Echoes of Erebus prologue video... and a cat.

Fun experiment I filmed yesterday while I had the house to myself. It gave me ideas for other vids in the future. This vid is less than professional, but it was fun, and hopefully interesting enough to watch.

Oh, btw, the music that comes in now and then was cannibalized from a composition I did quite a long time ago, and probably released with 'Sonic Equinox' under my old handle 'onyx'.

The appeal of Zombies

My first book deals heavily in zombies, and the following two don't shy away from them either. It's understandable if at first glance, people assume I'm a huge zombie fan. I'm kinda not. If you read Lifehack, you'll find it's not like a typical zombie book or movie. Lifehack isn't entirely about survival.. about a quarter of the book plays like that, but can you name the last Romero-styled movie that escalated into airstrikes on a dragon?

Seriously, name one. If there's one I missed, I wanna go see it. Otherwise, I'll go on assuming Lifehack is unique in that aspect. (as well as a handful of other aspects, of course)

Still, when Jersey's "the Star Ledger" called out about "The psychology of ... Zombies!" I felt I had to answer:
----

When the hero of my first book [Alisia] first hit the page [as art], she needed a target. Not wanting to kill innocents, I thought, "Hey, what's a threat I can shoot the **** out of, and not feel guilt?" I considered robots, but zombies won out. Robots are too potentially powerful, and from a writing perspective, it's hard to draw a line in what they can do- and readers are likely to draw their own limits on what a robot can and cannot do. It's a far too easy fallback to say "Yeah, you just beat 100 robots... but now.... HERE'S ONE WITH A BIGGER LASER!!!! OOOOOOH!!!"

Zombies have limits, they are pretty well defined. Sure, now we have fast ones, but on the whole, if you see a zombie, you know what you're in for. Does that make them less of a threat? No, that's the trick. They're like you and me... that alone is a threat. And they're relentless, tireless, and hungry. The more you think of a person maniacally trying to bite into your flesh... at first you think of an angry little kid biting. Yeah, that can leave a mark... but make it an adult who wants more than to hurt you, and have the strength to tear parts of you away. To pull your familiar, comfortable body apart, bit by bit.

Now give this guy a couple hundred buddies that all want the same thing. Suddenly you're the last tray of nachos in the stadium.

Right now, guarantee for me that there isn't a zombie outside your house. There isn't? Did you look? Are you wondering? We know there isn't, of course there isn't. But doesn't a part of you want to give a teeny little glance? Did you smirk at your fence? How long would that fence stop them, you wonder? Hey, there's a mop nearby, would it... no, a shovel would be better.

Suddenly, you're casting yourself in a zombie survival fantasy. It's real enough that anyone can get wrapped up in it. When the musing is done, you chuckle to yourself, or thank that it's not happening.

It isn't, is it?

Did you look outside?

Just a quick peek? For me? We have to stick together.

Chatty zombies

Quick knee update: Had an xray today, and it's healed enough I can ditch the brace.

Anyway, I was conceitedly reading my own stuff, specifically Echoes of Erebus today. I'm a little sick of zombies, I think a lot of people are. I tried to give em an extra twist in EoE, (most obviously with the 'demon' types) and I knew a section was coming up with 'normal zombies'.

I kinda dreaded it, and kind of expected to find myself skimming through it. Then HEY, it's talking! Yes, I wrote it, so I wasn't SHOCKED, but I'd forgotten about it, and was pretty pleased with the result.

They were walking to each other, sort of. They were talking via programming by our master badguy, who injected his ego and sense of humour into the banter. I then came to the realization that I am SO not a zombie writer. Sure, most of my zombies are the non-articulate moany-type, but the ones I have the most fun with aren't. I used to wonder why my books didn't fit in with ZOMBIE BOOKS.

One thing I considered was "My books are character driven, but now and then a few million zombies and/or nanites show up." Which... yeah.. I'll stand by that. Maybe I'm too fond of the type of zombies as shown in the simpsons on the occasional 'treehouse of horror'.

I've been neglecting this blog pretty bad, but go listen to my interview!!

http://www.thegenretraveler.com/science-fiction/podcast-episode-21-attack-of-the-nanite-zombies/

It's about half an hour long, and ends up bringing in a lot of different topics. Kinda. It went really well, and came out on valentine's. I have a lot to blog about, and no time to do it! Broke my knee, got gotten by a job, blah blah blah. I'll have to tell those tales another time. Oh, did I mention yet I have a 2nd kiddo due in the summer? Eeeheeeheee!

Next entry- sooner, and more. Promise. Kinda.

Echoes of Erebus excerpt - small one, and an update

Gee Mitch, where are your parents, Mitch? Eaten, you say? Intriguing. You even got to see it happen, and hear the screams of your mother as her own blood bubbled up her throat? See? There's a unique experience you can talk about to your school chums. They what? They were eaten too? Oh, some of them were doing the eating. What a diverse group!

-Sarah considering the futility of trying to converse with some people.

I'm at page 98/291 of another editing read before I pass it onto the editing crew. The cover is under some upgrade surgery.. still the same overall idea as the one that I previously posted, just... a bit better.

Echoes of Erebus first draft nearing completion

I'm roughly forty pages away, and with no toddler around in the next week or so, I have a lot of opportunity to do it. I'm not saying it WILL be done in the next week, but it's very possible.

I have recently threatened to drop Sarah 17 stories, and chop her roughly in half. I'm not sure how she'd deal with those situations, and neither is she. Thankfully she managed to think her way out of both threats in fun ways. Right now I have her deep underground. She just dealt with a boobytrap and some Erebus-grade opponents,all while struggling with visibility issues. Light amplification won't help much when there's no light to amplify.

An 'Erebus-grade' creation comes in two varieties depending on the mood of the creator at the time. Effective, or 'unique'. Those two categorizations sometimes overlap, but an effective design will be re-used, making the creature much less unique. Case in point being the common zombie. Sure, you can do artistic things WITH zombies, but this often reduces their effectiveness.

The cover I posted last time has been changed... at least there's another draft in the mix now. Same general idea, but somewhat darker blues.

In other news, I ran into a review of Lifehack that I wasn't aware of before. It was pretty darn complimentary, and illustrates how I need to stop chasing after reviewers who I know to be tough as nails, and let some gentler readers have a crack at it now and then.

I've also been interviewed for another website, thought I'm not sure when it will be posted. You can bet I'll pop the link up when it happens!

I've gotten 'clearance' to do a signing event in a local coffee shop. I just need to pick my saturday, do a little promo work, and it'll be done. The manager was quite open to the idea... it makes me think I should try some other coffee shops, and do these kinds of things until I need to reorder for my personal stock.



In other other news, I just had a sneezing fit so violent, I now smell blood.
In other other other news, my cat is going bat-poopie insane, and just clobbered herself by running into a doorframe at mach 47.

Got interviewd! And to celebrate, have an Echoes excerpt too...!

Clinton Foster's 'Interviews and Projects' blog has just posted a spot about Watching Yute. I kind of end up on my gay-rights soapbox a little bit, but worse things could happen. All in all, it's good stuff. (in the event you're reading this long after my interview has sunk into the archives, you can probably find it directly by this link.) Thanks again Clinton! I know there's a reason you invented the internet... huh? Different guy? Okay. His own main site is here by the way.

Ah, I've been promising a new excerpt for a while, and I keep procrastinating. Here's the freshest stuff... it's not finalized by any means, and has had limited proof reading, but it does show a facet of "Echoes of Erebus" that I haven't really shown before. To set it up, our hero Sarah dreams from time to time when she has nothing else to do. It becomes clear soon that in her dreams she is 'Amanda', living out events during Erebus' attacks on the city of Meston....

-------

Sarah found herself again dreaming that she was this 'Amanda'. She was with a group of a dozen or so people, wandering down a deserted street. A nearby discarded newspaper reminded her that she was in the city of Meston.

Some of the people in the group were wounded. Two were kids. A few could be seen carrying weapons. A couple rifles, a bat, a shovel. Everyone walked on cautiously, looking around now and then.
No one spoke, everyone listened. An unidentified sound caused the group to stop and listen. “What is it?” asked the younger child, a boy. He was shushed quickly by the girl standing next to him. Everyone kept listening.

Sarah looked down and saw blood on her hands. Was she injured, or was it someone else's blood? She felt pain. Her hands were scraped. She had fallen at some point.

The sound happened again. A dull but sharp sound. “It's one of those cannon things again.” said a man at the front of the group. “Maybe it means they're trying to send in more evacuation craft. Keep one eye on the sky, folks. If we spot a chopper, or one of those airlimbs coming in, we might be able to hustle over to get a ride.”

“Sure,” Sarah said, “If they don't get shot down by those things first. They'd be nuts to try that again.” Sarah didn't mean to say that, Amanda was in control of this dream. Sarah was just a passenger. Sarah didn't have much of an idea what she was talking about, but it didn't sound that optimistic. “Let's just keep going for now, alright?” A few people in the group murmured in the affirmative, and they got underway.

After a block or so, they came to a blood spill that reached across the entire street. They stopped at the edge of it, each silently considering having to walk across it. It looked to go on for about half a block.
“What the hell happened here?” someone asked quietly.
A woman in the group spoke up with a bit more of a tactical mindset. “Is it even safe to cross? I mean, if the zombies are nanite-driven like the Autar ones were, who's to say that this blood isn't infectious? Or even some kind of trap? It might infect us as soon as we step on it!”

The older of the two kids, a girl roughly twelve years old wandered away from the 'pond', muttering “This isn't happening, this isn't happening. I'm going to wake up now, alright? Someone wake me up now, please!”
That got the attention of the group. Many also looked to the younger child. A boy about eight years old. He was standing, shaking, staring out across the blood pond with wide eyes.

Amanda picked up the boy. “Oh to heck with this. We're not hauling these kids across this. It's too much.”
One of the men with a rifle nodded. “It's not like we were headed for anywhere specific. If we took a left back there, it's still roughly the same distance out of the city.” Amanda hadn't been waiting for his approval, nor the opinions of any of the others. She had already begun carrying the boy in the direction he suggested. The girl was the first to follow and the others were not far behind.

The boy clung to Amanda tightly as they walked, but he was still trembling. “What's your name, kiddo?” Amanda asked softly. He wasn't answering. “Hey little man, can you tell me your name?”
The girl walking beside them answered. “His name is Mitch.”
Mitch was getting heavy, but he still trembled enough that Amanda didn't feel like asking him to walk. “Hi, Mitch. Is this your sister here? She was kind enough to tell me your name, can you introduce me to her?”

“Cathy.” Mitch said quietly. Amanda wanted to draw more conversation out of Mitch, but every topic she could think of probably led to the horrible things going on. Gee Mitch, where are your parents, Mitch? Eaten, you say? Intriguing. You even got to see it happen, and hear the screams of your mother as her own blood bubbled up her throat? See? There's a unique experience you can talk about to your school chums. They what? They were eaten too? Oh, some of them were doing the eating. What a diverse group!

Amanda kept her mouth shut and just gave Mitch an extra squeeze. She wanted to give Cathy a squeeze too, but her arms were full with Mitch. Instead, she looked over to Cathy with a sympathetic forced smile. Cathy returned a similar look. It was heartbreaking.

“What the fuck was that?” a man in the group asked. He was pointing down the street, but nothing was there. “It ran across, it looked kinda big!” Amanda and everyone else kept an eye on that street. Something indeed sauntered out from an adjoining street, several blocks ahead.

A horse. With a rider. Maybe. It was too far off to see details, but it walked like a horse, and it was coming their way. It sauntered casually. Another two horses with riders stumbled into view behind him. They were wrestling as if they were dogs playing. The riders didn't fall off somehow, despite the horses falling on their side several times in their playing, often nearly upside down.

The first horseman continued striding forward slowly as the two playful ones were joined by a fourth. The first was close enough to see that the rider's head was little more than a skull. He raised his arms high in proclamation. He lacked hands; the forearms ended in narrow points. A voice came from him, booming so loud as to rattle windows.

“Hail, good travelers!” Despite a deep tone and immense volume, the voice sounded friendly enough. “This apocalypse is brought to you by our new and righteous lord and god, Erebus! Yes, Erebus! For when death isn't enough for you, Erebus will put extra spring in your step and extra human flesh in your mouth! If you get mutilated by only one necromantic god this year, make it Erebus!”

As the lead horseman lowered his arms, the other three ceased their play and began to charge. It was now easier to see that none of them had normal heads. One's head was replaced with a rifle sticking up, one had a roast turkey sitting up as a head, and the last one had half a dozen impaled rats planted in its neck stump.
All four charged with pointed arms held out to their sides, pointing downward at an angle. With that same volume, a scream came out that sounded a lot like that 'demon of Densfarn' that Sarah had seen.

Mitch grabbed onto Amanda even tighter as the group braced for the inevitable.

New Echoes of Erebus 'clip', Also- yay. vamps.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “That's dis-”
“:::I am not discussing that kind of imagery with my daughter,” Jason dryly interrupted, “I didn't see it, you didn't see it, moving on.” Such 'art' seemed like a mild offence after the whole zombie-genocide simulation, but Sarah let it slide.

The fourth door stood at the end of the hall. Most of the hall was made from the same wood that most of the bar seemed to be made of, but the wall at the end was solid concrete. The door was steel.
“:::I'm guessing that's probably not the grill's meat freezer.”
Jason scoffed. “:::I'm guessing they store their meat in the sun.”
Sarah reached out for the handle, and pulled it open. It was a door from a freezer, but inside it was lit even dimmer than the rest of the bar. A diffused warmth and mild scent of tobacco and other burnable things seemed to press out towards her. New sounds also found her. Yelling and cheering mostly. Past the door the hallway continued as concrete, and slowly lead downwards.

“:::Pop the strength to max, Sarah.”
“:::Already did.”

====================

Just the rost recent lil bit from Echoes of Erebus. I wrote that about 15 min ago. Pardon the formatting, but the blog ignores indents, so I used a few double returns to break it up. For those unaware, in my books the ":::" denotes that the following statement was done digitally. In this case, (as with much of the book) the ::: conversations are between Sarah and Jason, who lives in Sarah's brain.

As mentioned, there is a bit of zombie-fun in the coming book. Less than in Lifehack, but more than Yute. The creatures in Echoes will be somewhat more memorable I hope- partly due to my own writing experience, and partly because fewer numbers of creatures allows more time to be spent paying attention to each; both in tactics and in imagery. Oh, there will be a few scenes of the huge mobs, but not as many as in Lifehack, and it won't be solved by ordinance. And they're not necessarily the main issue.

Then again, the zombies in Lifehack weren't the main event anyway. Erebus wasn't playing to win. Zombie outbreaks were just his opening volley, a declaration- not of war, but of "Yeah bitches! What ya gonna do about THAT?" until he got ideas that amused him more.

This isn't a huge spoiler, and you might have figured it out by now anyway, so let's make it official oublic knowledge. Yes, 'Jason' above is indeed Erebus, A.K.A Jonathan Coll. Well.. kind of. If you remember Lifehack's events, you might have a better idea.

Alright, it's way too late. I had planned to do a blog entry about aspartame, (summary: aspartame bad, breaks down into nasty stuff like formaldehyde in your body, and can do nasty stuff to you, so ditch the diet pop!)

-and about the movie Daybreakers which I saw last week. (summary: cool vamp ideas, some poignant moments, but marred by moments of especially cheesy gore, 3 pointless 'surprise bat flying at the screen' shots, and a couple gaping plot holes.

In other news, True Blood rocks.... but "Sookie"? WTF kind of name is that?

I think the recent surge in vamp stuff is due to twilight... not because it was good and people want to jump on the bandwagon, but because it was HORRIBLE, and people want to remind the world how vamps are supposed to be done.

Oh, by the way. Claudia Black. (Did I get ya? You know who you are!)

Lifehack's Mana Drive- REAL?

Check it out!

Any of you who've read Lifehack, hopefully remember the 'Mana drive'- a city wide system where power is transmitted wirelessly.

Once, someone caught me, and guessed ole Nicola Tesla's ol timey experiments as the inspiration for that. Today, my dad drew the same conclusion when he came across this video.... This is also why I don't specify in my books what year they are. The future is coming at us faster than we expect.

Next up? NANO-DRIVEN ZOMBIES! FLEEEEEEE, B*****S!!!!

In other news: My website, www.ozero.ca has been updated to reflect the 3 available formats of both books, AND includes the new, reasonable pricing on the hardcovers, at 23.95! (the other 2 formats being the trade paperback, $14.98, and E-book, $4.98)

At this time, the trade paperback for Watching Yute isn't actually available QUITE yet, but it will be very soon, quite likely by the end of august.

That leaves just the sci-fi convention to survive...!

28 weeks later..... totally ripped me off.

Nah, I kid, but a few events in 28 weeks had me saying to myself "man, I SO did that first.." Mind you, they did it in shiny pretty graphics.

Overall, I really liked the movie. I used to say "Yeah, I love zombie movies", but then I watched more of them. Dawn of the dead springs to mind. DOTD features quite a few scenes that are more gore than I need, tyvm.. especially one very painful looking one for a certain HypaSpace hostess.. it instantly depressed me. It was the final straw that ruined the movie for me.

Then there's things like Saw. The first had an interesting concept. I watched it hoping for some dark physiological stuff, but to so huge surprise, that aspect didn't go that deep. I skipped #2. #3 was picked despite my vote against it at a friend's house. It was just an excuse for a snuf film. Why do people pay to see that kind of meaningless suffering? What kind of person MAKES it?

But back to 28 weeks later... both it and it's predecessor, 28 days, are my kind of zombie flick. Yes, there's blood and gore, but really, not much more than is entirely necessary to tell the story of civilization being overrun by maniacal cannibalistic folks.. Well, aside from one or two bloody scenes that almost seemed comical.

But the story was interesting. It wasn't just "Enter room, watch someone die slow and horribly, go to next room". It was more of an adventure. So many horror movies feel the need to kill EVERYONE, to leave zero hope- often for the world.

Well, I could ramble on, but I'd end up repeating myself. Maybe I should watch the new Day of the Dead... that one was run by romero again, right? Maybe I can see some of his alleged consumerism metaphors in it... meh.

Anyway, this leads into Lifehack. Yes, there's zombies. Yes there's a fair handful of gore. But it's not gore for gore's sake. I'm the first to say the book isn't scary. It's not meant to be. The gore that's in there us just there to illustrate the events. I don't want to scare anyone. With Lifehack, I'm telling a story of adventure and love, with just enough of a twist to not be cliche.

And lasers.

(Actually, I don't think there ARE any lasers... Oh wait! The P90 laser sight. Ah, there. mmmmmmmm, lasers...)

Lifehack 60%, and random news.

The Lifehack revision passed the 60% mark. I remember Michelle saysing when she was pregnant... "When I have the baby, I'll be on maternity leave, and I'll be at home. You'll have a lot more time for writing then."

I don't think she believed that any more than I did. It's hard to type with lil Caitlin sucking on a finger. Maybe when she figures out her thumbs, things will accelerate. In the mean time, I gust have to exercise my patience. No biggie. When that's done, I'll print one revision copy, and pass if around to volunteers with a highlighter. Numerous people have stepped up to the plate, more than on the first draft. I think they READ the first draft, and-

• A) Realized I'm serious about this book thing, and
• B) Realized how bad it needs people to look it over.

While they do that, I'll be plugging away at Watching Yute. My wife would rather see me work on the children's book, or the nonfiction "Wasn't worth the parking space", but the first draft of Yute is already half done, and waiting patiently. My third sci fi in that world can wait until after all those. Some of the concepts for 'Echoes' are still fermenting anyway...

Want a taste of how Lifehack's going? (Even if the blog kinda fudges up the formatting a bit)

"It could have been a bomb." The zombie said. "You're pretty brave.. or dumb."

"It didn't seem to fit your M.O. to use a bomb." Alisia said, fingering a power switch inside. "So, what's your name?"

"Ha! Nice try. But I guess you have to call me something.. how about... uh.. what's Autar backwards...? Ratua? No, that sucks. Uh.... ooh, this is cool, how about Samhain?"

"Samhain?" Regan asked

"Hmm.. you're right. A bit dorky still, and fact is, he wasn't actually the Celtic god of the dead. Ooh! Egyptian! Anubis! No, no, that’s been done. Charon? I’m not into boats.” The zombie looked off into nowhere while he thought and rambled. “Namtar? Rudra? Dorky, no. Thanatos has been so done. Tartarus? Tartar sauce. No. Hm. Erebus! Yes! Call me Erebus! Son of Chaos, brother of Nyx!”

"What the hell ever! Why are you doing this?" Alisia asked.

"Did you know that Erebus has a volcano named after him? Some people used to think of Erebus and Hades as the same guy, but I think the-"

"Shut the fuck up." Alisia pressed the switch in the mobile server, and he fell limp. The scattering of writhing parts they had made stopped moving, and rest of the zombies in other areas of the mall fell to the ground.

The owner of my HQ bookstore, Heron's books, will probably split the cost with me to mass-mail promotional postcards for the book and her store. Should I do a signing for the 2nd edition? Most of my friends and family already have a copy of the first ed, and probably wouldn't be too interested in 're buying' the book... but with a little 'real advertising' it might be worth it...

In other news, today 'Radar' went back to South Korean for a month. She had teary farewell to a friend who won't be here next year. Le sigh... Ping head back to China for a month tomorrow. Michelle is super happy to be making to drives to the airport in a row, but c'est la vie. It's going to be a little quite around here for a while, for better or worse.

Also yesterday we saw our first potential renters for the suite when it becomes available in Sept. They seemed nice and responsible, so we said OK. They have a dog, too, which will hopefully mean they'll be understanding about our own feral beast. They're engaged, and it will be their first home out form their parents. It's a good suite for first timers... the utils are taken care of and all that, so it's simple to manage. Will these folks be the ones to break the track record the suite has? Out of 3 renters since we moved in, each has left roughly a year after they came, having bought a place.

Lifehack progress

Well, the revision is about at 25% done. When that's done, I'll be getting a private printing to farm out to some univ. lit student to run through for typos and such. I have no idea what to pay for that sort of thing.
Some have told me that the students don't care; they just want it for their resumes. None the less, paying something does influence a bit of motivation to actually get something done.

When that stage is underway, I can work on the cover(s).. One for the trade paperback, one for the requested hardcover. U promised I'd post an image of what I have so far, didn't I?

Ahh, I should have saved a better level of JPG, but you get the point. The title is also just a holdover form the last over.

As far as some changes that have happened in the story from the first edition:

• Jonathan Coll gets a bit more focus early on
• The architecture of Autar has been changed to be less 'Midgar'-ish.
• Jonathan will no longer be choosing the name 'Anubis'. Stargate made the name too famous. He will instead choose 'Erebus', a similarly themed entity.
• The character 'Anne' will now be called 'Erika'. My apologies to the real-life Anne I know who was happy to have her name in the book. Blame Richard Dean Anderson.
• We get to see Regan breaking up with Kris, instead of just hearing about it.
• Various added little touches that no one will notice. More description, clarification, digits for numbers all changed to full spellings, ('5' becomes 'five')
• Font size changed from 11 to 10.
• Formatting made more standardized in terms of paragraphs, tabs, etc.
• Extras section nuked.
• The existance of the four sections will be erased, and turned into one whole piece.
• Table of contents removed.
• "AZU-" removed from title
• Due to formatting changes and the loss of the extras section, page count will be considerably lower, resulting in a lower end price.
• Lancer will have some more elaboration, and more details about them will be revealed.

I think that's it off the top of my head.

Other than that, it's the exact same thing, except:

• Joss Wheadon is no longer my director of choice, Uwe Boll is.
• Alisia has been turned into a guy named Al.
• Regan's now straight, and all traces of lesbian content have been removed.
• The zombies are now civil war re-creationists with chronic halitosis.

You believe me, right?