ZWD: Motorhead and the SOL

When I was writing the book ZWD: King of an Empty City I had a soundtrack that ran through my head most of the time. The main band was Motorhead. I named a group of kids after their lead singer; the SOL Sons of Lemmy. He was an important influence to this book. His music, the songs energy set the pace of the action going on in my head.

Thank you Lemmy.    

ZWD: Inside Chapter 20

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ZWDKings

First off a Little TCB.
If you have read the book, please write a review. Good or bad. The more reviews the book has, the higher it goes in the Amazon matrix and if there are a lot of reviews, they will promote the book so I don't have to as much.

Looking for hope with new friends. the SOL & Shaun. Finding an ally in any difficult situation is always a great thing and when our couple are introduced to the SOL, they see new hope in their bleak world. Now you as a reader probably looked at this and said, kids! How can there be hope in kids? What can they do? How stupid is this? I thought the same things. I honestly had no idea how a child shall lead them. But I thought it was worth exploring. Shaun was also a risk for them because Grandpa threatened to kill them earlier. But I had an idea in my head about Shaun's family, so I knew it would work with them.

The SOL represented a group effort, a collective, like ants working together to gather food. These kids knew they needed each other and they wanted the guidance of an adult, that's why they exposed themselves to our heroes. In my mind, they knew of plenty of adults who were around but none of them were doing much in the way of thriving, they were all just surviving and the SOL wanted to get things done, to create stability.

Several years ago I saw this report about rogue elephants, 3 teenage bulls were terrorizing their area and authorities didn't know what to do about them. They were big bullies who killed cattle, rhinos, destroyed crops, homes and anything else they got around. They had never been in a herd and basically had no idea how to be elephants. Nearby park authorities had an older bull that had recently lost his herd to lion attacks and poaching, so they drugged him and brought him into the 3 teens area. The first encounter was fantastic. They charged up to him and he basically stared them down and said in elephant; "Don't make me whack your pee-pee." Over the next few weeks he taught them how to be elephants again. That's what I saw our heroes doing, not the pee-pee whacking, but the teaching of these kids how to be adults, how to be leaders, how to be the people they would need to be. What's that saying? "Be the person to your kids you needed when you were one."

Shaun, I've talked a little about his past in another post in this series. He was a Wanna-be-Thug, a Gangsta but if you were to go into his bedroom, you would find posters of Spider-man, Dr Doom and Green Lantern ( the Guy Gardner one) if you're a geek you know just what that means. His family was educated despite grandpa's temperament. Uncle Andrew was a professor. But as I have pointed out, they are not in modern times they are all living in a modern society that has broken down so like so many people you don't see in this story, they are holed up trying to let this crisis pass them by. Then our Heroes show up and invite them to make that change. The nature of Shaun's family is if you ask for help they will give it, they won't go out of their way to do so, but if you ask they will help and that's what our heroes end up doing to them.   

Womanly things and Ashley. I needed a nurse, that's why Ashley is a nurse. Well, that and there are a lot of nurses here in Little Rock. I think we have seven hospitals in town, so that's a lot of nurses. It makes sense, that she could easily have been a nurse. I was recently asked about why she was a nurse.

The wife and I were talking one night about the story and how in movies they never show someone going to the bathroom unless it's for comic or horrific effect. She then said they never address a woman's period in these stories. This got me to thinking, if stores were looted would feminine hygiene products be a prized item? If they were, where else could you find them if stores had been looted? The answer drove right up to me as two teenage girls stopped their car and asked to pet my Great Danes. Homes with teen girls would have tons of products. My wife confirmed this and for a short time we had foster girls in our home and now I can confirm this, ton's of products. It made sense to me that homes where women or teen girls lived would be the place to scavenge for such things so that's what they did when they met Ashley.       

The raccoon- skipping over clues, poor foreshadowing, Actually I don't think it was  poor foreshadowing I think it was rather clever to not point it out with a big sign that said CLUE, HERE IS A CLUE! If you haven't read the book, I won't go into details, but spoiler alert, I give a clue about what's coming. And no the raccoon isn't the clue.

The raccoon is just a raccoon. For those in the world who are not familiar with them they are nasty, vile, mean creatures that people in the south, living out in the country like to keep as pets for some reason. I've known several families that have had them as pets. The one in the story just happened to have broken into this house and set up a home of it's own. I put it in the story for a little bit of suspense.      

I think it's a magical scene, the car alarm attack. My editor wanted me to take this out but it scared my brother so it stayed. He doesn't scare easily, so I knew when I sent him that chapter and he called me up saying that scared the crap out of him, I had something. Since then several readers have written me and said while they were reading it it happened to be storming and set the mood perfectly or the power went out and while reading by candle light something went boom at the right moment or my favorite; another brother was waiting on his wife to get off work and he had to lock the doors while he read in the car, you know, to be safe. He forgot about her and when she banged on his window to get him to unlock the door and he about jumped through the roof. Yep I like that scene. 

Wrestler Joey Ryan finishes off opponent using his penis

Yes you read that right. This is why I love Wrestling. They do things like this and the crown just buys into it with what it is presented as, theater. Now this guy will have a legend to work with, it should be interesting to see how his legend "Grows".



Wrestler Joey Ryan finishes off opponent using his penis

ZWD: Inside Chapter 19

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“Where are all the lights?” I was watching some doomsday show and they pointed out a very sobering fact. If the nations electrical grid fails for what ever reason we have, in a split second, gone from a civilization greater than any seen on the earth before to glorified cavemen. Cities like NYC, Boston, Paris, London, etc even little old Little Rock would become immobile, no phones, tv, wi-fi, food in grocery stores would rot quickly (about a week), no lights, If you look at all the things that take electricity to run we wold be basically screwed.  

The ladder no longer electrified. their electrified ladder, their greatest security on the roof, gone. They are vulnerable, open, exposed even hidden on that roof. They have a shovel and an Ice Pike to protect themselves. Without the electrified ladder they are very poor cave people.

Fire. Right now if you had to could you make a fire from scratch and keep it going for hours, days? Growing up for years off and on I was in the boy scouts and was an avid camper and I never mastered the art of making a fire from scratch. A little smoke, a spark but never got a flame blazing, not without a lighter. I slept many a night cold. When they power goes out in the city our couple have a sobering moment when they realize just how lucky they have had it till now. Thankfully the power comes on again but if it had stayed off or goes off the next time and never comes back on they are thrown back into the cave era.  

Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle & internet searches. I have said earlier that my father was a marksman and a Marine, on days when he would babysit me as a small child to give me a puzzle to put together he would hand me an M-16 and we would take it apart then I would put it back together. Sometime we would go out and shoot it afterwords. That being said I do not have any guns, I don't particularly like them. I also don't have anything against them, I simply choose not to have one. So I am not a big gun guy. I had to do a search to find the two sniper riffles in this story just to get something close to true. The Barrett are apparently very popular among gun people. That's why I gave them to the Page family.

The Page family back story. I really wanted to do more with the Page family. I had it in mind early that their would be a family of preppers who just missed it. All that preparation and damned the luck they messed it up.

The pages were a family that complexly bought into the be prepper philosophy. They had food stashed away in a storage unit as well as under their house in the crawl spaces. Everyone in the family did some kind of training for fire starting, water purification, curing meat, basically if it involved survival on ones own or in a family group they practiced. As our boy guesses the Page family had an underground shelter covered by a trailer on a plot of land they had off the Sweetwater Cutoff road going south on Asher (HWY-367). I know it doesn't matter where that is actually it was just in my mind. In fact I had it in my mind that if they had looked around more they would have found a treasurer trove of survival gear and enough food to last them the winter. However they did not look closely enough. It would have been my luck that that would have happened to me.

Now the fate of the Page family is about what our boy guessed. The outbreak occurred and while one of the kids was at school someone turned or got bitten and it spread fast through the school. When the kids got home one of them was "Sick" and as they looked on knowing what was about to happen they still couldn't believe it and the kid turned then went on a biting spree, getting mommy first who called the rest fo the kids to her and then turned and bit them. Mr. Page himself was just too overcome with emotion to think straight. He ended up trying suicide but when he used a crossbow pistol instead of a real pistol he messed that up and slowly turned into a zombie. When we meet him he has a slight shred of himself left and, well we see what happened.      

the church notebook. This was a running theme in the original tweets that never really took off in the book. The original tweet Idea was that they our heros would be in one part of the city, living on the roof and another group of people they would hook up later. The notebook would be, at first how they would communicate as they feel each other out. They would shoot a single shot in the air to let the other group know they had responded. Naturally the idea came about that a third group would hear the shot and read all the correspondence and pretend to be one of the other two and basically ambush a group and start bad blood between groups who would eventually team up and fight the third group. But as is the case with some stories it never happened because the story did not go that way. In the end the notebook never really did much but to introduce the SOL.

The SOL Sons of Lemmy. Believe me, when you want an acronym finding the words for the letters isn't easy, at least for me. I wanted to call them the S.O.L. much the same way as in Frank Millers the Dark Knight Returns when the kids all start calling themselves Sons of Batman (SOB) and I wanted to bring in a musical element to their title. It was just luck that day that my playlist started playing Motorhead and I thought to myself Lemmy, Sons of Lemmy. I wanted to do a lot of things with the kids but the story dictated otherwise. I rewrote their first encounter several times and settled on the simplest where they boys thought that calling themselves Sons of Lemmy would somehow strike fear into the hearts of men and never really considering two things. One if you don't know who Lemmy is then its not very tough sounding and your not afraid of them. Two if you do know who Lemmy is your a metal head and you think these guys are cool just for coming up with the name and your not afraid of them.  

Heroes Wall- This just seemed to be an organic thing that needed to grow on it's own. Her gesture with respects to the dead seemed like one of those memorials you see on the sidewalk after a horrific shooting and over the next few days flowers, beads, photos and other things appear as people pay their respects. But because their were so many dead and funerals were a little out of the questions because of the attention they would bring it seemed organic to me that people would bring their dead after seeing someone else come up with a way of showing respect.    

Shaun. I was asked recently if this was a nod to the movie Shaun of the Dead. No it is not. Shaun is from a short story I wrote many years ago that started this mess. In that story Shaun was a punk kid named Shaun-tee. He was a wannabee gang banger but he was just too smart for his own good so he never really got into it, instead he got into collage and . . . well his story isn't finished yet. I brought him into the story one as a way to keep the crossover between stories going and two I needed another neighborhood family so I thought I would explore his a little.

I have to say it gave me a lot of ideas about Shaun and his uncle Andy who we meet in this story. because of what I have written in ZWD I now have an idea about what went on in Shaun's life between his first appearance in my mind and this one. Hopefully I will be able to tell that story in a few years.    

ZWD: Fan Review - not typical!

D. says this was well thought out and not typical!
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And NOW
Available at bookstores Everywhere!

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Superstars Stable 5

Stable 05

Stable 5

Davy Boy Smith

Robert Gibson

Ricky Morton

Robert Gibson 02

Ricky Morton 02

Brian Adias 02

Bret Heart

Denis Condrey

Bobby Eaton 02

Buddy Landell

ZWD: Inside Chapter 18

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The Black Truck and a zombie parade. In comparison to the three hunters the guys from the last chapter, in the black truck they were actual hunters, predators,  and they could read the signs that our hero had been there recently. Not that they were hard to read he did cut heads off. So he goes from possibility being found by the zombies to being found by the Black Truck people. It raises the question which one is actually worse? 

A lot of questions like that presented themselves in this short chapter. It kind of gets to that point doesn't it? Even in life, you go from day to day and not much changes then something does change and you have to decide how you will react, how you will adopt, how you will stand and on what side of that issue be it Coke or Pepsi or some greater more important issue.    

A moral quarrel, This discussion between our two hero's I think not only shows this but also I think shows just how much ahead of him she is in adopting to the new world. And it's always going to be that way someone will adopt to things and move on much faster than another person. The other person will not accept change and cling to the "old ways" with some bit of nostalgia for something that was familiar and comfortable but actually nothing like they remember it. 

I suppose being a military brat, moving around so much I can at this age look back with some retrospection and see how quickly I and other brats adopted to change while others who never lived that gypsy lifestyle and barely moved from their comfort zone had a much harder time when change occurred. I don't know, it's a debate that can go on for a long time and in many different directions. 

Our hero's however in their debate shows my perspective fairly well. She has decided to move forward and he is still trying to hand on to a humanity that will get him killed. I believe we can say she has not become vicious or cold blooded but practical and stronger than him. Which reflects something I believe strongly, women are stronger than men. Perhaps not in physical strength but in everything else women are stronger. 

Although this is written as his diary of events I think we can see that as the story goes on he is not so much the hero but the sidekick with a moral dilemma between the new and the old. She is forging on and he is struggling.   

The combination  to the gun safe. Can you imagine their frustration earlier when he realized the page family were doomsday preppers and they had a gun safe but they couldn't find the combination to the damned thing? She absentmindedly stuffs a piece of paper into her pocket and forgets about it only to look at it later to realize it's the combination? 

What a common human action. I know I do it all the time, pick up things and forget I had them. punch an important number into my phone only t forget to add the name. My world is mapped out by sticky notes surrounding my monitor, stuffed in my wallet and plastered on the bathroom mirror when it's really important. 

Right now on my desk I have a note that simply says 11078, I have no idea what it means, where it came from or anything. It's not in my handwriting so one of my coworkers thought it was important and stuck it there, eventually someone will say something to me and it will all make since. But for now. 11078 is a mystery.   

ZWD: Inside Chapter 17

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Run Rabit Run the imagery, the dream. We ended up cutting out pages and pages of the dream sequences. I have to give my editor, Charlee Redman, credit for suggesting they go because it really improved the pace of the story. What you missed in those sequences was really noting important. I had in my mind that our hero would have these dreams where his two childhood friends were helping him and hunting him at the same time. They would try to heard him towards a giant yellow stickpin balloon, his destination, and they kept telling him to go past it, that that was his real destination. A kind of reach your goal and exceed it metaphor. It was really stupid, some great scenes in there but it all slowed the story down and kind of got you lost. There was a running theme to the dreams based on the song Fox on the Run by the 1970's band Sweet although I think I was thinking more of the Scorpions cover of the same song. If I remember right it popped up in my play list and I thought I have to use this in the story. Then we cut it all out. 

Bobby Morgan & Jim Grider on a blowgun hunt
showing off their catch Brandon Grider Jim's son. 

The history of Dylan and Stager. This one is kind of complicated and really simple at the same time. I needed character names for these two best friends. Dylan came about because the playlist started playing a Bob Dylan tune and I thought that's one name I'll call the guy Dylan. Stager was almost named after Bob Seger but I had already put in the Page family after Jimmy Page so I tried to do a double meaning and called him Stager. A stager is an old acting term I think from the time of Shakespeare, it's someone who is a veteran of the stage who runs the play during a performance. Both these guys are veterans in their backstory but I had in mind that Stager was the older, wilder of the two and he would be frustrated with our boy because he just didn't get what they were trying to tell him.       

These two are actually based on two very good childhood friends of mine, Bobby Morgan and Jim Grider. Much like the history of Dylan and Stager these two were adventurers always out in the woods and I was the guy they let tag along. I could tell volumes of stories about our exploits but I wont.

I guess I should explain the photo though. Jim got a blowgun from somewhere and for weeks we three tried to master the art of blowgun hunting. We all got pretty good at hitting a Styrofoam cup at about 10 feet away. After mastering that kill we moved down to the Mississippi River and started using trees as targets. Brandon, Jim's son went along with us and they posed for that pic like big game hunters. Brandon was not hurt by the blowgun, at least that time.  

The three hunters. These guys I thought were good Imagery for several reasons. One the idea of three guys going off to find the Black Truck or zombies or whatever they were hunting seemed noble. The idea of the three coming back as zombies spoke well to just how unprepared they were. I make this even more apparent when our boy goes through their belonging and finds shells and bullets that don't match the guns they were carrying.   

In contrast our boy being trapped under a bush and how he had to control his breathing as a zombie heard strolled past him says a lot about how prepared he was. With no weapons he had to count on his cunning and skill to stay alive just under their feet. They went into the situation blind or ignorant and died while he was from pure experience surviving the heard with noting but what he had already learned. I thought it was a moment that showed just how far he had come from a guy who makes so many mistakes. He's still making them at this point just on a grander scale and not a personal one.   

Decking for a garden & putting things back as they were.  I believe I have already talked about resources but think about this for a moment. If you where you are now in the world had to build something to keep you alive and you didn't have easy access to simple building materials from a hardware store where would you get them? I thought of someones back deck, privacy fencing, kicking out sheet rock and pulling studs from old homes. Tons of places in an old home could be salvaged it would just take some creativity.

This again got into that survival thing from YouTube where people show how to survive. I saw one show where a car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and it's getting dark. The guy took a knife and sliced up the seats using the cushions to insulate himself. took the tires off and burned them so the black smoke caused a plumb for rescuers to see. hubcaps were used to collect and melt snow. I would not have thought of half of that stuff and there were a ton of other things he did to survive. What would you have done? 

Superstars Stable 03 & 04

Stable 03

Stable 04

Stable 3	Stable 4
Road Warrior Hawk	The Crusher
Mike Rotonda	Vern Gagne
Sting	Bobby The Brains Heenan
Keven Sullivan	Curt Henning
The War Lord	Steve Keirn
Steve Dr Death Williams	Stan Lane
Barry Windham	Steve Olsonoski
Sheik Adnan el Kaisee	Steve Regal
King Kong Brody	Brad Rhiengans
Screamin Norman Smiley	Billy Robins

ZD: Fan Review - Not Really Into It.

Karl W. wasn't really into it. Despite that he still enjoyed the story, He even loaned it to another friend! He got sucked into the ZWD world!
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ZWD: Where Do You Stand in the Outbreak?

The folks over at The Blaze took a look at preparedness and found this interactive map that shows your chances.  Do you live in a place you could survive?

These Are the Top 10 Places in the U.S. to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

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ZWD: Author Appearances

I will be in Jonesboro at the ASU Library 3rd floor from 3pm to when we finish on Friday Oct 30th and Saturday at That Bookstore in Blytheville on Saturday 31st from 11am to 3pm. Join me.

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ZWDKings

ZWD: Fan Review "I can hardly wait for his next book!"

ROBBIE M. 

PROUDLY CLAIMS 

DEVOURED THE BOOK IN 6 HOURS! 

Her concern for the characters compelled her to keep reading! 

SHE HAD TO PICK IT UP AGAIN! 

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Superstars Stable 02

Stable 2 

Bobby Eaton

Tully Blanchard

Arn Anderson

Jimmy Garvin

Konga The Barbarian

Ivan Koloff

Nikita Koloff

Stan Lane

Dusty Rhodes

Road Warrior Animal 

ZWD: Inside Chapter 16

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Enter a bunch of kids, I had in mind that there would be a group of kids who had learned from video games and movies how to move with military precision. They may not have it accurate but they were making their version work with each member of the team knowing their task. 'Course the kid with the cigarette was the old salty dog Sargent of the group.

 I liked the contrast between them and our heroes, both had been living this world for the same amount of time and yet the adults were the ones who had not adopted to the new way of things where the kids had adopted and overcame. They were moving without fear of zombies through the streets cans tied behind them daring the zombies to come out and make some trouble. If you remember in the first chapter our couple were afraid of noise. I just loved the idea that they kids were better at this survival thing than the adults were.

Potato Cannon with compressor. 

Potato weapons are awesome. I had happened upon a video where some guys had made some and were shooting them for incredible distances. There are tons of how to build these things videos out there on the web along with diagrams and a ton of other modifications you can do to make them more powerful and more accurate.  And they shoot more than potatoes. There are also potato pistols that can be made but they basically shoot just little slivers of potato at you and can basically do no damage. In the book I have them making potato pistols but my thinking was if you have a cannon and it shoots a potato with deadly force at close range why wouldn't a kid think just make it smaller ie. into a pistol and have it be just as deadly? I realize that there are a ton of reasons why it wouldn't work in real life but we are fighting zombies here I can make a smaller version of a cannon work as a pistol.

Just in case you don't think a cannon at close range can kill a zombie check out this video of one shooting through a car fender. Potato Cannon   I thought these wold be perfect weapons for kids to make and use in the story, I know it's Arkansas and something like 1 in 7 moves has a gun in it but this was just a lot more fun to have and since you can load it with just about anything and soot it I thought it was a perfect weapon.
         

I wanted waffles. As I was talking about the last chapter food is a big subject and when you don't have it you wish you did. I have cooked frozen burritos on a camp fire before and it never turned out good, at least not without aluminum foil. I was simply carrying on the theme that the food situation was bad. 

The Black Truck is the personification of the evil that men do in this story. Again in this chapter they make an appearance and you wonder what they are up to. That mystery of not knowing what they are doing I tried to keep for as long as I could in the story because what you imagine is almost always fare worse than what is really happening.

Face it, with zombies you know they are going to try to eat you. One on one or even up to three or four on one you might have a chance of getting away from that mindless evil get them in a group and they become far more dangerous with the swarm effect of ants attacking an enemy. Starvation is an enemy but it can be fought in a dozen different ways if you have the knowledge how. Animals can be a problem but they can be dealt with, especially in an urban ares like our couple where the bigger animals haven't moved into yet. Their is a big difference between a chipmunk  attack and a black bear attack. But man is the dangerous predator because he thinks like you do and if you can think of a horror to inflict on another so can he. To me that is one of the things that makes the Black Truck in this story the more dangerous element, over the weather, the starvation and the zombies. We know they will kill for no apparent reason and we know they are doing something but what the hell is it? I love the suspense.    

Hot-wiring cars, who hasn't wanted to do that? I see them do it in the movies all the time and it looks easy. It probably is but it's illegal so I have never tried. I'm a good citizen like that. It's something I had to think about for a long time, all the elements involved. Our hero as a web designer has some electronics in his background so that was to his advantage but it's still not something he does every day. By the design of their plan he was going to need to move thousands of cars. Hot-wiring is a skill he desperately needed.   

Zombie Hookers! This was inspired by local events I just changed them into zombies. Let me explain before you jump to conclusions. The service road along I-630 is a very open and visible road so although I am certain it has happened their before seeing a hooker work along the service road isn't a common sight. I thought it was a good bit though -hooker, service road, get it?

Actually what inspired this was an odd occurrence during my bike rides. I love to ride along the Arkansas River Trail. The trail travels 26 miles around the city through several parks and wooded areas along with spots near tourist spots where you can drink, eat & shop. One of those spots is the Clinton Presidential Library, Or as we call it, the Double Wide, since it looks like a double wide trailer, fitting for Arkansas.

   

The parking lot WAS filled with trees and promised to be a large shaded area for visitors to park under when visiting. The problem was that the trees blocked the view of the security cameras. For some reason it became a thing when people realized this for johns to get a blowjob in the parking lot of the library. A lot of the guys would smoke a cigar while it happened.

On Saturday or Sunday morning when I would start my ride at the library parking lot I would see a lot of men getting serviced in the parking lot. Shortly before I wrote that scene with the service road hooker I had gone on a ride and seen yet again one of these moments so I had to add it to the book.

ZWD: Fan Review from S OM

Dear God what have I created?  The mysterious and enigmatic S OM was drawn in to the Zombie world of Little Rock Immediately!
S OM wants MORE just like a zombie!
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ZWD: Inside Chapter 15

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ZWDKings

“Do you think there are vampires?” Hint, Working on a vampire story now. Should be out in a few years. Not that it will take me that long to write it but I'm also working on several other books and it's about the forth one in the cue.

Something that I did with this story when I introduced you to Lonnie, and I have mentioned this before, Lonnie is a character in another story, the next book, who you meet. In the next book you will meet several characters who are in a future story. Since it's hard to introduce a vampire, especially this one into this story I just had to raise the idea about the possibility. But I will say yes Virginia there is a vampire.    

“Food, you know what I miss?  Bacon.  And popcorn, popcorn with beer.” 

“Yogurt.” 

“Ice Cream.” 

“That cheesecake they use to make at that bakery on Main Street.” 

“B-B-Q.”  I said with my stomach growling. 

“The best of all, a peanut buster parfait layered in fudge and caramel and 

topped with real marshmallow cream topping.” 

Food, food, fooood!  When your hungry you can think of little else, and when you have food but not the kind you want you dream of those foods. I was in the Navy during Desert Shield/Desert Storm stuck on La Maddalena in Italy. Believe me it wasn't a hardship compared to the guys over in the heart of the war but it wasn't a piece of cake either.  

The locals for the most part hated us and I can't really blame them. At the time the command said no women on the base because of an incident they wouldn't talk about. La Madd was about eight miles round and had 52 bars of which I have been thrown out of 51 of them in the year and a half that I drank during my three year stay there. 

There were only local restaurants on the island, no chains, no corporate eateries like McDonald's or Taco Bell. You either cooked your own (hard to do when your working 16 hours days) or ate in town at one of the many cafes that served Italian food. Don't get me wrong it was food but we would have killed for a Taco Bell. The closest we had was the ships food and one cafe that served chili cheese fries. The closest McDonald's was in Rome, that's a story for another blog. 

The conversation above I have had a variation of a dozen times with dozens of people all because we wanted the familiar and didn't have it. I know of thousands of people on diets who have the same conversation. It's a great generic conversation.   




The P-38 The John Wayne. I think my father gave me one of those when I was six. He told me he had it in the war. I didn't even know what war but it came from him so it was cool. He gave me that and a pocket knife about an inch long. I still have both of them today but the P-38 I carried on my key chain for years. That little hooked blade on it cut more holes in my jeans pockets than anything else in the world and I have I don't know how many scars on my thigh from being stabbed by that thing as I fell down or had a bike crash or did something stupid.

A younger generation would have no idea how to use this thing but from hundreds of camping trips I can tell you it has gotten me into stubborn cans of food and opened bottles and all manner of things and it's no bigger than a quarter. As I said in the story thousands of GI's carried these things and it served them well. So when your traveling light and need to open a can or bottle or unscrew something it's a great tool to have and I'm glad I gave it to our hero's.


Gaunt. I mention the above things because I had been waiting for a long time to get to this point in the story. From the time I really started writing it I knew I was headed for this moment and I was loving it. I know it sounds strange that I would relish getting my characters to a point of starvation but it's true. I had been reading a lot of survival stuff and how not eating right would make you basically waste away.

Then came that tv show "Naked and Afraid"; if you haven't seen it just watch one episode, just one, and it supported what I had in my mind. In the show your dropped off in the wilds somewhere and you have to trek to a base camp area naked with one item. You have to stay there for 21 days and then trek five miles to the extraction point. In that 21 days the contestants have to find their own food wherever they can and they always loose a lot of weight. Usually they catch some disease like dysentery and have to be rescued by the camera crew.

Our hero's have been scrounging for food for over two months. They are starving, they have gone from a little overweight to lean. For them the next step is gaunt and they are just starting the edge of that. What food they do have they must ration for God only knows how long and they are just realizing that their to-do list is a mile long and they might not have the strength to even make a dent in it before they can start surviving.

Imagine you have been living day to day and once you come up with a plan to live more than day to day, to live week to week and build to month to month or year to year. You have hope, remember they just left the library with new archery skills, they both can now hunt, their chances are doubled. But they see themselves in a reflection and know they are weak, know they may have come up with this plan too late to do them any good. It's only December and winter doesn't let up till March. They have at least three more months to go through before spring and they realize they many not have three more months in them.

What would you do faced with that possibility? You know what they did.             

Cigars, I love cigars. I think this stems from my family. I had a great uncle Henry and an uncle Andy who both smoked cigars and I loved them both. God only know what kind of influence they had on my life outside of the cigars but they both smoked cigars and growing up I wanted to smoke them too. I did in the Navy because in Italy we could buy Cubans in the tobacco shops. Cubans are as good as people make them out to be buy the way. Today I don't smoke more than two or three a year simply because I can't afford them. I'm not talking those Swisher Sweet our boy was smoking but a good cheap $5 cigar. I just can't burn that kind of cash. My neighbor however does smoke Swisher Sweet Peach & Strawberry & Chocolate I think. That's why I decided to reward our boy with the cigars because I like cigars  and in honor of my neighbor our boy got Swisher Sweets.

ZWD: Inside Chapter 14

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Bow practicing in the library seemed like a logical thing to do. Their inside a safe building with long isles much like a firing range and they have walls at the end they can tear up with target practice.  I've already talked about the Archers Paradox about pointing the arrow not at the target you are trying to hit but to the side of it so that you can hit your target, it's a weird way of aiming but it works. In Japanese Archery due to the style in which they shoot they hold the bow in a very strict weird looking posture that doesn't seem like it would work but it does.

      

But it allows them to shoot that arrow a very long way with deadly accuracy.  So accurately that they can reportedly shoot under many low arches and strike their target with ease. Although the library has fairly high ceilings this was what I had in mind when I had them practicing in the isle, a narrow field and a restricted arching space for the arrows when fired. I know that given his previous demonstration of not being able to literately hit the side of a barn to being able to strike his target in a confined space in such a short time is a miraculous achievement but it's my story and what are you going to do? I needed him to get better fast so he did.    


The firetruck killing machine was one of my favorite scenes to write about in a previous chapter. The question came up in editing wither or not those hoses would still be flailing about or would they have emptied by now. From my experience on the firefighting teams in the navy; as long at those hoses were charged (pressure applied) they would flail about. I did not imagine anyone coming along shutting off pressure to the hoses so I think they would continue. I may be wrong. I probably am but it makes a great visual.  

Car fires and target practice together, how much fun is that? They had just spent hours int he library practicing on a wall.They needed to, he needed to, she was doing fine, get in some dead action target practice on moving targets. Naturally it wasn't going to go well.

In this chapter it wasn't so much the archery that was important to me but the fact that they had been living basically homeless for so long that dumpster diving was done without so much as a grown. He needed empty bottles so in he went and neither one thought much of it. They had gone from professional upper middle class to professional dumpster divers with ease of necessity. I'm still not sure if it was a demonstration of adaptability or depredation.  

ZWD: Fan Photo Cynthia H.

Another Fan Photo!

Cynthia H. is about to DEVOUR the best zombie book this year! 

Where is your fan photo? 

Send it to us at

walkingkrow@swbell.net

put ZWD in the subject,please

Don't have a copy yet you can get it at these fine stores.

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Superstar Stable 01

I got them loaded as soon as I could. Here is the first set of wrestlers for you to start enjoying your game. I have listed the ones in this folder below. As I said I have a lot of these and it will take a while befoe I get them all on here. so enjoy for now. 

Stable 01

Brian Adias

BrickHouse Brown

Art Crew

Bobo Brazil

The Sheikh

Stone Cold Steve Austin

Goldberg

The Rock

Rick Flair

Superstars of Pro Wrestling - The Matches

Naturally you can do a simple match and have a lot of fun or a tag team match and double that fun. But why stop there? 

The specialty matches are fantastic. 

I think the Texas Death Match was my favorite of them all. 

I remember building up a grudge with one of they guys in our gaming group and ending it in a specialty Grudge match. One of the five guys in my stable would be pitted against one of theirs, usually after I tried to get them to give me a title shot and was brutally denied. 

Things would be settled once and for all. Either I would win the match and win a title shot or I couldn't compete that wrestler in a title match for two months. Throw in a Texas Death Match or a Steel Cage Match and it was going to be an exciting time at the kitchen table. And if I was playing especially dirty and we all were there would be a Manager at ringside.     

As always feel free to download the matches and have fun. I ask that you share freely because this is a great game for game night. The Link is below. 

The Matches

I know I have given you the Matches here and in a previous post the rules and a bunch of tournament charts to get started but no wrestlers. 

They will be coming in the next  few post as I said earlier I have about 500 of them to share. They are broken down into stables of about ten wrestlers each. 

It's taking me a while to get them organized. please be patient, they are on their way.   

ZWD: Another Fan Review

"I love it!" She Claims!
"This is truly a good read!"
Can her praise get any better?
What did you think of the book?
Will Batman get to city hall before the bomb blows? What?
Ok that had noting to do with the book, there is no Batman in it or is there?
Read it and find out. Don't have a copy yet? Are you insane?
Do you realize you could go ignorant without a copy?
That's a medical fact! I couldn't make that up!
Let me help you out click on one of the links below and get your copy now.
Right Now!
Click on one of the links below and get your copy today.

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Once you have your copy take a pic with it and send it to us at

 walkingkrow@swbell.net (Put ZWD in the subject line please) 

Once we have it we will add it to the photo gallery.  or you can do it yourself on our Facebook page at ZWDKings

ZWD: Fan Review

Crazy For ZWD! Crazy!

If your not reading this book for Halloween You are not living a complete life. 

I'm not making that up. You need to read this book. 

Don't have a copy? Don't worry my friend I'm here to help. Click on one of the links below and get your copy today.

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Once you have your copy take a pic with it and send it to us at

 walkingkrow@swbell.net (Put ZWD in the subject line please) 

Once we have it we will add it to the photo gallery.  or you can do it yourself on our Facebook page at ZWDKings

ZWD: Inside Chapter 13

You can get your copy of the book here at these fine stores. 

Barns & Noble  

Amazon.com

once you have your copy send us a photo of you with it. We'll add it to our fan photo gallery. 

krowdady@swbell.net 

or you can add it yourself to our Facebook page.

ZWDKings

I think this is the shortest chapter int he book. From the previous chapter you know things did not go well for them in getting to the library. In fact he might just die in this chapter. (Don't worry he doesn't die in THIS chapter) But I did draw from personal experience on this one.

When I was a child, perhaps 10, I busted the back of my head open. I required six stitches, there was blood everywhere and I vividly remember the feel of blood rolling down the back of my head behind my ears and dripping on the ground as they stitched me up. I remember the doctor saying; "I got it cleaned out, now we need to sterilize it before we close. This might sting a bit." and he poured something on the back of my head that burned like hell. I didn't pass out but I was hyperventilating so much I almost did.

Let's face it, I'm willing to face it, face it with me. Our hero man is a big baby. True he has been banged up a bunch and bounced around more than his fare share but he's a big baby. That's what I was trying to show in this chapter and I think I did.