heavy machineguns were so powerful that the rounds likely went through a half dozen or more infected before finally stopping. Stone thought back to his heavy weapons course eons ago and what his instructor had told him about the heavy machinegun the Canadian Forces used. He winced as he watched them fire, mowing down rows of infected. They fell below the massed fire like wheat before a scythe. Thank god he had never been on the receiving end of one of those monsters, he thought to himself. The only problem with the weapon was that they would go through their ammo in a minute or two, and then would need several minutes to refill their ammo hoppers. Sure enough, well before the horde was gone, the machineguns stopped firing. Their crews scrambled to reload as fast as possible. Once the mortars and heavy weapons opened up, many soldiers began firing far more rapidly and unfortunately, far more inaccurately. While the heavy weapons were unlikely to kill many infected outright, it tore them apart and knocked them down, or otherwise disabled them so that snipers could finish them off later. Meanwhile, Master Corporal Stone and the other marksmen continued their steady, methodical slaughter of the infected. Below him, troops at the fence had shoved their barrels through the chain links and were firing indiscriminately into the horde. The horde was huge and their bodies lay in heaps everywhere, but they kept coming like some elemental force such as the tide. Stone had engaged the first infected at more than five hundred metres. Now, ten minutes later, the horde was about three hundred metres away and still closing. Stone kept firing, reloading and firing until his shoulder was sore. He hadn’t fired this much in a long time. A thundering roar came from behind him and Stone glanced backwards. Purchase info; Zombie Night in Canada on Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Night-Canada-Period-ebook/dp/B007KR4OYY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331903528&sr=8-1 Feel free to offer this reduced price Coupon Code at Smashwords.com (allows for all e-book formats to be purchased) for your blog's readers Promotional price: $3.99 (regular price $4.99) Coupon Code: CX94Y Expires: June 10, 2012 Bio; Jamie Friesen was born in Lahr, West Germany while his father was serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He attended the University of Alberta where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in History, and followed it later with a Masters of Arts in Communications & Technology. After obtaining his Bachelor's degree, Jamie went abroad and taught English in Japan and Taiwan. He now lives in Edmonton, Canada with his wife and daughter, working in the Public Relations field and writes in his spare time, which usually translates to early mornings and lunch time. Zombie Night in Canada: First Period is his first novel. Contact info; My blog - http://www.jamiefriesen.com/ Twitter - @jamiefriesen ZNIC Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Zombie-Night-in-Canada/262078575266

The Writing Process by Kaye George

Our Writing Process

I noticed some differences and some similarities in the writing process when ALL THINGS DARK AND DASTARDLY, an anthology I'm included in, was recently published through Dragonfire Press which one of the authors runs.

For my own work, I proceed my own pace. I have deadlines, but if they're not set by my publisher, they're self-imposed. For our anthology, we took on some of the duties of a publisher by deciding when we wanted to publish and by making our own schedule. Not knowing how long each stage would take, we set arbitrary deadlines, but ended up meeting them pretty much right on the nose--much to our surprise.

There's editing to do for the professional editors in both cases. Most of the marketing is self-promotion in both cases. But there were other people to coordinate with for every step, for the anthology. Also for the anthology, we chose our own title, text for the cover, got our own blurbs, did our own cover, and are responsible for distribution.

Here's how this whole thing came about. I belong to a writers' group that meets twice a month. We call ourselves All Things Writing. We don't critique each other on an ongoing basis, as my mystery writing group does. Instead, our habit is to spend the first part of the meeting doing a timed writing exercise to a prompt. When the time is up, we can choose to read what we've come up with or not. Since we usually do read our own stuff, we get to know each others' writing styles. This group has dwindled to three faithful members in the last year. Some writers have quit writing, some have acquired jobs that prevent their attendance, but we three keep showing up like faithful musketeers.

I should mention that there is no genre basis for this group. We're just a few people who live in and around Austin and who love to write. The three of us have each achieved our big dream in 2011, publication of a novel. Mine is a mystery (CHOKE), Mary Ann's is dark urban fantasy (NEPHILIM), and Steve's is a unique take on zombies (THE ZOMBIE MONOLOGUES). We've noticed, over time, that we all three like to write dark fiction, usually with some humor thrown in.

So, seeing that our styles somewhat mesh, one day we decided to put some short stories together and see what we came up with. Several of these were the eventual results of our writing exercises. We were pleased with what we put together and had them professionally edited by Ramona DeFelice Long (who really straightened my stories out!). One member, who we had initially thought would contribute, backed out of the group several months ago. That made us a little short on the desired word count, so Mary Ann and I added some reprints to bring us up to snuff.

Steve took charge of the cover and paperback version, I did the ebook versions, Mary Ann got us online, we all helped with the last edits, and we're all helping with the publicity. We're very happy with the result and pleased that people are actually buying it!

If you'd like to try our darkish tales, here's where the book is available:

Amazon paperback, Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords

It will also soon be available from Untreed Reads.

http://www.untreedreads.com/

BIO: Kaye George, an Agatha nominated short story writer,
is the author of CHOKE: An Imogene Duckworthy Mystery
(Mainly Murder Press), as well as A PATCHWORK OF
STORIES, a collection of her previously published works,
and THE BAVARIAN KRISP CAPER, (Untreed Reads).
FISH TALES: The Guppy Anthology contains her story,
"The Truck Contest". She serves as President of the
Guppies chapter of Sister in Crime, reviews for "Suspense
Magazine", and writes for several newsletters and blogs.
She, her husband, and a rescued feral cat named Agamemnon
live together in Texas, near Austin.
kayegeorge.com and travelswithkaye.blogspot.com 

BLURB: ALL THINGS DARK AND DASTARDLY

A compilation of horror, mystery, and urban fantasy short stories by Austin authors with a distinctly dark side.