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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"A Very Abaddon Christmas" Part 1: Hungry Christmas

Hi all,

Okay, here it is. I know you're all as excited as me about this, so without further ado, I am please and proud to present to you the first installment in our December 2009 guest-blogging event, A Very Abaddon Christmas...

Hungry Christmas

A Tomes of the Dead: Hungry Hearts story

by Gary McMahon

It’s been said that your life flashes before your eyes in the moment of death, depicting scenes dragged up from the vault of memory. As his undead wife ripped out his heart and ate it, Rick Nutman’s mind flicked briefly to something different: a Christmas that might have been...

  He’d only entered the shopping centre in search of supplies, foolishly thinking that he might find a turkey hidden away in the freezer department of HumSave, or some dried-up Christmas pud left forgotten on an otherwise empty shelf in M&S.
  What he didn’t expect was Santa.
  The large figure in red was plodding around the ornamental fountain in the foyer, swaying from side to side like he was drunk. But he wasn’t drunk; he was dead.
  Dead Santa.
  Rick took out the Glock pistol and slowly made his way across the foyer, crouching behind the wide support pillars. He’d never believed in Santa, even as a child, and he wasn’t about to start believing in the fat fool now...
  Dead Santa’s beard was red, covered in blood, and his face was white as snow. He caught sight of Rick and began to stumble towards him, still carrying his sack of presents. The dead fat man splashed through the fountain, his baggy red trousers loose and soggy, and opened his mouth to reveal jagged, broken teeth and a throat some joker had stuffed with silver tinsel.
  Rick shot him in the mouth, blowing a hole through the middle of his gore-soaked beard. Dead Santa’s face collapsed inward, deflating like a punctured plastic Christmas bauble.
  The sack fell from Dead Santa’s grasp, spilling its contents. Gifts and cards and tacky tree decorations spread out around his fallen body.
  Rick walked over and picked up a toy gun. He smiled. Pulled the trigger.
  Click!
  Then he went back outside to the jeep, mumbling under his breath: “Fuck you and the reindeer you rode in on...”

Abaddon Competition Winners!

Hi all,

Here it is. I know you've been waiting for this with bated breath, jowls wobbling like some kind of Japanese teleporting superhero... I am proud to announce the winners of the Abaddon Zombie Shelter Competition!

Now, this has been far from easy. We've had some brilliant entries, and they've all taken very different approaches to the very thorny problem of where to take shelter from the coming Zombipocalypse. Each of us had a favourite; there have been arguments, recriminations, even tears. Some things were said that will be hard to take back. It's been an emotional time.

But we have shaped up some kind of final list. As I said before, the top three submissions have been selected to publish here for your education and edification.

Third Place goes to Debbie Bennett, who went for a delightful combination of whimsical, crazy and come-hither:

It’s dead simple, you see. There’s this field at the back of my house and I’ve been busy planting land mines in it – I get them cheap from a guy in the pub. So there’s garlic and holy water too (just in case) and once I’ve made my way through the mine maze, I can climb up to my tree house and pull the rope ladder up behind me (the tree trunk is covered in oil and battery acid). I’ve got cherryade and garibaldi biscuits. 3 loo rolls. And an AK47. Like I said – dead simple. Wanna come play?

I'm sure this is lifted out of Blyton's Five Fight Off The Deathless Horde, but I'll let that slide since I just made that fact up. Debbie, I would personally love to join you in your tree-house, but there's this zombie horde attacking and we have to get to a bunk- holy shit! Did you say say cherryade? I'm there.

Second Place, by an absolute whisker, goes to Charles Payne's submission which, oddly, also appeals to the inner chainsaw-wielding child:

Two words: Santa's workshop. As soon as the first cry of BRAINS! goes out, I'm heading for the North Pole. It's the perfect shelter- most zombies will freeze before they reach it and it comes with an army of industrious elves and a super powered fat guy. Santa and his elves should be more than happy to rain destruction upon the undead hordes (I'm pretty sure eating brains puts you on the naughty list) and you get all the milk and cookies you could want. What more could you want in a zombie-proof shelter?

Aside from the difficulty of getting to the North Pole when all the airports are closed down by the apocalypse (f*ck it, I can always steal a twin-prop from somewhere), this is actually pretty much the perfect solution. It very nearly won, but Santa Claus is an imaginary person, and we take Zombies very seriously.

First Place and ultimate winner is this proposal by Richard Smeeton:

A converted Man-Takraf RB293 mobile bucket wheel excavator, a forty-five thousand tonne, ninety five metre tall beast of mining equipment - with red go faster stripes. And the bucket wheel converted to a giant buzzsaw. It's a moving shelter where the best form of defence is attack - slowly crushing the hordes beneath the tracks or slashing with the buzzsaw. Concessions to practicality: a greenhouse, solar panels, a crane to grab stuff (including a fuel suction function to drain petrol stations). Plus a crew of Swedish air hostess and topped off with a golden throne to observe the carnage from.

A controversial choice, Richard; you could always run out of fuel, and you'll be stuck with the hordes clambering up the sides of your machine. But, after a long, hard deliberation, we decided that including Swedish air-hostesses in your vehicle - as a "concession to practicality," no less - shows a certain style. Also, golden thrones kick ass.

We'll be writing to Richard to get his postal address and choice of Tomes of the Dead books.

Thank you all for entering, and I'm sorry to those of you that entertained and amused me who had the ill-fortune not to be included in the final list. You're all awesome, and I'm heartened to know that the future of humanity will be in your hands when the blood starts to flow...

Cheers,

David

Zombie Contest Closed!

Hi all,

The Zombie Shelter Contest is now closed. We are sorting through submissions - and arguing about whether to get our authors in as guest judges - and will post the results on Friday.

Many thanks to those of you who sent in submissions, and our commiserations to those of you who meant to but didn't get around to it. Although, actually, not too many commiserations. You should have got yourselves sorted out. Sheesh.

Watch this space...

David

Abaddon Competition!

Alright, here it is! Our first ever Abaddon Competition!

Everyone knows it’s coming. You just gotta see the signs. And I see you all preparing – maybe getting some training in with simulations like L4D or House of the Dead, maybe going to see instructive films like 28 Days Later or Zombieland – but how ready are you, really? When the Zs start clawing at your door, what are you going to do? How will you fight them? Where will you take shelter?

With an eye to getting you all ready for the (sadly inevitable) Zombipocalypse, Abaddon is running a competition! We want you to tell us about your zombie-proof shelter. Where is it? How is it protected? Upper stories (good vision, shoot from the balcony) or underground (more secure, more energy-efficient)? Locked down or escape routes? Well-water or bottled? What do you look for in a zombie shelter? It doesn’t have to be a real place (although a friend of mine swears he’s heading straight to Reading Gaol) or at any rate your place (honestly, if you write to us and tell us that you for real have a gun-and-tinned-food-stocked bunker in the suburbs, we may be obliged to inform your psychiatrist...), just the sort of place you’d go when the eatin’ starts.

You have 100 words. Tell us why your hideout’s awesome, not just what it is. Convince us. And make us laugh. All submissions to abaddonbooks@gmail.com by November 27th; winner announced December 4th, and we’ll post the best three reports here. The prize is copies of a couple of our Tomes of the Dead books, to further prepare you for the days to come.

Robots scare the sh*t outta me

Hi all,

Just what the hell is wrong with scientists? I mean, for real.

I appreciate that the zombipocalypse is coming; that even if I live in a first floor apartment with a reinforced door, an escape route down from the balcony, and a room full of shotguns, tinned food and water, the likelihood is that my life will end to the sound of my own skull fragmenting under zombie teeth. I don't like it, but I accept it. Maybe I even welcome it, just a little bit.

So why the hell are the scientists of the world trying to prevent it by ensuring that the robopocalypse happens first? Is being ground under the titanium exoskeletons of my robotic masters enough better than becoming one of the world's army of mindless dead to justify turning it into some kind of race?

Robots can now run, climb, fly, drive, and handle rough terrain. They're stronger than us, smarter than us, and six years ago some damn fool in Japan worked out how to make robots that feed on human blood (Dr. Kazuo Eda, heading the research, said "It is like the metabolism of food... When glucose is oxidised, electrons can be obtained." He went on to add, "No! No! You cannot turn on me! I created you! I am your masterrraaaaaaaarghhhh!....").

We just keep ignoring the signs. In 2007, a robot gun in South Africa went crazy and killed nine friendly soldiers. The army was investigating whether this was caused by a "mechanical glitch," but you and I know they're testing us, seeing how far they can go before we realise the revolution has started.

And today, I was shown this video of a robot that can reassemble itself when smashed apart. Now, after the revolution, when our sons are living in dirt trenches and fighting the evil robot overlords, when we'll finally realise - oh, too tragically late - that we should never have created these machines in the first place and start to fight back, our angry mobs will tear the damn metal bastards apart only to watch them reassemble themselves and come back stronger than ever.

Way to go, scientists. Dicks.

Rule #2: Double-Tap

Listen up, zombie-hunters:

My wife and I watched Zombieland last week, and it is probably the funniest film I have seen this year. Mrs. Moore actually started hyperventilating at one point.

The film is slick, pacy, funny and stylish. It's visually impressive, clever and often ironic, regularly referencing and subverting the genre. Certificate 15, but bloody enough to satisfy fans of undead violence; think of Shaun of the Dead and you have a rough idea. And the hero is a massive OCD geek with a 32-point list of instructions for surviving the Zombipocalypse.

It isn't a conventional zombie-movie plot, being more rom-com than survivalism, but as a parody you'll tend to forgive it that anyway.

See it. And just remember Cardio, Double-tap, Seatbelts, and Bathroom and you're gonna do just fine.

David