Just a short post, to point you to an article I wrote that’s appearing today on the Shimmer Magazine site. It’s for new writers, and it’s called Writing at Gunpoint. Enjoy.

Yes, I will continue to use the “Gerund Stony Mayhall” titles. It’s either that or zombie puns. What’s that you say? Gerunds are fine? Okay then.

Today Raising Stony Mayhall reaches book stores near you. Hopefully. Given the state of book stores, that’s not a given. Support those local shops, people!  (And then leave comments on Amazon for your favorite authors.)

Getting Stony Mayhall (for free)

But if you’re cheap like me and always on the lookout for free books, here’s your chance. The wonderful Mindy Klasky let me write a guest post on her blog today, as part of her Inside Track series. My post is about “the undead elephant in the room” — why the world doesn’t need another zombie novel, and why I felt I had to write one anyway.Anyone who comments is entered in a drawing to win a free copy of Stony.

Reviewing Stony…. oh, you get the idea

A quick note about some reviews. I already blogged about the Publishers Weekly review, but a couple more reviews came in recently that were not only positive, but perceptive, what you’d call the Good Good Review. (There are also good bad reviews, in which the critic doesn’t  like the book, but the review is well reasoned, and bad bad reviews, in which the critic hates the book for the wrong reasons, and its cousin, the good bad review, in which the reviewer likes it for the wrong reasons. I forget the name of the author which articulated this reviewing matrix, but it’s handy to keep in mind.)

Gary K. Wolfe in Locus Magazine had a nicely written piece in which he points out several things that I was hoping people would get from the novel, and he  ends his review with this:

Despite some notably grotesque touches, such as a zombie philosopher named The Lump who survives with only a fragment of a body, Raising Stony Mayhall is almost restrained in is lack of splatter mayhem and movie-quote set pieces. Instead, what Gregory has written is an odd kind of heroic family romance, in which the occasional limb may fall off, but the love is convincing real.

And Christopher Shearer over at HorrorWorld, had this to say:

Like his award-winning previous novels, Pandemonium and The Devil’s Alphabet, Raising Stony Mayhall is a simply written yet complex novel that is sure to linger in the thoughts of its readers long after the book is finished and set aside. And sure to garner Gregory a slew of new readers, win him some more awards, and raise the bar for all zombie and speculative literature to come. Full review.

Well, tomorrow’s launch day for Raising Stony Mayhall. My thanks to everyone who pre-ordered and told me about it — your signed bookplates are in the mail.If you ordered from Amazon, I heard from several people that they shipped yesterday — on my birthday. Did I mention it was my birthday, yesterday? I’m 46. I am not dismayed by this number, because I believe you are only as old as the person you feel — so go out there and feel a younger person today!

Wait, that didn’t come out right.

Moving on, this week is all about the PR. Suvudu.com, the site run by Del Rey Spectra, has the first 50 pages of Stony up, with a few paragraphs of intro by me, talking about my new favorite word: Zombildungsroman. It also has a quick trivia questionnaire, called Take Five, where I spill the beans on a few behind-the-scenes items that went into the book.

I’m also doing a little guest-blogging–basically, barging into friends’ blogs and messing up the joint. First up this week,  fantasy author and old pal Joshua Palmatier let me into his LiveJournal page to talk about A History of Zombie Violence.  I link to more of those as they go live.

Oh, and if you didn’t get to pre-order, here are some places to do that in alphabetical order:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders
Flights of Fantasy Books (great indie bookstore)
Powell’s Books

Texas

On Saturday moning, June 11, I shall disappear.  I am highly confident of this. I have received this revelation in the form of plane tickets, and the date upon those tickets is clear. I will miss you, but I will think of you often from my place in the Afterlife–Austin, Texas.

You see, next week I will be on retreat with a bunch of other writers from the Clockwork Storybook crew: Chris Roberson, Matt Sturges, Bill Willingham, Mark Finn, Bill Williams, and special guests Dave Justus and Paul Tobin. I drop their names not only to increase hits to this blog (hey there, Fables fans! Nothing to see here), but to make you jealous.

You see, the Afterlife is full of good writers who talk about interesting things. The whole point of such a retreat is to  (a) gas up the metaphorical tanks, (b) talk about careers, (c) commiserate, and most importantly, (d) drink. I mean Write. Write Like Hell. And I have a lot of writing to get done.

According the rental office, the Afterlife’s connection to the internet is feeble to non-existent. This is a good thing for productivity, but not so good for keeping in touch with friends, especially as a book is about to come out.  However, if you use your Ouija board, I may answer simple questions, such as, Will you return to this vale of tears? Alas, I already know the answer, as it is written on this return plane ticket. I’ll see you mortals in about a week.

–d

For all you folks in Israel and beyond who like to read the way God intended it — from right to left — I’m pleased to announce that Pandemonium is now available in Hebrew from the Israeli publisher, Graff Publishing.

Pop art wildness! Click to see the high-res version.

Man, I love that cover. And I’m amazed by the different choices made by each publisher. Here’s the North American original, followed by the Italian and Czech versions:

Oh, and if you want to buy, here are the links:  Hebrew, Italian, Czech, or classic English in paper or Kindle versions.

So here’s a nice way to start your day: At 8am yesterday, my agent called. Publisher’s Weekly had just covered Raising Stony Mayhall, and not only had they given it a starred review, but they made it their pick of the week. And today that review is online.

They open with “Richly textured settings and nuanced characters mark this introspective novel…” and end with “His unique narration elevates this zombie story well above others of its kind.” Other nice stuff is in between.

I’m a bit relieved. This is the first major review of the book, and even if all later reviews suck, I can cling like Spider-Man to this one. (Query: Why doesn’t Doctor Octopus have suckers on his arms? Seems like an oversight.)

In other Stony news, there’s one day left in the GoodReads.com Stony giveway. As I write this, 664 people have signed up for the 20 books, which means at least 644 losers to console.

I’m sorry people. It’s a cruel world.  But you know what always makes me feel better? Buying a book. I know, right? Maybe there’s a book you wanted that you could order right now on Amazon…

Last night I finished reading Greg van Eekhout’s fabulous The Boy at the End of the World. I haven’t had this much fun with a book in quite a while.

I have to admit that I never would have picked this book up if I didn’t know Greg. See, it’s aimed at middle-grade readers, and not my usual thing, especially now that my kids have gotten older. But Greg had me laughing in the first chapter, and I started reading lines aloud to my wife Kathy.  So forget the middle grade reader designation — this is just a good book, witty and zippy enough to keep even a sour old guy like me smiling and turning the pages.

The hero of the book — and this is an old fashioned adventure, where “hero” is definitely the right term — is Fisher, a boy who wakes up from his pod just as the entire Ark is crashing down around his head. Thousands of years have passed, and Fisher has no memories or skills except the ones that have been programmed into him.

…A big chunk of ceiling fell right in front of him, and Fisher discovered another thing he knew: profanity. Profanity was a collection of words that helped express strong feelings.

Fisher uttered a word from his profanity collection now.

That last line was the first one I read aloud to Kathy. She’s reading the book now.

Fisher learns that he’s a vat-grown kid, maybe the last boy on earth, and with the help of a robot companion named Click and a pygmy mammoth named Protein, he journeys across a wildly changed America, looking for another Ark where humans might have survived. The jungles, it goes without saying, are alive with killer parrots, weaponized prairie dogs, murderous robot drones.

Did I mention this book was fun?

You older children will pick up on nods to Huckleberry Finn, and SF readers will realize that this is essentially a generation ship story, though one in which the ships never leave earth.  And while there’s a serious ecological message underlying the book, there’s a cheerful energy to the story that’s very engaging.

The Boy at the End of the World is due out on June 21. Check out Greg’s site, order it for the 9-13 year old that’s in your life, read it yourself before you give it to the child, abruptly realize that you want to keep this copy for yourself, and order a second one.