Still Dying After All These Years (with apologies to Paul Simon)

If you had asked me 18 months ago if I thought I would ever read a zombie book, let alone participate in the writing of one, I would have laughed at you (but not in a mean way).

If you had asked me…I’d owe you a big apology, because not only have I read a few, my name now appears on the covers of 3…as a contributing author!

It all began when I met zombie/horror writer Armand Rosamilia.

Thanks to our shared love of writing, as well as the Boston Red Sox (that’s the 2013 World Series Champion Red Sox) and the Oakland Raiders, we established an immediate rapport and it wasn’t long before discussions about a collaborative effort began.

The first result was Dying Days: The Siege of European Village, released in December of 2012. Siege was an extension of Armand’s already popular Dying Days series (read about it here) and we had so much fun writing it that we decided to write a sequel.

Dying Days: Siege 2, released in November of 2013, continued the story we had begun a year earlier, and it was just as much fun to write (you can read about that one here).

As if that weren’t enough, Mando asked me to contribute to his second Dying Days anthology.

Even though we were friends, and even though we had co-written two novellas, the request was an unexpected honor. I was being given an opportunity to add a short story to Still Dying 2 – joining some premier horror authors like Patrick Greene, Brent Abell and Mark Tufo – just to name a few.

Still Dying 2 is now available in e-book and print – here are the links:

Click here for e-book

Click here for print

My contribution to the book is a story called Dying Days: Angel.

It tells the story of a woman named Angel, who must escape her own home to avoid the zombie hordes roaming her quiet St. Augustine neighborhood. Angel is a character from the first Siege novella and I tied my short story into that story – so there’s a bit of a continuity thing going on.

I’m very pleased with my story, but I’m sure it’s far from the best one in the collection – which is why I highly recommend you grab yourself a copy of this anthology. It’s a great collection of short stories…it will introduce you to several gifted horror authors…it will give you an introduction to the Dying Days world and, last, but not least…it will be the perfect thing to read on those long, dark, stormy winter nights…

As always – thank you for reading

Writing Tips From the World Series

Warning: I’m going to talk about baseball for a minute, but only briefly, I promise.

I was watching game 1 of the World Series between the Red Sox and the Cardinals and something unusual happened in the first inning.

The Red Sox had runners on first and second when David Ortiz hit a ground ball to the second baseman which should have resulted in a routine double-play. Unfortunately (for the Cardinals) shortstop Pete Kozma failed to handle the toss from the second baseman, resulting in a bases-loaded/no out situation for the Red Sox as opposed to having a man on third with two outs.

In baseball, and especially in the World Series, that is a huge difference.

The Red Sox went on to score three runs in the inning and eventually won the game 8-1.

Even before the game was over the baseball pundits started with the what ifs.

What if Kozma hadn’t dropped the ball?

They began giving their predictions and analyzing how the inning would have been different. When the game was over the talk was about how that play changed the game – and you can bet your bottom dollar that when the World Series is over they will pontificate for days, maybe even weeks, about how that one play affected the outcome of the series.

If the play had gone a different way (any different way) there would be as many potential results as there were fans in the seats…maybe more.

What does this have to do with writing?

Quite simply…you can crerate an entire story with those two words…What if.

The What If  is a fiction writer’s best friend and if you aren’t asking yourself what if often, you should be.

I once saw an interview with Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, and he told about how he once read a newspaper article about a shark attack of the New Jersey shore…and he asked himself what if a shark decided to stake a claim in a certain place and stay there until the food source was gone…

That is not an exact quote – but the what if part is. When I heard him say those two words a bell went off in my head.

What if…is the key to mapping out your story.

You start with a basic what if concept and build on it by asking what if whenever you get to a fork in the road.

Asking it once will create a ripple effect, and each answer will bring about its own what ifs. Some of them will be dead ends, you may have to back-track and change an answer here and there to create a new path…but eventually you’ll have a story.

Like the baseball game, the number of potential answers is virtually unlimited, as are the outcomes.

The beauty of writing fiction is – unlike baseball – you get to ask the what ifs before it’s too late.

That’s why I tell people I don’t believe in writer’s block. If you find yourself stuck…just ask yourself what if. And keep asking it (and answering it, of course) until you are writing again.

It’s not a shortcut – there are no shortcuts in writing – it’s more like a navigational tool that will allow you to predict the outcome of the game before it’s played.

Now if we could only put down a few bets…