An Afterword for ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY Part Three: Thoughts On God

WARNING: This Young ADULT novel is mean and nasty and intended for a mature audience. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers. It is a gruesome, repugnant tale sure to warp young minds. Seriously.

The following is a three-part Afterword for All Together Now: A Zombie Story (you could probably read the actual book in less time). I'm going to keep it mostly spoiler-free, but I am going to discuss writing, theme, and some of the choices I made. If you haven't read the book, this might be more interesting after you have. You can get the first 14 chapters free here.

My own religious views don't matter. As I've said, this story doesn't belong to me anymore, it's yours. It's impolite to discuss religion and politics, but if an author is going to be polite, why bother:) Even so, I wouldn't discuss religion at all if it weren't so prominently featured in All Together Now: A Zombie Story.

Perhaps you'll find it interesting to know that I very much believe in God (or perhaps you checked out during the first part of this ridiculously extended afterword and don't care). The older I get, the more I believe in something greater in the universe beyond ourselves. I've read Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and Christopher Hitchens, and they're all very smart guys. Hitchens, in particular, wrote and spoke in a manner that makes me long for such an apt capability in my own work (not likely).

I'm aware of many of the arguments against the existence of God and they're intelligent and well thought-out and make sense to me. I'd feel smarter endorsing them. But I've had brushes in this short life of mine with the divine, things that could to others be written off as coincidence, superstition, and an unsoundness of mind (common in writers). I was taught from infancy there was a God to see, so I went looking, and I've seen evidence of Her existence and felt His presence. To me, the atheist view that the world is spiritually flat and there is nothing beyond the tangible doesn't hold water. Of course, I also believe in UFO's, so you're welcome to disagree:)

I don't have any special knowledge of the afterlife. It will either be a surprise or there won't be a me to know there isn't one, and I sure can't tell you with any certainty whether God's name is Jesus or Mohamed or Walter or George or Madame Rosita (please let it be that). I'm wary of folks who make such claims.

I've always loved the story of the elephant as a metaphor for the world's religions: 7 blind men from 7 villages are gathered in secret to learn about a great beast. Each man is allowed to feel a different part of the elephant, then they're sent back to their villages to tell of what they felt. The 7 men tell the people 7 very different stories about the same beast, and they're all telling a different version of the same truth. The moral of the story: if you want to know what an elephant looks like, don't send a blind guy. Google it:)

I set my zombie apocalypse in a small Indiana town because I was once a teenager in a small Indiana town. Zombies are a lie, so I tried to tell the truth of the setting by writing what I know. And I'm telling you dead people rising doesn't happen in a small Indiana town without involving a church or two and a Wal-Mart. 

I grew up in the church and I appreciate it. The folks who brought me up were kind and friendly and they kept me from turning out to be a total jerk. I have fond memories of mountain backpacking with Christians, spelunking, going to church camp, and eating homemade meals at my minister's table. He and his wife are awesome. If I have one fear in publishing this book it's that old Sunday school teachers of mine will read it and think I don't appreciate the hard work they put into raising me. I love them and I'll forever be grateful for their kindness and decency. 

But I remember reading Pet Semmetary on a long bus ride home from a missions trip and being told to put it away and instead read the Bible. Later, I was again told to put down a nonfiction book of science and instead focus on a book of magical fairy tales. I was forced to sing songs programming me to think and act in a way deemed acceptable by others, and told horrific tales of hell way scarier than anything I've written to frighten me into submission.

And I got off light. I had friends who were treated in unspeakable ways in the name of God. My family donates to Indiana Youth Group, an organization that provides shelter to LGBT kids who've been kicked out of their homes, usually for religious reasons. Religion is capable of turning parents against their own children in the name of interpreting the will of God, and any social tool with that kind of power should be approached with caution and skepticism. 

I've said this novel is about my own fears and I likely wouldn't have written it if it weren't. I've published this book now for two reasons: 

1. I'm about to be a father and later I may lack the nerve to publish the daycare center stuff:) Thinking of how I might raise a child to adulthood has had me rethinking the manner in which I was raised. 

2. I'm afraid I'm nearly completely conformed and zombified.

Teenage Rob was certain I'd have set the world on fire by now with my storytelling, but it hasn't happened. After graduation, I had to get a job. It sucked, so I went to college and got a better job. I met the most wonderful woman in the world and we're having a child and would you look at that: I'm a conformed adult. 

I work hard every day doing something I enjoy, but it's not what I most want to do. I have to feed my family and that dictates much of how I behave and very little of my life is about choice. I'm doing what I have to do, which is how conformed adults roll (I have people I love and that makes it worth doing).

But this book is in the world. It exists and can be read. As Ricky says:

     When I finish this chapter, I'm going to post this journal online so it can never be destroyed. No matter what happens to me, my story is intact and waiting to be read. I'm in these pages and can never be destroyed.

This concludes the longest, most indulgent afterword a book ever had:)

An Afterword for ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY Part Two: What's It All About?

WARNING: This Young ADULT novel is mean and nasty and intended for a mature audience. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers. It is a gruesome, repugnant tale sure to warp young minds. Seriously.

The following is a three-part Afterword for All Together Now: A Zombie Story (you could probably read the actual book in less time). I'm going to keep it mostly spoiler-free, but I am going to discuss writing, theme, and some of the choices I made. If you haven't read the book, this might be more interesting after you have. You can get the first 14 chapters free here.


Halfway through writing All Together Now: A Zombie Story, I realized the book was very much about my own fears (of course) and that was when I decided to publish it no matter what. Allow me to elaborate:

Something that's always struck me about zombies is that they are unique among the most famous monsters. If a vampire bites you, but doesn't kill you, you become a vampire. Oh no! You'll have to live forever with super powers and a sexy, enchanting charisma. Oh the humanity! If a werewolf bites you, you become a mostly unstoppable super-powered human able to hulk out. True, you may be sad and whiny afterward and walk away from the camera hitchhiking as sad music plays, but you'll mostly be okay.

If a zombie bites you, you lose yourself. There is nothing desirable about becoming a walking corpse, no longer in control of your own thoughts or actions because you're dead. When a zombie bites you, you become like every other zombie, indistinguishable from the horde. And more likely than not, you're pretty gross:

     "Mr. Goodwin?" I said. "Are you—"
     All right was how I meant to finish, but when I turned to face him, I saw he was the furthest from all right any of us will ever be.
     He was dead.
     Had to be.
     The bearded right side of his face was the same as ever, but the left half ended in ragged patches of skin and hair where the flesh from his cheek to his ear had been torn away along with a good chunk of forehead and scalp.
     There were spongy layers of skin covering his skull, but I could see parts of it as well as the bottom curve of his eyeball which must've rolled back in its socket. It was milky white from beginning to end.
     I swore and leapt to my feet.
     Mr. Goodwin's mouth opened and I could see what was left of his facial muscles working.

Identifying that a fear of zombies is in part a fear of conformity is hardly ground-breaking stuff. But I haven't seen it presented elsewhere in quite the same way I've done it. Some of you may remember me bugging Courtney Summers to write This Is Not A Test after I flipped for her incredible YA novel Cracked Up To Be. When I learned she loved zombies, I immediately saw the potential of a teenage zombie novel and she'd be the perfect YA writer to tackle it, not a middle grade ninja like me.

Thankfully, Courtney had her own unique take on zombies that's very different from and likely better than my own. Her book is mostly about people and their emotional landscapes, mine is mostly about zombies and their landscapes being strewn with blood and guts. But the idea of a teenage zombie novel haunted me until I had to write this book.

After all, who has more reason to fear conformity than a teenager? Adults have mostly made their peace with the compromise we all have to make. But toward the end of high school, many teens begin to realize that the years they've spent in the education system have socialized them. The purpose of school is to mold and build young minds, to transform unruly children to civilized adults capable of interacting in our society. To prepare them to get up for an 8-hour day and do what someone else tells them (in the words of Pink Floyd, "hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!").

To join a group is to conform. Being a part of society usually means food and security in exchange for behaving in certain ways, unless of course the townsfolk accuse you of being a witch, the Nazi party creates propaganda against you, or the wealthy decide to enslave or imprison you, etc.

Teenagers are invincible and never going to become their parents. But underneath their boasts is a fear resulting from the knowledge that the larger political body of adults surrounding them, like a horde of zombies, will eventually assimilate them. Conformity is as inevitable as adulthood.

Teens will have to work jobs, they will have to stand in line at the BMV, they will have to attend social functions, they will have to pay taxes, they will have to obey the law or face the consequences, some of them will go to war, and on, and on, and on. They will become something like their parents, and in America, where social mobility is at an all time low, they will probably work similar jobs and live in similar homes as their parents. They'll have children of their own and raise them to be the next generation of the same.

As much as I could without getting in the way of the story (I hope), I've tried to reinforce this theme throughout All Together Now: A Zombie Story. In my view, the teenage years involve being smart enough to realize one is being socialized, but usually not clever enough to stop the process (at least, I wasn't).  Not all high schools say the pledge of allegiance in the morning anymore, but you can bet the students in my book do:)

A theme inevitably emerges in a novel, whatever the author's intentions, and I believe it's best when done deliberately and as minimally as possible. You know you've gone too far if John Galt gives a 60-page speech (never pass up an opportunity to stick it to Ayn Rand). Too much of a good thing leads to preaching rather than storytelling, which is what the reader is paying you to do. So I tried to keep passages like this one to a minimum:

     When we reached the intersection of Kirkman Avenue and Harrington Street, I turned left, but not before I saw the courthouse. Its exterior was limestone and mostly still standing, though chunks of it had fallen to the lawn.

     But its inside was burned out, leaving a husk of what had been: a building that should be ashes but somehow still stood.

Ending a book with a metaphoric house collapsing is all good and well for Annie Prouxl, but I'm just not that deep or that precious. My protagonist has a clear cut goal: Ricky Genero has to get his zombie brother to Kirkman's soda plant where he's been told the CDC is developing a cure. Many of the events of the story are geared toward motivating Ricky to make something right in a world where so much has gone wrong until the reader (hopefully) believes Ricky will stop at nothing to find the cure for his little brother. As the population has become living dead, literally everyone is trying to kill Ricky and stop him from accomplishing his goal. Zombie stories write themselves:)

I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I know there's an anti-social streak in zombie readers (and writers) and part of the reason we love zombie stories is the inherent promise of grotesque violence. If a zombie story is to aspire to meaning and thematic concern, it first has to deliver on the promise of blunt entertainment. If the reader isn't emotionally invested in Ricky and his journey, they're never going to care enough to ponder what the story "means." So before I can concern myself with anything else, I have to fork over the goods and do my best to deliver on the promise of the premise:

     A dead girl lurched from the side of the bleachers, blocking our path to the exit. A flap of skin had been peeled back from above her right eye to the top of her skull. The flesh of her stomach and side from her armpit to her jeans had been ripped away. She moaned and reached for us.

     Ben gave her a wide berth, but he couldn't reach the exit door without touching her.

     The snarling behind us grew louder, closer.

     "Please move," I said.

     The girl cocked her head and stepped toward me, her lips drawing back to expose her teeth, and I knew she didn't understand. She was beyond understanding

     "Move," I said, flinching.

     I glanced back at the approaching corpses and did what I had to. I swung my bat into the girl's face as hard as I could.

     She fell over with a screeching thump on the glazed hardwood floor.

     "I'm sorry."

     The left side of her face was now mangled and bleeding where I'd struck her, but the girl started to stand again anyway.

     "I'm so sorry." My hands were trembling so badly it's a wonder I didn't drop my bat.

I've said my piece and probably too much, so that's where we'll leave it. Except, I can't write an afterword for this book and not address religion. Was there ever an instrument of propaganda and social conformity more powerful than the church? Religion is more dangerous than a loaded gun and more impacting than a nuclear blast.

An Afterword for ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY Part One: How and Why I Wrote It

WARNING: This Young ADULT novel is mean and nasty and intended for a mature audience. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers. It is a gruesome, repugnant tale sure to warp young minds. Seriously.

The following is a three-part Afterword for All Together Now: A Zombie Story (you could probably read the actual book in less time). I'm going to keep it mostly spoiler-free, but I am going to discuss writing, theme, and some of the choices I made. If you haven't read the book, this might be more interesting after you have. You can get the first 14 chapters free here.

This isn't an explanation for or defense of my novel. I believe a story either stands on its own or it doesn't, and no amount of supplemental material changes that. But I do run this blog about writing in which I discuss technique and I'm never going to have as firm a grip on why something was done in a story as when I'm discussing my own work.

That being said, my interpretation is probably not the most valid or reliable. Whatever you think the book is about is absolutely right. This story was mine for a time and I loved it dearly, but now it's out in the world and it belongs to you, Esteemed Reader.

Let's start at the beginning. 

Before I created this blog about children's literature, I wanted to be Stephen King (still do). For the four years of this blog I've read and wrote mostly middle grade books, trying to bury my dark side. But all the while it was festering and growing ravenous until I apparently could not contain it. How else am I to explain the existence of this mean-spirited book on a shelf of my otherwise good-natured stories about adventures with robots and talking animals (all soon to be available)?

If you read this blog regularly, Esteemed Reader, you know I love zombies. Other than Batman, a zombie apocalypse is my favorite thing to read about. For years, I toyed with the idea of writing a middle grade zombie book, which is why soda is the cause of my zombie apocalypse (my very own!). 

Ordinarily, I wouldn't waste time with an explanation for the zombie apocalypse unless the zombies were realistic--infected humans rather than walking corpses. As my zombies are supernatural, there isn't a truly convincing explanation I can offer for them, so why bother? 

Because the crux of my tale revolves around a possible cure for zombie-ism. In order for my heroes to speculate there might be a cure for zombies, they have to know the cause. If zombies simply rise up from the grave and attack, no one would suspect a cure-able disorder.

I figure soda is poison marketed to children by insidious profiteers who are traitors among us (not to take an extreme position). Children and especially teenagers drink soda, they become obese, jittery, overly-emotional, violent, and so on. For me, it's a short trip from that to child zombie. As I'm still paying for dental bills resulting from the soda that was marketed to me and made available at my school, I have an ax to grind with big soda. 

I didn't take my story idea serious until I came up with the perfect zombies-don't-suck-you-suck ending. This is my brother's shorthand for the big scene at the end of most zombie stories where the storyteller creates a metaphor for why human society is actually worse than zombies--see Night of the Living Dead. 

For example, at the end of 28 Days Later, when Jim has killed a bunch of people for the "right reasons" and he's coated in blood and Selena has a gun pointed at him, uncertain whether Jim is a violent infected or still human because she can't see a difference, one can almost hear director Danny Boyle shouting, "Human beings are violent jerks, infected or not. Zombies don't suck. You suck!"

Having my ending in mind dictated my theme and style. I don't care that a protagonist writing a journal of the zombie apocalypse is more than a bit played out, so are zombies, and readers haven't yet seen my protagonist write a journal of my zombie apocalypse. A first-person account keeps an epic tale contained and frees me from the obligation to relay how the apocalypse is effecting all the people who aren't this one kid.

So I decided to tell the story of 11-year-old Ricky traveling amongst the dead in search of a cure for his six-year-old zombie brother Chuck. It would be a somewhat grim story, I thought, but still appropriate for young readers as my zombies would be only playfully scary.

But my dark side saw his chance to come out and play. I was writing horror, after all. Three chapters in Mr. Hyde shoved Dr. Jekyll aside and wrote this:

     I heard muffled thumping. There were two corpses pounding on the windshield from inside the truck.

     "They're out of food," Levi said.

     When I looked where he was pointing I felt faint and my vision clouded with black spots. If this had happened a week ago, I would've thrown up. But I've seen a lot since then.

     At first I could see only the zombies lying on the roof of the truck's cab, Mommy and Daddy. Both of them had the dark rimmed, all-white eyes of the dead, sunken because the pale grey skin surrounding them had gone lax and hung off their skulls like dough.

     Mommy was wearing a blue summer dress, stained maroon all down the front. Daddy had broken his neck and his head lolled on his shoulder. An unnatural bulge protruded beneath his jaw and stretched the skin there to near bursting.

     Then I saw what Levi meant by "food."

     Hanging upside down behind Mommy and Daddy was a car seat. It was still strapped in, despite the seat belt straps on either side having been gnawed through.

     The soft grey lining of the car seat was stained red and black and covered in flecks of skin and hair.

I remember staring at the page, stunned. Where were my kid-friendly middle-grade zombies? I highlighted the passage and my finger hovered over 'delete.' Then I remembered reading Beautiful by Amy Reed and The Duff by Kody Keplinger. Those wild ladies got away with everything in young adult and I wasn't even writing about sex (for shame!). I was writing about graphic violence (understandable and perfectly acceptable), so my book would totally pass if I made it about teenagers. Ricky became 15-years-old instead of 11, problem solved.

Then this happened: 

     When Levi ran out of names to call the dead girl, he stomped her head.

     His aim was off. Instead of crushing her skull, he broke her jaw.

     Her lips slid crooked. Still she made no noise and when she flopped over I saw why: her throat had been torn out and probably her voice box as well.

     Levi raised his leg and her one hand seized his ankle.

     Her fingers stayed clasped as Levi stomped her twice more, but released on the third stomp when her face caved in like a rotten jack-o'-lantern.

     Her arm dropped and lay still.

     Levi spit on her and put his cigarette out in the mashed all-white goo of her eye socket.

     When his eyes met mine, he looked embarrassed as though I'd caught him behind the counter with a dirty magazine. "I hate those things."

After that, I abandoned all pretense of playing nice, as evidenced by a later scene at a daycare center. I decided to just go for it and when I went too far (and I did) my writer's group, my agent, and my wife would remind me there was a good chance my mother might read this book.

In this way, writing All Together Now: A Zombie Story freed me in a way nothing else could. What had started as a just-for-fun-between-projects exercise became an obsession. For years I'd been writing for the market, thinking of what editors and publishers might respond to, but now I was writing a story for no other reason than I wanted it to exist.

I focused on character and action and for a time, that was all. In order for readers to care about Ricky and Chuck being chased by zombies, they have to care about Ricky and Chuck. I spent a lot of time thinking of who they were and decided to make them products of a broken home so they'd have their own issues and conflicts that could fill a novel even if the zombie apocalypse didn't break out.

A trend I've noticed since writing this blog is that the majority of authors of MG and YA are female. I don't think it's coincidence that in most of the divorce stories I've read, the cause of the divorce is more frequently the father. Sometimes the child protagonist comes to realize their mother was right all along and her ex-husband really is a jerk. As wonderful as my own mother is, I promised myself if I ever wrote about a broken family, I'd strike a blow for the men and tip the scales back a bit. So I let Mom have it:)

As I was putting all that together, I had a sudden revelation about what had happened to Chuck to make him a zombie. The scene of Chuck's death and rebirth came to me whole and intact. In a flash, I understood what my novel was about and why I had to write it.

Book Review: ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY by Robert Kent

WARNING: This weeks' Young ADULT novel is mean and nasty and intended for a mature audience. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers. It is a gruesome, repugnant tale sure to warp young minds. Seriously.

First Paragraph(s): I'M NOT A BAD WRITER, but I'm amazing with a baseball bat, which is why I'm still alive to write this.

     I get mostly A's in English, or at least I did before the school burned down. Two summers ago my short story "Raccoon Avenger" was published in the Harrington Herald.

     I just wanted you to know this story isn't going to suck.

     It might suck.

     I'm not exactly writing it under ideal circumstances. We don't dare turn on a flashlight. I'm writing this by moonlight on the floor so they won't see me through the windows.

That's right, Esteemed Reader. I picked my own book as the Book of the Week. Make sure you come back next week when I'll be giving myself the most handsome blogger award:) 

Obviously, I'm not actually going to review my own book, but that's okay. As I (almost) never comment on a book's shortcomings, I don't really review books here anyway. I talk about writing and advertise authors. Usually I tell you about a book's story and fumble around guessing why the author made some of the choices they did. 

Well, this week I don't have to guess. This is the one book about which I can tell you exactly why the author made the choices he did (unknowable subconscious motivations aside). I can even tell you the author started every writing session on this book listening to Johnny Cash sing "I See a Darkness" because it helped, ya know, see the darkness:) I can't tell you if the author made the right choices or if the book works--that's not for me to say. But obviously, I love this book. It's a story I crafted with you in mind, Esteemed Reader, because I thought you'd like it.

Actually, you might not like it. I have no doubt there will be readers who find this book offensive and disturbing, and hopefully, it is. My worst nightmare is someone reading my entire story and having no reaction. I want your heart. I want the reader to laugh, cry, hate me, be mortified, be offended--anything but passive indifference. I want your heart:

     Levi and I flanked him.

     I had my lucky baseball bat, but Levi carried an axe, so I let him take the first swing, and the second, both aimed at the thing's legs. The blows were intended to disarm (disleg?) rather than kill.

     The zombie crumpled to his knees, his white eyes never leaving my face, his craven moan never changing pitch, his one remaining arm stretched toward me.

     Levi hacked at that arm and I swung my metal bat straight into the zombie's forehead, like hitting a baseball off a batting tee.

     Though the bottom half of his one arm now hung by the thin membrane of skin Levi hadn't severed, the zombie still had both biceps raised toward me.

     I brought the bat down again. When I raised it, it was covered in the same blackish red that sprayed from his head in a fine mist.

     The zombie convulsed.

     I swung the bat one last time and when it connected, the thing's skull made a loud cracking sound like an ice-weighted branch snapping. The impact traveled up the bat and stung my hands.

     The zombie went limp and silent.

     Levi wiped his axe on his purple "New Life Christian Church" T-shirt, then dropped it to his side and kept walking.

     I should've kept walking, but I didn't.

     Maybe it was the clothes the zombie was wearing: brown slacks, a blue and black striped polo shirt, and black dress shoes, as though he'd been at a church supper. Maybe it was the wedding band on his left hand.

     I knelt beside the corpse and rooted in his pocket until I found his wallet.

     According to his license, this man had been Gary Boyer. He had four credit cards, a gym membership, and a photo from his human days. He was standing with a woman, two small children, and Donald Duck in front of that giant golf ball in Epcot.

     "Are you coming?" Michelle asked as she passed.

     I couldn't speak just then, so I dropped the wallet and got to my feet.

Fifteen-year-old Ricky Genero is writing a journal of the zombie apocalypse. His high school has burned to the ground,  most everyone he's ever known is either dead or a shambling corpse roaming the earth in search of human flesh, and his best friend died saving his six-year-old brother Chuck from a zombie horde. When Chuck is bitten and infected with the zombie virus, Ricky must travel among the walking dead in search of a cure.

Originally, the title of the book was simply A Zombie Story. Don't try to church it up, Kent, I told myself. I wanted a straightforward tale about zombies that would be the book I wanted to read if someone else had written it. As a long-time zombie fan, I wanted standard-issue, slow-moving dead people that follow all the traditional tropes of the genre, and I wanted to take them seriously.

Also, for me there's no sneaky calling them "infected," "frenzied," "walkers,"  "unconsecrated," or any of those other fancy words authors use when they're pretending to discuss something more highbrow than zombies. I'm not re-inventing the wheel here and no one's going to give me an award for originality, but I do feel I was able to work within genre to bring readers some fresh ideas about zombies I haven't read elsewhere. For Ricky, zombies are in the world for the first time, but for the reader, I'm painting fresh blood on an old corpse:)

There's a theme that emerges in the tale and a metaphor for social life and plenty of symbolism and satire, and that stuff is all good and well, but I did my best to keep it contained and to keep it light instead of heavy. I wrote that stuff for the second read, assuming anyone bothers. Your first time through, Esteemed Reader, I don't want your brain. I want your heart. That other stuff is meant to haunt the reader later when the book is done and it's time to try and sleep--it's philosophical horror:)

The book is meant to be a fast, fun read. For this reason, the chapters of All Together Now: A Zombie Story are short as is the book (around 200-250 pages, depending on format) and the pace is mostly frantic:

     At least this will be a short book. There are only 300 pages in this journal and there's a good chance I won't live long enough to fill them all. So if this story should just stop somewhere in the middle, you'll know I didn't make it.

     Or maybe I lost this journal. Let's hope it's that.

First and foremost, I want to show Esteemed Reader a good time. There is no shortage of people being chased and killed and most of the book is devoted to scenes like this one:

     "They'll pass," I whispered. "We wait."

     But they didn't sound like they were passing. I could hear their steps on the cement outside as they shambled past the gas pumps.

     I wanted to lift my head to the glass, peek out just enough to see what they were up to, but I kept my cheek pressed to the cold tile floor.

     They moaned in unison, the sound of each harmonizing with the moans of the others so I couldn't tell if the moans were coming from three zombies, or five, or ten. All I knew for sure is they were on the other side of the door.

     WHAM!!!

     At first I thought it was the sound of a gun, but then it happened again, just above me.

     "Sh—" Michelle slapped a hand to Levi's mouth before he could say more.

     A corpse's palm smacked against the window glass, fell away, and smacked again.

     A second hand smacked the glass, closer to the entrance. Then a third hand started on the other side of the door, so all three hands were smacking in unison.

     Michelle bit the fingers on her left hand, but in her right hand our one gun was trained on the glass.

     I tightened my grip on my bat.

     WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!

     The glass wavered, rippling with each smack, but didn't break.

     Yet.

     WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!

All Together Now: A Zombie Story contains some sexual content, references to drug use, and a whole bunch of zombie violence (some of it set in a daycare center).  There's absolutely no swearing (in a book about fear of conformity, the language conforms), but I wouldn't let my kid read it. If you take nothing else away from this "review," know that this is a story for adults and teenagers who've already seen worse on television.

Obviously, I have more to say about this book. We haven't even touched on the creepy Christians that show up late in the story. For me, religious satire fits perfectly in a tale about the dead rising and I couldn't imagine a zombie apocalypse set in a small Indiana town not involving a church. As Ricky tells us: 

     You can't throw a stone in Indiana without hitting a church. We'd only just left Levi's church yesterday.

     "We still going to Kirkman's?"

     I nodded. There were at least four churches I knew of between Ernie's and the Kirkman Soda plant. We were traveling in God's country.

All the same, I think we better call it a review.  If you're curious, you can also read the first 14 chapters free here.  If you're looking for a scary story this Halloween and you read this blog, why not give me a shot at terrifying you?

If you'd like to hear me ramble more about the merits of my own book (why wouldn't you?), I'll be posting an over-long and supremely smug Afterword later this week in which I'll discuss the process of writing the book and some of the techniques I employed in agonizing detail (as some of the most popular posts on this blog are me rambling about editing, I'm going to give the people more of what they seem to want). I'll even chat a bit about religion and how I love religious people and God, but am wary of overzealous dogma. 

As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from my own book (stomach rolls over in disgust) All Together Now: A Zombie Story:

     The corpse gnawed (spoiler)'s right arm, loose white flesh spreading out on either side of his mouth like the skin of fried chicken.

     Not far from them was Maggie Evans. She was smiling at me in a way I knew meant if I'd gone to her she might've let me get to first base. She had eyes as green and lush as a rainforest.

     I saw one of them sucked from its socket and eaten in the back of the chemistry lab not too long ago. The creamy pale skin of her face with just the perfect scattering of freckles was torn away by the teeth of Mary Beth Kerr, her best friend.

     Ben raised his bat and brought it down on a kid no older than four.

     "Don't kill them!" Dad cried, but by then Ben was braining his second toddler. (somewhere my Mom is proud--MGN)

     I stopped to look into the nursery.

     A little girl lay in the center of the room, whimpering. Her head was bent at an unnatural angle. I couldn't see how she was still alive, but she was crying—not snarls and moans, but human crying.

     Something important was obviously broken as she wasn't moving her arms or legs beyond a twitch. If she could've got up, she would've.

     There were two babies dressed in shirts and diapers on her chest, protruding like growths, their faces buried in the bloody meat of her arm. I doubt they had teeth, but they were licking at her blood and feasting on her in some way.

     Their moans were quiet and content.

     They looked up at me, their eyes bright white, seemed to decide they weren't big enough to bring me down, and went back to the meal they had.

     At the girl's foot was a teddy bear as big as she was, and behind it a rocking chair beside a crib. A small, dead hand curled over the top of the crib, not strong enough to pull whatever was attached to those tiny digits into a standing position. (Am I nervous about becoming a father? Why do you ask? --MGN)

     When I finish this chapter, I'm going to post this journal online so it can never be destroyed. No matter what happens to me, my story is intact and waiting to be read. I'm in these pages and can never be destroyed.


STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.