Jesus has a big PR machine,
We don't,
Here's something on theme for this day.
Showing posts with label Zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zombies. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Sunday, April 20, 2014
NEW! Tin Universe Monthly 2014 Easter Special
The Tin Universe Monthly 2014 Easter Special gives you stories about mud rain and killer cults, and a conversation that mentions Zardoz. There's also Zombies! Ok, Zombie! Sorry, just one. I so fail at zombie day. And it's all FREE!
you might want to check out,
This poster is in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Created from poetry written in 2010 by me to draw attention to the issue, it has been paired up with a photo from Stainless Photography. Any profits made from sales of the poster will be donated to a local Melbourne Florida charity that helps people who are dealing with sexual violence issues.
Someone is zombifying athletes at Clear Cut High School in Utah. Lucky the school has its own young superhero in the person of Mildred Betbeze to try and figure out what's going on. Pep rallies, cheerleaders, new kids in the neighborhood are just some of things our hero and her sidekick slash best friend Aisha have to deal with in the first book in Tin Universe's new middle grade series.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Zombie, Easter, and Ad #4
FREE! Coming April 20th Tin Universe Monthly 2014 Easter Special
*the only thing special about it are the ads... and the cover. Zombies!
you might want to check out,
This poster is in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Created from poetry written in 2010 by me to draw attention to the issue, it has been paired up with a photo from Stainless Photography. Any profits made from sales of the poster will be donated to a local Melbourne Florida charity that helps people who are dealing with sexual violence issues.
Someone is zombifying athletes at Clear Cut High School in Utah. Lucky the school has its own young superhero in the person of Mildred Betbeze to try and figure out what's going on. Pep rallies, cheerleaders, new kids in the neighborhood are just some of things our hero and her sidekick slash best friend Aisha have to deal with in the first book in Tin Universe's new middle grade series.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Max Brooks at FIT
There was a event scheduled at one of the local colleges, not far from we live that was said to be a speaking event with the writer Max Brooks from The Zombie Survival Guide fame. Mar really liked his book and we thought cool but for a week or more no one could get answers from the student event organizers about if you had to pay, was he going to sign books, or anything until the day of the event when they said it was going to be free but first come seating to students. Then they said it was free to students but $20 dollars to everyone else. Then it was free to all and they couldn't understand why all this same day confusion was causing issues with people.
Only a school with this much entitlement and this much money would go back and worth on money issues like this like it doesn't mean anything. I know many people who wanted to come but didn't want to drive a long way not knowing firmly if they could get in. The official website of the student organization running the event, on the college website, hadn't been updated in months.
Come on. If you don't know anything about putting on an event study the press releases and materials and procedures others have used in putting on their event to learn how to do things yourself. Hey, sorta what you are there for.
You know, in a college.
Being a self-publisher I have to do a lot of things writers normally don't do like creating covers and publicity and the like, but the one way I can tell you how no one will take you serious, its not NOT making mistakes, mistakes are understanding when you are not a trained professional in something, it's acting like they don't matter.
We decided to go since it wasn't that far from where we live and when we got there we got more confusion and people acting like not having answers wasn't that big a deal. I ranted about this last night during the event on my Twitter if you want to check it out but it went short of like this "Do students get in first? "Doesn't matter, it's not going to be full up." "Will he be signing?" "Probably" "Will there be a limitations on what he will sign?" ".....vacant look..."
The event wasn't advertised much even though they were bragging about all the places they put ads. Hell the night before a local theater was sold out with probably double the sale wanting to get in to a showing of the season premiere of the Walking Dead but nothing was said there as far as I know.
We wouldn't have even known about it if our local comic book store hadn't reposted something about it on Facebook {these people should study our local comic shop, they know how to do events.}
That being said none of use were surprised when in a community that loves zombies- we have zombie walks, zombie proms, and all sorts of zombie fun this event wasn't even close to half full, in a small venue, and the people we talked to when we got there weren't expecting it to be?
We actually overheard some of them talking about how much it cost to get him and laughing. Goes back to that entitlement word I used. And we deal with these people all the time living near the college campus.
I've helped run events, I really hope these people don't go into this sort of things as a career because as I said on my Twitter, when your student event looks clearly to be a student event you failed.
But lets get to Max Brooks. He was very funny throughout. Very entertaining. I'm really glade we got to see him and he handled the trolls that were only there to get get noticed or for credit with a blade sharp tongue. I had heard before that he was cool to hear speak but this was way better than I was thinking going in.
See, not many people at all. A shame.
Couldn't get good stage pics. They had the lights turned up too high for a already well lighted venue.
Mar and her sister Trill got copies of The Zombie Survival Guide signed and photos with him. I wish this event wasn't such a clusterfuck or I would have picked up a copy of the G.I. Joe book he wrote and gotten that signed also.
*If you like the blood splatter effect on those photos I learned how to do it watching this You Tube video. Might be of good use for people doing Halloween stuff this month.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
THIS IS NOT A TEST by Courtney Summers
THIS IS NOT A TEST
Coming June 19th, 2012 from St. Martin’s Press
I’ve never been the biggest zombie fan. {My gf just told me that’s because I suck.} Maybe, but I’m actually more a fan of real old school mind controlled zombies. {She just rolled her eyes at me for saying that. She loves “Zombies”}
But I’m not here to debate what is and isn’t a zombie. I just brought that up to state that going into any modern zombie story it has to really be good to make any sort of impact with me because I usually don’t go in expecting much.
The only zombie stories I list among my favorite books and movies is the original Night Of The Living Dead, Shaun Of The Dead, and the early stories of The Walking Dead.
This Is Not A Test sits right there with them to me but I’m also a fan of all of the books written by Courtney Summers. She is one of the few writers who I will buy anything she writes. Right there with Paul Cornell, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Nova Ren Suma, and Gail Simone. I’ll check out anything they are involved in.
I will confess right away that even though I’m staking my lifes writing in the digital book field, this was the first full length e-book I have ever read. One for this is I don’t own an e-reader and two I don’t have the best eyes and after writing for a good deal of the day, the last thing I really want to do is stare at a screen even more, but this book got a hold of me and said READ ME YOU HALF WITTED, CLOSE TO GOING BLIND BASTARD.
When I heard that Courtney Summers was going to write a zombie book I brain exploded. Having been a fan of her blog for years I knew she really knew what it takes to make a good zombie and horror story. This extra long paragraph could be the whole review in one but I’m too long winded to do that. At first thought upon hearing about her doing a zombie book I wondered would she tackle the tropes of zombie and horror stories? Would she explore and hint or homage the great films she has said in the past she is a fan of? Just how epic would the epicitude of this book be? What she did was the job of what a writer does? She wrote a great story, a very good book.
This is a book that doesn’t hold back its blows, then again from reading previous books by the author, she doesn’t hold back much and that skill {and it’s a skill} and daring to go where many would not go, the fearless path of this writer continues with This Is Not A Test.
My first thoughts after finishing this book was how much I enjoy a writer who doesn’t care if you want to like their characters. I love a writer who looks at the reader and basically says you want this person to stand out, sorry no. You want this to happen, no. Happy endings your thing, I don’t care. This story is this story. I respect a writer who will make you uncomfortable and it isn’t in the shock for shocks sake method but through a submersion into the human condition of suffering.
What some really good writers do is they make you uncomfortable to the point it stays with you a bit. That’s storytelling at its core. They can do that with things that happen within a story or with a slurping into your brain on how much you may be like a character, even if that makes you really uncomfortable.
Basically what I’m saying is, uncomfortable is the job of a writer if they can do it without it being a stunt. Courtney Summers does it with talent and what seems like sometimes to be a key into your spirit and soul.
This has happen to me with each book Courtney Summers has written. Each one has had something in it that made me uncomfortable. That hit home. That hurt. Here it happens with the character of Cary. I won’t say how his actions make me think this, that would be spoilers, but the uncomfortable comes in how I would react in the same situations. I will say that it unnerved me a bit and I applaud the writer for that.
This story contains a very strong cast of characters and even though you have the lead character who let you into her thoughts as the story is told, it is truly a strong assembly of human beings with full builds with each character. No character is wasted. No moment written without purpose.
There are many HOLY SHIT moments in this story and each one hit at just the right moment.
Eating away at you when you read most zombie stories are that the writers are doing everything they can to avoid the subject of zombies or you have writers consumed with the subject so much they forget about working on the non walking dead characters. This Is Not A Test is a very nice balance. The zombies are a major part of the story but not to the point where the living characters end up doing stupid thing after stupid thing to “Get back to the zombie fun.”
If all zombie stories were this well crafted I could wolf down one after the other but I guess you could say that about any story. My main problem with zombie stories in the past hasn’t been that the subject isn’t interesting but that the subject by nature calls on writers to really write strong dramatic characters without fear of the actions their characters might want to take. Most writers fail at this and that’s why I find a lot of zombie stories boring. What this writer does is something I was told a long time ago by a teacher, “Don’t be afraid to let your characters live their steps in life.”
Another thing I took from this story was the devouring sibling relationships that exist within the story. Yes, I said devouring. I didn’t misspell that or use the wrong word. The last book I read with such a strong sibling relationship was Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma and that was my favorite book of 2011.
I don’t like these types of stories to be a war or for them to be a slaughter. I want them to be a day in and day out suffering of breathing in and out until the people find peace and then get butchered in different ways for their happiness. I found joy in how that is accomplished with this book.
Most zombie stories I think are an experiment in how much a writer knows about writing real studies of humanity. Or they could just be about political shit. Or played for laughs. The problem when something becomes popular be it vampires, angels, or zombies is that sometimes writers forget to just write a good story. Courtney Summers wrote one hell of a story.
In the end this story gets the highest rating I give because it does what all writers should strive to do with their stories. This story is the story it should be. It’s brave, HOLY SHIT, hardcore, and worth it to fans of zombies or fans of good storytelling in general.
5 out of 5 stars for
This Is Not A Test
Coming June 19th, 2012 from St. Martin’s Press
Monday, October 5, 2009
ZOMBIE FEST FUN
Saturday night we attended a Zombie Double feature of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and ZOMBIELAND:
And the event was so popular there will be an encore event:
I would show you photos I took while there but my phone has a crappy camera but they did zombie makeup, workers were zombiefied, they did a raffle with zombie prizes, and had a costume contest. Also $4 from every ticket sold went to the Redcross. Wave won a copy of THE WALKING DEAD: VOLUME ONE signed by the artist.
Later in the night I was attacked by a librarian zombie.
A link to the encore event can be found here if you live locally and wish to attend. Also if you are local how about checking out Famous Faces And Funnies which is my local comic books store and from what I saw, the supplier of most of the prizes for the raffles. The event was sponsored by them, B&N, and others.
And the event was so popular there will be an encore event:
I would show you photos I took while there but my phone has a crappy camera but they did zombie makeup, workers were zombiefied, they did a raffle with zombie prizes, and had a costume contest. Also $4 from every ticket sold went to the Redcross. Wave won a copy of THE WALKING DEAD: VOLUME ONE signed by the artist.
Later in the night I was attacked by a librarian zombie.
A link to the encore event can be found here if you live locally and wish to attend. Also if you are local how about checking out Famous Faces And Funnies which is my local comic books store and from what I saw, the supplier of most of the prizes for the raffles. The event was sponsored by them, B&N, and others.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
