Afterblight Chronology

To celebrate last week's UK release of The Journal of the Plague Year we sat down with Abaddon Editor David Moore to work through the chronology of The Afterblight series so far.*

In the Beginning

1. Orbital Decay by Malcolm Cross. This one’s easy, as it starts as the virus is just getting started.

=2. School’s Out by Scott K. Andrews. Exactly where to place Scott’s opening novel is tricky, as Lee flashes back to the early days of the Cull and the story runs out over the course of a year, but I’m going to pin this one down as at least starting within a few months of the virus breaking out.

=2. Dead Kelly by C. B. Harvey. Colin’s contribution is explicitly placed six months after the Cull hits, which makes it more or less contemporary with the start of School’s out.

One Year on

3. The Bloody Deluge by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Adrian doesn’t pin Katy’s and Emil’s flight across Germany down, but it seems to begin between one and two years after the Cull.

Year Two

Editor-in-Chief Jon Oliver's
favourite Rebellion cover.

4. Death Got No Mercy by Al Ewing. Al’s actually quite specific; Cade’s rampage begins two years after the dyin’ started.

5. ‘The Man Who Would Not Be King’ by Scott Andrews. This short story, included with Paul Kane’s Broken Arrow (and the collected School’s Out Forever), bridges School’s Out and Operation Motherland and is set around two years after the Cull.

Year Three

6. Operation Motherland by Scott K. Andrews. Set a while after the end of School’s Out, as the new school has had a chance to settle in, Motherland takes place around three years after the Cull.

Year Four

7. Arrowhead by Paul Kane. Paul and Scott, I gather, sorted out between themselves that de Falaise’s invasion occurs after the destruction of the base in Salisbury plain, explaining why there was no organised resistance. Around Year Four.

Year Five

=8. The Culled by Simon Spurrier. The nameless soldier of Simon’s book explicitly gives the date as five years after the Cull.

=8. Kill or Cure by Rebecca Levene. Jasmine leaves the secret facility at Lake Erie at the same time as her lover – The Culled’s nameless hero – sets out to find her.

=8. Children’s Crusade by Scott K. Andrews. Lee and Matron clash with the Neo-Clergy’s child-snatchers, suggesting that this book is contemporary with The Culled.

9. ‘The Servitor’ by Paul Kane. This short story – published in Death Ray #21, Oct/Nov 2009 (and collected in the ebook edition of Hooded Man) – introduces the sinister new cult that kicks off the action in Broken Arrow. Between Years Five and Six.

Year Six

10. Broken Arrow by Paul Kane. It has been some while since Arrowhead’s Rob Stokes settled Nottingham and established his Rangers, putting this book around Year Six

11. ‘Perfect Presents’ by Paul Kane. A charming snapshot of life in Afterblight Nottingham, this short story – featured in Abaddon Books’ A Very Abaddon Christmas blog event, 2009 (and collected in the ebook edition of Hooded Man) – is set the Christmas after Broken Arrow.

Year Seven

12. ‘Signs and Portents’ by Paul Kane. This short story – included in Children’s Crusade (and collected in ebook edition of Hooded Man) – sets the scene for Arrowland, and takes place in about Year Seven.

Year Eight to Year Nine

13. Arrowland by Paul Kane. A little while has passed since the rise and fall of the Tsar, putting this book at about eight or nine years after the Cull.

One Decade on

14. Dawn Over Doomsday by Jasper Bark. Some years have passed since the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn was crippled by the nameless soldier of The Culled in Year Five, placing it about one decade in.

Twenty Years on

15. Blood Ocean by Weston Ochse. This one’s made fairly easy by dint of sheer scale. It’s not clear when exactly the events occur, but it’s clear that people have been born and grown to adulthood never knowing a world before the Cull. Blood Ocean’s set at least twenty years after the virus.

With each new title and each new author bring a whole new perspective and history to the world of The Afterblight we're already really excited to see what the next wave of books brings. Let us know where or when you'd love to see the next title set, either in the comments below or @abaddonbooks on twitter. Plus, why not take advantage of our current Afterblight sale to explore the series more - titles start from just £3 until July 17th 2014.

Journal of the Plague Year is out now in the UK in print and kindle edition, as well being available worldwide through the rebellion store. 

Out in the UK now

*For those new to Afterblight a quick explanation: the series is shared world writing experience. Each book or story contributed is a stand alone title in its own right and you can start the series anywhere you like. As more and more authors contribute to the series new points in the history of The Afterblight are uncovered around the world that may affect future stories. Malcolm Cross, author of Orbital Decay, discusses the experience of contributing to Afterblight in more detail here.

GIVING QUESTIONS, DEMANDING ANSWERS: Weston Ochse

With Blood Ocean hitting shelves this week, the mighty Weston Ochse submitted to our editorial authority and - upon promise of release of his precious collection of decapitated garden gnomes - answered some questions about floating cities, murderous Hawaiians, and his zombie apocalypse bolt-hole...

Weston is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of various short stories and novels, including the critically acclaimed Scarecrow Gods. He is much in demand as a speaker at genre conventions and has been chosen as a guest of honour on numerous occasions. As well as writing many novels, Weston has written for comic books, professional writing guides, magazines and anthologies. Weston lives in Southern Arizona with his wife, the author Yvonne Navarro, and their menagerie of animals. Blood Ocean is his second novel for Abaddon Books.

* What were the particularly challenges you faced in writing for an established universe that has already been explored by several different authors?

Honestly, since I’d been following Afterblight since before the very first book, I was a little worried. After all, there have been nine books before mine. What if I messed up? But then I realized two things. One, the books weren’t necessarily sequential. And two, that no one had written about a floating city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. By creating my own setting, I was giving myself breathing room. And it worked.

* How did the idea for the monkey-bankers come about?

It’s a crazy thing. After speaking with editor-in-chief Jon Oliver in Brighton about the possibility of a book that image popped into my mind and ended up searing into it. Just the imagery of a monkey surgically attached to a person’s back was so iconic… just wow.

* There's a lot of Hawaiian mythology in Blood Ocean. Is Hawaii a place you were already familiar with, or did you have to do a lot of research?

I was already familiar with a lot of it. My best friend is Hawaiian. I’ve written about it in my novels Recalled to Life and Track of the Storm. I’ve also been there. The place is steeped in history and mythology, and as far as I’m concerned, has barely been tapped.

* Tell us a bit about your writing routine.

When I’m in the throes of a novel, such as Blood Ocean, I have a fairly regular routine. In fact, my goal is to write novels in three months. I can usually make that happen with the first draft if I keep to at least five pages a day. Then I take another month for editing and proofing, very often having my Beta Readers and Uber Fans read it as well, so I can provide their input.

* As a Bram Stoker award winner is horror your first love, or are you adept at all genres?

I’ve always felt that horror is a feeling, not really a genre. Blood Ocean is a science fiction novel, for sure. But it’s also horror, isn’t it? It is in that I delve a little more into the brilliant violence that would attend a society at the end of the world, where like-minded and like-blooded people band together out of sheer desperation.

*What are your five favourite novels?

Tough question because these can change every day because there are so many beautiful novels that have influenced me since I first read ‘Once Upon a Time,’ but I’ll try.

* Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury for its melancholy remembrance of what it was to be young; * The Scar by China Mieville for his world-building and some of the most beautifully written passages I’ve ever had the pleasure to read;

* A Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker for its just around the corner universe that is there in our everyday lives;

* The Last Good Kiss by James Crumbly for distilling and originalizing everything that was ever wonderful about the America detective novel genre;

* The Hobbit by none other for starting me on a journey into a thousand fantasy lands populated by the muse of a thousand authors, to include the incomparable Steve Donaldson as well as the inconceivable Joe Abercrombie.

* What advice would you give to new writers hoping to break into the field?

Don’t ever have anyone publish anything you’ve written until it’s been edited by an actual editor.

* Tell us a bit about Blood Ocean and why people should buy it.

If it was a movie, I’d call it Road Warrior meets Battle Royale. To compare books its like if The Horseclans Books and Lord of the Flies had a Hawaiian baby and this was the result. Honestly, this is as original as they come.

* Do you have a plan for when/if the Apocalypse comes? Have you any crazy ideas for re-establishing civilization?

My wife and I have both zombie and apocalypse plans for wherever we go. We will be ready. But to tell you would be to minimize our survival. Nice try. But I’ll tell you what. If it’s you and me at the end of the world, just do what I do. That’ll keep you alive long enough to at least yell yippee-kai-yay!

Blood Ocean is out this week in the UK and North America.

Read the first chapter of Blood Ocean - completely free!

“Weston is one of the best

authors of our generation.”

– Brian Keene, author of Take the Long Way Home and City of the Dead

How's about THAT for a recommendation, eh? Weston Ochse's Blood Ocean hits shops on both sides of the Atlantic this very week and later today we'll be talking to Weston on this very blog about his writing, his favourite books and his preferred zombie apocalypse refuge.

In the meantime, and to celebrate the release of another hardcore tale of post-apocalyptic survival, what better way to whet your appetite than to fish out the first chapter?

And you can read it totally for free!!

That's right - free! Just click on this link and get words for your eyes and your brains.

OUT THIS WEEK: On the high seas, if you don’t live large… you just sink

This week sees the return of Weston Ochse to the world of The Afterblight Chronicles, as Blood Ocean hits shelves on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tomorrow, we'll be talking to the man himself, but in the meantime here's a reminder of the latest book in this civilisation-shattering series...

The Afterblight Chronicles:

Blood Ocean

by Weston Ochse

RELEASED THIS WEEK!

£7.99 (UK) ISBN 978-1-907992-87-2

$9.99 (US & CAN) ISBN 978-1-907992-87-2

Also available as an ebook

In a world reduced to ruin by all-consuming plague, one young boy embarks on a mission of revenge after one of his friends is found dead … harvested for his blood!

Kavika Kamalani is a Pali Boy on Nomi No Toshi, the floating city. The post-plague heir to an ancient Hawai’ian warrior tradition that believes in overcoming death by embracing one’s fears and living large, Kavika’s life is turned upside down when one of his friends dies – and he sets out to find the killer.

When he is kidnapped and subjected to a terrifying transformation, Kavika must embrace the ultimate fear – death itself. It is the only way if he, his loved ones, and the Pali Boys are to survive.

This stand-alone title is the latest pulse-pounding story of post-apocalyptic survival in The Afterblight Chronicles series from Weston Ochse – a writer who pulls no punches.

“Weston Ochse is an artist whose craft, stories and voice are so distinct

and mesmerising that you can’t help but be enthralled.”

– Dani Kollin, Prometheus Award-winning author of The Unincorporated Man

About the Series

The Afterblight Chronicles is a post-apocalyptic series in which a devastating epidemic has ravaged the world. In the Afterblight pockets of humans attempt to continue civilization amidst the mounting chaos of the collapsed infrastructure . Mobs run rampant while cults and warlords fight for authority over the survivors of the global plague.

One of the three series with which Abaddon Books launched in 2006, The Afterblight Chronicles is a collection of stand-alone novels that has showcased the talents of a number of brilliant, up-and-coming authors, including Scott Andrews, Paul Kane, Jasper Bark and Rebecca Levene. Blood Ocean is the eleventh Afterblight Chronicles title.

About the Author

Weston Ochse is the Bram Stoker award-winning author of various short stories and novels, including the critically acclaimed Scarecrow Gods and Tomes of the Dead novel, Empire of Salt.

He is much in demand as a speaker at genre conventions and has been chosen as guest of honour on numerous occasions. Weston lives in Southern Arizona with his wife Yvonne and their menagerie of animals.

Empire of Salt up for the Bram Stoker!

Hi all,

This is properly cool. Like, "Holy f***ing c**p this is cool!" cool.

Weston Ochse's redneck-zombie-filled opus, the extraordinary Empire of Salt, has made it onto the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel!

If you're not sure what that is, the Preliminary Ballot is essentially the long-list. Members of the Horror Writers' Association vote on the preliminaries to produce the shortlist, from which the eventual winner will be selected. Making it onto the shortlist means that Ochse goes to the awards ceremony to sit, fingers and toes crossed, and see if he'll be recognised with the most prestigious award in horror writing.

And it's not a long long-list either. The final ballot will, if I recall correctly, consist of five books; the preliminary ballot only has eleven. This is essentially the HWA's recognition that Empire is one of the eleven best horror novels of 2010.

Hell of an achievement, even if it doesn't go any further. And, you know, it might. You can even help; do you know anyone in the HWA? Bother them! Leave copies of Empire lying around significantly when they come to visit. Frequently remind them of how cool a book it is. Mention how, maybe, you'd like to bear Weston's child, if the option were there. That sort of thing.

So, anyway, awesome news. Well done, Weston. We're dead chuffed for you.

Cheers,

David

Zombie Book Signing: The Video

Weston made a video of the OEOSBSTZC.

It's... er... kind of a music video? I guess?

Look, watch it. You decide what it is.

Weston, you're a hard-working, enthusiastic, strongly motivated and deeply unusual young man.

Many thanks,

David

Weston Apologises for Scaring a Reader

While we're talkin' Weston and Empire of Salt, did you know he scared a reader so bad he had to apologise to her?

Nor did I, until just now.

Read Weston's apology to Nadine.

Nadine, who could not read past Chapter Four. Bless.

She actually replies in the comments box as well, which is sweet of her.

Cheers,

David

The Zombie Crawl...

Hi all,

Well, it seems the OEOSBSTZC* was a resounding success. Weston signed some copies of his book, Empire of Salt (pictured right). Tucson residents shopping at Barnes & Noble were startled. There was groaning and a certain amount of drool.

All of which is pretty much de rigueur for a fantasy or horror book signing, but on this occasion there were also some people dressed as zombies.

Because, of course, the good people of the Tucson Zombies were kind enough to support Weston's book-signing by dressing up, shuffling around and drawing attention to themselves. Seems their actually-official annual walk is this Saturday, so this was a chance to drag out their kit, dust it off and get an early start.

Anyway, Weston was good enough to get a picture taken (which the zombies were good enough to pose for), and send it to us:


(That's Weston in the red and black shirt.)

Awesome.

Although slightly perturbed to see a child in a Clone Wars T-Shirt. Damn you, Lucas, is no innocence to be spared?

Anyway, do get out in Tucson this Saturday (if you live in or near Tucson, naturally) to support the Zombies, who are collecting food and raising funds for the community Food Bank.

And check out Empire of Salt, if you haven't yet.

Cheers,

David


*The Official Empire of Salt Book Signing Tucson Zombie Crawl, of course. Do keep up.

That Crawl Again...

Wotcher all,

Weston's put the Official Empire of Salt Book Signing Tucson Zombie Crawl (hereinafter referred to as the OEOSBSTZC) up on CrawloftheDead.com. So you can sign up to the Crawl, keep track of any updates or developments on the event.

It's also on Upcoming.com.

Cheers!

David

Empire of Salt: Signing and Zombie Crawl!

Hi all,

Tireless author and tourer Weston Ochse, author of the redneck-zombie epic Tomes of the Dead: Empire of Salt (the only Abaddon book so far to include an AK-47-toting Elvis impersonator), has secured a signing date at 1pm on Saturday 16th October at a Barnes & Noble in Tucson, Arizona, where he will be meeting fans and signing copies of Empire.

But as if a Barnes & Noble signing date isn't awesome enough, he's managed to arrange to mark the occasion with a Zombie Crawl through Tucson to mark the occasion.

So if you're based near Tucson and want to get your copy signed, or just want to get involved in the zombie crawl (and who would blame you?) then stick your head in the B&N at:

Barnes & Noble
5130 East Broadway
Tucson, AZ 85711

This event, and all of Weston's unceasing efforts to promote this awesome book, can be found on his BookTour.com page.

Cheers,

David

BRAAAINS.

Go tell Pornokitsch about your favourite zombie for a chance to win shiny new first editions of Ryan Brown's Play Dead, Weston Ochse's Empire of Salt and a signed copy of Rebecca Levene's Anno Mortis. Competition is here.

Me? My favourite zombie is either Bub the Zombie from Romero's Day of the Dead, or Zombo from 2000 AD's Zombo comics, or maybe the talking zombie head of Deadpool in the Marvel Zombies comics and beyond. Let's face it, I really can't decide on just one!

Speaking of Empire of Salt, Weston pointed me to a nice little review of it here, by San Diego bookshop Mysterious Galaxy. The reviewer warns us: Cheer all you want for the heroes, but reader be warned, there are many twists and turns that will leave you laughing, crying, screaming in rage, and hoping against hope that someone comes out of this alive. You won't put it down until it's over.

By the way, 2000 AD's wise-cracking Zombo was created by Abaddon Books author Al Ewing! I've just finished editing his latest work for Abaddon, Gods of Manhattan, so stay tuned here for a post all about it...

-

Zombies and other stuff...

Two things to blog about today, one, Weston Ochse reports queues out the shop doors on his booksigning tour in Arizona promoting his epic zombie novel Empire of Salt, and sent us some photos to share. (Too bad you didn't take photos of the queues Weston, we're not sure we believe you! Just kidding...)

And secondly, Scott Andrews has done a brief interview here at Pornokitsch about the conclusion to his apocalyptic St. Mark's School trilogy, Children's Crusade, which came out last month.

Also, because it's a bloody fantastic question, I'm going to steal one of Pornokitsch's interview questions and put it to you, dear readers... but you'll have to read the interview to hear Scott's answer!

Zombies attack. You can have one weapon, one sidekick and one song for your zombie-slaying soundtrack. Go...


-

Weston Ochse interviews Pat Kelleher!

PAT KELLEHER is the author of Abaddon's upcoming new series, 'No Man's World' - which starts with Black Hand Gang, due to be released on June 15th!



WESTON OCHSE is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Abaddon's zombie horror novel, Empire of Salt. He lives in Arizona, and gave us a dead scorpion when we met him in Brighton. No, really! Okay, it was in the form of a glittery souvenir paperweight...

In march, we had Pat Kelleher interview Weston Ochse to celebrate the release of Empire of Salt! Well, with Pat's Black Hand Gang just around the corner, it's time for Weston to get his own back!

Weston: How did you meet the folks at Abaddon? I assume it was the same dark room selection committee involving shaving cream, steel wool, hula hoops and the Greatest Hits of Abba played at disorienting decibels that I went through.

Pat: You got a selection committee!? You lucky bugger. I was press ganged. I've known fellow Abaddon author Mike Wild for years now. We regularly sit in the pub, drinking pints of Everson's Old Fusilier, batting ideas around, world-building and the like. Little did I suspect I was being groomed (don't take drinks from writers, kids). After one particularly heavy session I woke in an unfamiliar basement chained to a radiator with only the lurid green light of an ancient word processor for company. If I make my daily allotted word count they feed me. If sales are good on Black Hand Gang they've promised me a window.

The truth? When Mike mentioned that the mariner character in the Kerberos world bible was still up for grabs he suggested I put in a pitch. I was hammering it out when I'd found out that Jon Oliver had taken it on, so having just missed my chance at writing for the Kerberos series and not having a zombie or post-apocalyptic idea in my head, when I heard that Abaddon had a one line brief rattling around about WW1 soldiers I seized on it with alacrity, jumping through all the usual hoops of a pitch, a world bible, a sample chapter and chapter breakdown before securing the commission. Throughout the whole process Jon was enthusiastic and encouraging and there was a flurry of emails with Simon Parr, their designer as we thrashed out ideas and sourced reference material for a really a cool cover.* But other than that I have still to meet any of them in the flesh. Strange, that.

Some of Simon's Parr's concept art for the cover image.

The idea of a WWI unit being transported to a hostile planet is intriguing. Can you describe the genesis of the novel?

It's a local war memorial; a bronze statue of a Tommy on a plinth that made an indelible impression on me when I first saw it in childhood, it's a great uncle who died at the Third Battle of Ypres, it's TV documentaries about the Great War containing haunting interviews with survivors.

Beyond that, the initial spark of the story was based in fact, well, I say fact, in that there had been a WW1 battalion that actually vanished in battle; the First 5th Norfolks who, contemporary myth had it, advanced into a cloud at Gallipoli and never came out. The myth persisted in the popular press for a few years but after the war, when the truth was eventually uncovered it was altogether more prosaic and tragic than the legend would have you believe. Nevertheless, the magical 'what if' seed had been planted.**

I felt, as a new Abaddon series, it should have its own distinct tone, something they hadn't done before, and took my initial cues from the books of the period, back when Science Fiction was still called 'Scientific Romance'. Black Hand Gang continues the tradition of those stories, but totally Abaddoned up. Fast paced action and imperialist adventure for the 21st century. If it helps, imagine Charley's War drawn by Kevin O'Neill. I put together a three page pitch and fired it off on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 2008, the one hundredth anniversary of the Armistice, precisely. Talk about a niche marketing opportunity.

And if this was going to be a First World War battalion, then I really wanted to nail that reality, otherwise it might as well be anybody on an alien planet, so I pored over field manuals, I read journals, diaries, contemporary accounts. I began cherry-picking things from the period that looked interesting; Tesla was claiming to have received extraterrestrial radio signals, there was the rise of the Labour Movement, the General Strike, women's suffrage, Anarchist bombing and shootings and, as I read, the men in the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers took on a life of their own. They signed up, made the oath and took the Abaddon shilling, the poor sods. But the War was only half of it.

I always knew the planet was going to be a badass place. Most stories of this period are presented by the author with a mysterious provenance, a journalistic first hand account, letters, an unpublished journal, and so it was with the 13th Pennine Fusiliers. Once I realised that this provenance included silent black and white film, I finally knew that this was the planet, the grainy footage of which would go on to inspire a thousand pulp science fiction magazine covers; untamed and inhospitable even for its indigenous inhabitants: a harsh environment of unforgiving habitats populated by dangerous plants and beasts. Then it just became a case of mashing the two together.


Why WWI soldiers? It seems to me that the weapons and technology wouldn't be the best for combating aliens. I haven't read your book yet, but why not more modern weapons, such as SABOT tank rounds or Hellfire Missiles?

Well, if I'm honest, the weapons were never a primary concern. I knew I wanted a Mark 1 tank, putting the date no earlier than September 1916. I knew I wanted the Somme which only left me a two month window. What ever was available up to and including October 31st 1916 would have to do. Those are the weapons with which I and the Pennines were stuck. And to be honest, I really enjoy having those sorts of limitations.

Sure, the weapons might appear crude by today's standards but in their day they were cutting edge, state-of-the-art and really brought the 'Splodey.

You can ratchet up a body count real quick with a Vickers water-cooled machine-gun (and make a cup of tea into the bargain - how British is that?).

And don't even get me started on gas warfare. Heck, manned flight was barely 10 years old and they'd already figured out how to use it to kill people.

German machine-gun tactics had just changed the face of modern warfare for ever. The British response, the Ironclad landship? It was ripped straight from an HG Wells story. This was Science Fiction becoming science fact right there, right then. This was real life steampunk. These weapons may not be the best for combating aliens, but I for one wouldn't want to be on the receiving end.

So while I can't offer you SABOT tank rounds, depleted uranium bullets or daisy cutters I can offer plum puddings, toffee apples, whizz-bangs, minnies and monsters, with a side order of bayonets 'n' British Pluck served up in a rollicking good yarn.

A Mark 1 WW1 tank - just like the one used by Pat's Pennine Fusiliers in Black Hand Gang

Clearly you enjoy good science fiction. What are a few of your favorite science fiction novels and was there any one in particular that lent more inspiration for Black Hand Gang than others?

I enjoy good fiction full stop. I'm old enough to have read the 'classics'; Asimov, Clarke, Herbert, Bradbury, Harrison. Mind you, back then anything with a Chris Foss cover would do. I read Phillip K Dick, Greg Bear, China Meiville, Dan Abnett but as for individual books? Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's, The Mote in God's Eye, Ian M Banks Culture novels, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Paul Cornell's Summertime, Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow, Carl Sagan's Contact. But Science Fiction is not something to which I restrict myself. I've probably read a lot more fantasy than Science Fiction recently and a whole lot more that isn't either. I buy books faster than I can read 'em, all kinds of stuff. I've added several feet of WW1 research to my shelves in the past year or so which I'm still ploughing through so I haven't had time for much else.

But for my main inspiration, you'd have to go back a hundred years or more.

Authors like HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edwin L Arnold, and Rudyard Kipling. If there were any that had a more direct inspiration on the Black Hand Gang I'd say Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger stories with a soupcon of John Carter and a seasoning of Gullivar Jones, if not in the specifics at least in the spirit. That's not to say that I'm ignoring a century of Science Fiction. It's just that, filtered through a 1916 character you might not immediately recognize some of it.

They certainly wouldn't. We can sit here today and talk about quantum entanglement, wormholes, M-theory and the like, but back then probably only a half a dozen people in the world understood what the hell Einstein was talking about.


What are your plans when Black Hand Gang hits the streets? Are we talking world tour? Over here in America, I've found that I have so many favorite authors who live in England and I get to meet too few of them.
Folks like Tim Lebbon and Simon Clark I get to see regularly when they travel to America. What about you? Is there going to be a Black Hand Intergalactic Megatour so that all your fans in American and points west can shake your hand and thank you for such great writing? What about getting Abaddon to send you on a whirlwind tour of the Hawaiian Islands? I'll carry your bags...

Well, by the time Black Hand Gang comes out I'll be back in the trenches, deep in the mud of the second novel, I might not have time to stick my head above the parapet, so initially at least I'm hoping to develop more of a web presence. I have some ideas I'm working up to that end. Keep checking here for news. And then, yeah, a breath of fresh air would be good. I'd love to get out to some conventions. I'll be popping up wherever I get the chance.

And an American tour would be great, but I suspect the only way that's going to happen in the near future is if I smuggle myself over in Jon's baggage.

In which case you won't be carrying my bags - I will be the bags. Just don't drop me, or worse, leave me unattended.


*Go here to read about Simon's Black Hand Gang cover design at his blog.
**Go here to read about the lost Sandringham battalion.

-

Empire of Salt Victim's League

Weston Ochse has written to me to tell you guys that there's a new Facebook group that's been created to support those horrified by the zombie carnage in his Tomes of the Dead novel - it's called the Empire of Salt Victim's League.

Our thoughts are with those poor souls....


There's also two competions which are only open to UK fans, so get in there quick, Brits!

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Pat Kelleher interviews Weston Ochse!

WESTON OCHSE is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Abaddon's upcoming zombie horror novel, Empire of Salt. He lives in Arizona, but if you're a Brit and you fancy meeting him, get on down to the Brighton World Horror Con next week, where he'll be reading from and signing copies of his book!




PAT KELLEHER is the author of Abaddon's upcoming new series, 'No Man's World' - which starts with Black Hand Gang, due to be released this spring!



PK: With all of time and space in which to set your Zombie novel, Empire of Salt, the Salton Sea is a very specific location. What was it about that place that appealed you as a setting for a story, let alone a Zombie-pocalypse (without giving too many spoilers)?

WO: Location. Location. Location. Like in advertizing and commerce, novels must have a sense of place. Some novels are made for the normal and everyday. We hide the events of the plot in the mundane of every day. We want people to think that what they have could change at any minute.

But then some novels cry out for exotic locales, especially if the location is intrinsic to the plot. Song of Kali by Dan Simmons would have been a snoozer if the plot took place in Upstate New York. The novel had to be set in India. Likewise, The Shining had to be set in a remote hotel in the Rockies. A Holiday Inn near the interstate just wouldn’t have worked.

Like a lot of authors, I prefer locations that are near and dear to our hearts. I want to lull readers into recognizing street signs, businesses, parks and cultural icons, before I introduce elements of fantasy into the locale. But then there are some locations that just scream to be used; the Salton Sea is one of them.

It’s a dead sea smack dab in the middle of California that almost no one has heard of. Just south of Palm Springs the Salton Sea used to be the vacation destination that everyone went to from regular Dick and Janes, to Richie Riches of Hollywood. Now it spawns red tides of dead fish. Birds fall from the sky. Where water meets earth, it bubbles green putrid residue. Yet people still live there. God bless them, there are people too tough to be scared away or too desperate to leave. Those kind of people aren’t the normal kinds of people regular folks are used to dealing with.
Folks from the Salton Sea are made from stern stuff. They’re a little crazy. They’re a lot desperate. And they are perfect grist for my authorial mill.

And to reward them for their perseverance and never-say-die attitudes, I’ve done what any right-minded author who doesn’t care who gets hurt would do. I infested the entire area with flesh-eating, eyeball-munching zombies. How cool is that?

Abandoned homes at the Salton Sea, wikipedia stock photos.

With eclectic collections of horror stories and a Brammy in the bank for your first novel (yes, I´m looking at you, Scarecrow Gods) what was it that drew you to the good ol´ classic Zombie?

Zombies! Taste like chicken! Seriously, I’ve never been one to get too excited about tropes. The traditional monsters of horror seem to be done to death. Probably of the hundred or so stories I’ve had published, less than ten of them deal with vampires, zombies, werewolves and the like.
I’ve always been more of a dark fantasist; I like to create textured landscapes populated by real characters who I then put in improbable situations. I’ve tended to create my own themes, my own monsters, and my own horror elements. So writing zombies was something new for me.

But zombies have something going for them that all the other tropes do not; they are pop culture icons. I inhale pop culture and exhale satisfaction. I love the iconography of registered trademarks and consumer logos. I crave music and television and magazines. I’d sleep on a bed of TV channel guides if it would mean that I could by osmosis relive the first 50 episodes of Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched or I Dream of Jeanie.
Because of their post modern representation in the original Dawn of the Dead, zombies have become as much a piece of pop culture as the Golden Arches, delivery pizzas and over-priced coffee from teenage American baristas.

If I was ever going to do a trope it was always going to be a zombie.
Zombies are cool. Zombies are badass. Even better, zombies are so badass cool that they don’t even know they’re monsters.

Cover artwork for Weston Ochses' 'Empire of Salt', painted by Greg Staples. Click for horrible high-def version!

As an American, how did Abaddon, a publisher that´s as British as Fish `n´ Chips and 2000 AD, first appear on your radar? What attracted you to them as a potential publisher? Or more to the point, what exactly do they have on you?

What’s 2000 AD? Is that a motor oil? HA! Just kidding. Put down the knife. Seriously, the folks at Abaddon caught me pilfering nursery rhymes from a Grimms' Fairy Tales book and selling it to the Star Trek franchise as Klingon Fables. They also caught me coming out of a massage parlor in West Hollywood, where I was only asking for directions, I swear. The kicker was when I was filmed beating up a herd of Girl Scouts and stealing their cookies. With all the evidence against me, it was too easy for Abaddon to force me to pay them money and send them a kick-ass free zombie novel.

Seriously this time; I was first drawn to Abaddon when 'The Afterblight Chronicles' first began. I thought the idea was incredible. I still do and would love to work on the franchise. I communicated with Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Abaddon, during this time. We agreed that we’d like to work together sometime in the future, but couldn’t decide in what capacity. Then came 2008 and the Book Expo of America which took place in L.A. Abaddon had a space in the show and I took the time to drop by and say hello. Pretty soon, Abaddon reopened their submissions and were looking for some more zombie novels. I’d been thinking about doing one regarding the Salton Sea anyway, so this became the perfect opportunity to pitch the project. Jon loved it and here we are today, with me sitting here being interviewed about a zombie novel coming out from Abaddon with a super-kick-ass cover.

Apart from your award winning novel, you´ve also had great success with your `Backwoods Horror´ short stories. You obviously enjoy working in both forms. Do you have a preference?

For me the story decides the form. I was lucky starting out. I began writing short stories. Me and a fellow named David Whitman became household names in a very short time with our collection Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. The collection garnered insane attention and outsold everything the then publisher, Darktales, had to offer. The stories in the collection inspired independent film projects and hearkened in a period of backwoods horror fiction in America that is only now beginning to slow down.

I still meet folks at conventions and book signings who bring copies of that old book, or the hard cover reprint from Delirium. Instead of what I’m working on now, they want to talk about those old stories and how much they meant to them. I still remember a reading I did at Horrorfind I in Baltimore. There must have been seventy five people in the room. I’d advertised that there would be cheese balls and beer and I didn’t lie. I went to the discount store and bought ten big bags of cheese balls. Then I went and bought 8 cases of the local brew, National Bohemian, or Natty Bo.
I passed out the beer and encouraged everyone to throw cheese balls during the reading. It was sheer and utter chaos with me reading at the top of my lungs. People still come and talk to me about that. What a blast that was; even more fun than the bass boat radio hour reading we had the following year. Ah, the good old days.

What is it about Horror as a genre that attracts you as a writer?

Funny thing about horror is that I never knew I was a horror author. In fact, the question is still up in the air. When I first started writing I was just an author. I wrote what I wanted. It wasn’t until I began to sell things that I was called a horror author. But then I sold my first novel, and although it won a Bram Stoker Award, I have it on record from several other publishers that it’s a dark fantasy novel. I’ve since pitched a few novels to agents and publishers only to have them come back and tell me that what I was pitching wasn’t horror, and it wasn’t science fiction, and it wasn’t fantasy, but instead, some kind of amalgam of all three. At that point I usually naively bat my eyelashes and ask, “So? Is there a problem with that?” As it turns out those sorts of novels are immensely popular, but because publishers have a hard time marketing them, they are few and far between.

So do I write horror? I think so. Do I write science fiction? Yes. What about fantasy? That too. I have two trilogies in the works right now. One is 'The Cycle of the Aegis' and is a combination of all three. Those books are immensely popular. In fact, I’m writing the final book now. The other trilogy is 'The Vampire Outlaw' trilogy, which is horror, adventure and space opera. This is also immensely popular. It’s what I want to write.
It’s what people want to read.

But you asked me what it was about horror that I like, didn’t you. I’ve always felt that horror is an emotion and it’s the manipulation of that emotion that makes horror good horror. Horror is about the psychology of fear, which gets to the very heart of characterization. There’s nothing better than to give a character something nice, then make them terrified they’ll lose it, whether it’s a Barbie Doll or their very lives...

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Stay tuned for the follow up to this interview, where we turn the tables and Weston interviews Pat about his forthcoming series!

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Zombies!!

I just had to interrupt your regular broadcast to say - how effing Abaddon Books are these shoes?

Honest to god, I must have these. Like, now. Zombie shoes! They're even in Abaddon colours!!

('Zombie Stomper' high heels by Iron Fist)

If you see a brunette tottering around the next Horror convention wearing these, it's probably me. Help me back to the Abaddon and Solaris Books table as I can't walk in high heels to save my life. And yet I still want these shoes. (Hey, who needs to actually walk? I'll just sit and look at them.) Which reminds me - I'm going to be at WHC in Brighton and Eastercon in London in a few weeks, comment if you're going!


Right, back to proofing Weston Ochse's Empire of Salt, his zombie novel for our Tomes of the Dead line. It's brilliant, by the way. One thing that completely jumps out at me is the setting, he really makes me want to visit the Salton Sea, (although not if it's full of zombies, obviously! I'd be rubbish with a shotgun). It just sounds like such a spooky, interesting place.

If you don't know already, (and I didn't) the Salton Sea is a large lake in California that was once hailed as a tourist resort, although due to environmental problems the water is getting saltier and saltier, the fish are dying out and tourism has decreased.* There're loads of abandoned holiday houses and motels, - in short, it's a really spooky setting for a zombie story!

I love ghost town photography of abandoned places, so here's two photos from the Salton Sea to get you in the right frame of mind... The book's out at the end of April!

Right, back to work...**

(photo of an abadoned motel by 'pretzelpaws' taken from wikipedia)

The Olivers have a chance to make a new home at Salton Sea. Looking forward to California fun, sun and adventure they are unprepared for the ecological devastation they find. The sea is rotting, the town of Bombay Beach is dying and the citizens are like bait, waiting to be plucked from their homes by what comes from the sea. Beware the coming of the green, they say. Beware the coming of the night...

('Ghost town photography' by Steve Bingham)


*There's lots of information over here at the Salton Sea Restoration website if you're interested in the hows and whys of this.
** This proofreading would totally be more fun if I was wearing zombie shoes. Now where's my credit card...