November 27, 2011

Just in time for Christmas...

A short story of mine has just appeared in a new anthology by Post Mortem Press, entitled New Dawn Fades. A perfect gift for the horror readers on your list -- after all, what says Christmas more than a collection of twenty zombie stories?

Joe Schreiber, author of the Star Wars-zombie novels, StarWars: Death Troopers and Star Wars: Red Harvest, writes the introduction to the volume. He calls my story "Happy Birthday, Joshie" and the other stories of the collection "thrusts, stabs and downright eviscerations on a convention that just won't die."

I had a lot of fun writing "Happy Birthday, Joshie," and I hope it shows. The story does not play with the short fiction form, but it is still haiku fiction in that it looks at the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse through the eyes of a single individual.

Imagine a world where our loved ones need never die. Just infect them with the zombie virus and they stay the same forever. More or less. After many years, Rachel Harding finally knows what to give her brother unnaturally kept at age ten. She just needs to find a way to get her present to him in the zombie Viewing Center.
 
I love horror stories that make the reader wonder, who really is the monster. I hope that I pull off at least raising the question in "Happy Birthday, Joshie." The entire collection deals with the same issue, in many different ways. Again, from Joe Schreiber's introduction: "If I had to pick out a common thematic thread in these pages, it would be this: The zombies in New Dawn Fades hold a mirror up to ourselves."
 
Small stories, big impact is what haiku fiction is all about. I hope that you'll support the small press movement and give New Dawn Fades a try.

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