Normbies!

It’s a different kind of zombie apocalypse.

Everybody knows getting bitten by a zombie turns you into one of them. What took a little longer to figure out is that biting a zombie also changes them back. But there is a cost, and not everyone is ready to pay.

As the zombie threat looms as strong as ever over a post-post-apocalyptic world, perceptions toward the creatures begin to shift, as do those toward normbies—the people who have been brought back from the other side. It’s a new world full of new dangers, and the worst of them might not be the zombies at all…

Normbies! is a collection of short stories that span several decades, surrounding a zombie apocalypse that takes a sharp turn when survivors discover biting a zombie turns them back into a human. The book will be available digitally and in paperback and hardcover starting October 14th, 2022. You can read the first story, “Patient Zero” here: Patient Zero

You can pre-order the eBook now: AmazonSmashwords

Crypto Bizarro

It’s been a while, but I haven’t been idle. I have a few projects in the pipeline, hopefully coming soon. In the meantime, my latest is available right now.

Introducing Crypto Bizarro.

Welcome to the world of Crypto Bizarro, where all manner of ghosts and ghouls and things that go “bump” in the night come out to play. This fully-illustrated collection of horror includes short stories, poems, puzzles, cryptograms, secret messages, a choose-your-own-adventure tale, and more. From restless spirits to physical monstrosities, dastardly acts and forbidden rituals, the frights found within ask the reader to question their reality. As the tome comes to life in your hands, you’ll have to search beyond the book itself to unlock all of its mysteries, but take care—when you venture into darkness, the unknown has ways of making itself known.

Crypto Bizarro is a fully-illustrated collection of horror-themed short stories, puzzles, and poems for a mature audience. This collection is the culmination of two and a half years’ worth of work and correspondence between myself and Josh Leichliter, as well as the contributions of our wonderful writing and producing team: Sarah Carswell, Seth Thomas, Nick Brown, Aerys Bates-Leichliter, Andrea Wright, and Ariana Wright.

The book is available in hardcover and eBook formats. You’ll find links at the bottom of this post.

Crypto Bizarro is more than a collection. It’s a brand, a flavor if you will, and this collection is just the start. To keep up on all of our crazy ideas, visit www.cryptobizarro.com and sign up for our mailing list, or follow our page on facebook. Right now you can find a few free samples and a nice little puzzle, with more on the way. This is meant to be a growing, evolving, living (or perhaps undead?) collection, and Josh and I have much more up our sleeves.

Amazon (Hardcover) • Amazon (Kindle) • Google Play (Coming Soon) • iTunesBarnes & Noble (Hardcover) • Barnes & Noble (eBook) • Smashwords • Direct Purchase

In the Year of Our Death and Zombiemandias – Available Now

In the Year of Our Death, the sequel to After the Bite and In the Lone and Level Sands is now available in print and eBook formats at various retailers, and should go live at several more over the next few hours.

In the Year of Our Death

It’s been two years since the zombies first appeared and changed the world forever. Keely and her friends escaped the hell of Seattle and settled down near an abandoned radio station. Bailey finds herself caught up with a ravenous group of survivors. Georgie has set up a courier system to move mail across the remains of America. Will and his friends—all of them orphans now—are out of water and have to leave their quiet suburb for the first time in their lives. Nelson, the engineer charged with running Hoover Dam and powering the American Southwest, breaks his glasses and must wander the wasteland nearly blind looking for a replacement.

Adam, however, knows the truth about the zombies: They aren’t monsters, they’re angels, sent by God to cleanse the world of the survivors, and Adam and his Church of Lesser Humans were put here to help them do it. Armed only with faith, a bus, and the steadfast rule to never allow harm to come to the zombies, Adam knows Judgment Day is coming, and will stop at nothing to herald its arrival.

You can read a sample chapter here as well as download samples from the retailer of your choice.

Store Links (more will be added as they become available):

Amazon • Google Play • iTunes • Barnes & Noble • SmashwordsKobo • Paperback (CreateSpace store) • Hardcover

The paperback edition should be available through Amazon’s website and Barnes & Noble’s website soon.

Also available is the collected edition, Zombiemandias: In the Zombie Apocalypse Collection, an eBook that includes After the Bite, In the Lone and Level Sands, and In the Year of Our Death.

Zombiemandias: In the Zombie Apocalypse Collection

Amazon • Google Play • iTunes • Barnes & Noble • SmashwordsKobo

Thanks to everyone who makes what I do possible. This includes you, the reader, without whom I’m just sitting here shouting random nonsense into a void. Thank you.

In the Year of Our Death

Things have been exciting lately! I published my first game, Hinterland, and while it was a little bit glitchier than I thought, it’s been mostly smooth. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, and a lot of fun watching people play it on YouTube.

Now it’s time for me to shift my focus to my other big October project. This one is a book announcement.

In 2012 I published After the Bite, a collection of short stories I wrote with my friend Seth Thomas, set during a zombie apocalypse. This was a companion book to a novel we released a year later called In the Lone and Level Sands. Now, I couldn’t be happier to announce the sequel to both: In the Year of Our Death.

In the Year of Our Death

In the Year of Our Death picks up roughly two years after the end of In the Lone and Level Sands. Like the previous book, it follows different groups of characters across the zombie-ravaged country. Returning from In the Lone and Level Sands, Keely and her friends live in a motel near a radio station in a small, quiet part of Los Angeles they’ve barricaded off from the zombies and the outside world. Young Will and his group of orphaned teens have been waiting out the apocalypse in a peaceful suburb, but have run out of food and water and have to leave to find a new home. Ruffian Bailey found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and has been running with a bad crowd ever since, until she decides to flee them and try to do some good in the world. Slow but well-meaning Georgie, who could outrun the devil himself on his bicycle, has set up a courier system to shuttle packages and information across the United States. Engineer Stephen Nelson has set himself up at Hoover Dam, where he keeps power running to the Southwest—until he breaks his glasses and has to head blindly into the wasteland to replace them.

At the heart of it all is Adam. Suffering from nightmares of a church fire he survived at the onset of the apocalypse, Adam believes the zombies to be a higher form of enlightenment, and now commits his life to protecting them. His most important mission is to find the man on the radio who feeds daily advice on how to kill what Adam calls the “greater humans” and silence him for good.

After the Bite told the small tales of a zombie apocalypse, while In the Lone and Level Sands serves as a record of survivors at its onset. In the Year of Our Death finds the survivors—and zombies—struggling to survive in a world that changed forever two years ago. Every day now is a war, and this year will claim its fair share of casualties.

You can read a sample chapter here: Chapter 16

So this is how I find myself sitting on a series of finished books. I have to say I like how it feels. On that front, I’m also announcing an eBook collection of all three books:

Zombiemandias: In the Zombie Apocalypse Collection

Buying the three of them together will end up being a little cheaper than buying them separately, but fair warning: This is going to be quite a long eBook.

Both books release on October 20th, 2015. Pre-orders will be live soon, I’ll update with links as they’re available. Also, in celebration, the eBook version of In the Lone and Level Sands will be available for free and/or at a deep discount at most retailers through the month of October.

So that’s that. Stay tuned here for release info, teasers, and other goodies.

Thanks always for reading.

Hardcovers!

I recently received my proof copies of the hardcover editions of After the Bite and In the Lone and Level Sands. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out, and now I’m making them available to purchase through Lulu.

I wish I could make these available elsewhere, but I can’t justify the cost to do so. For now, Lulu is the only place to get hardcovers of these books. Paperbacks and ebooks will remain available everywhere they currently are.

You can find After the Bite here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/david-lovato-and-seth-thomas/after-the-bite/hardcover/product-21636543.html

And In the Lone and Level Sands here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/david-lovato-and-seth-thomas/in-the-lone-and-level-sands/hardcover/product-21636523.html

After the Bite comes in black satin with gold spine text, while In the Lone and Level Sands comes in tan satin with black spine text. Both books feature glossy dust jackets and black-and-white interiors.

In the Lone and Level Sands

In the Lone and Level Sands cover

The wait is over! In the Lone and Level Sands is now available in ebook format (list price $3.99) through Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes (with Kobo and Sony editions coming soon). It’s also available in print (list price $12.99) through Createspace and Amazon (with Barnes & Noble coming soon).

In the Lone and Level Sands is the story of seven groups of people across America as they try to survive the zombie apocalypse.

You can read the first 19 chapters here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzO8YJWnSng8SzRzcUtYeHpDM00/edit?usp=sharing

You can also see a longer preview at the various ebook retailer pages.

Seth and I want to thank everyone who reads this or any of our works, and everyone who will do so. You mean a lot to us.

In the Lone and Level Sands Trailer (And Other Things)

In the Lone and Level Sands comes out Tuesday, November 26th.

You can pre-order the ebook through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes.

The ebook will also be available through Amazon, Kobo, and Sony eBooks. A print edition will also be available soon.

Purchasing a new print edition through Amazon will allow you to download the Kindle eBook free of charge.

Just a reminder, you can read the first 19 chapters of the book under the “Samples” section of this blog. You can read a longer sample at the book’s Smashwords page.

Another reminder, the ebook edition of After the Bite is free for the month of November.

I’m very excited to release this novel next week. In the meantime, my NaNoWriMo progress has slowed considerably. I reached a point where it felt like forcing the story out would ruin it, so I’m more or less checking out of NaNoWriMo. I wrote a good 20,000 words and I absolutely plan to finish this novel, just not by the end of November.

I’ve also come up with a new title for one of the books I’m querying agents for. I’m not sure whether I want to change it yet, but I’m thinking I’ll do a blog post about titles pretty soon, as I have a few things to say on the subject.

Zombie Extravaganza

The tentative release date for my co-authored zombie apocalypse novel In the Lone and Level Sands is November 26th, 2013.

Leading up to its release, I’ve been posting a lot of fun zombie-related stuff on the book’s Facebook page. This blog post is meant to recap a lot of that. If you like zombie fiction, I hope you’ll check these out.

Free Norman Peters! – A blog maintained by one of the minor characters in In the Lone and Level Sands.

After the Bite – A collection of short stories and poems set during the same zombie apocalypse. Published in 2012, the e-book is free for the month of November if you download it through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes Books, or Sony.

Update: Amazon now also allows you to download the eBook free of charge.

This book is also enrolled in the Kindle Matchbook program, meaning if you buy a new copy of the paperback edition through Amazon, you can download the Kindle version free of charge.

In the Lone and Level Sands preview – The first two parts (about 16%) of In the Lone and Level Sands uploaded as a .doc to Google Docs for easy reading. This includes the first 19 chapters of the upcoming book, in their entirety.

I’ve been a huge fan of zombies for a long time, and In the Lone and Level Sands is the zombie epic I always wanted to write. I’m happy to finally be releasing my contribution to the zombie genre, and I hope you’ll stick around when it arrives later this month. I also hope you enjoy the rest of this stuff in the meantime. Have fun!