Why the heck zombies??? Release Day!!! @pippajaygreen takes over!! #guestpost #YA @LycaonPress

Blurb:

Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067 and rising...from the grave...

Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems...

But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead?

And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P. 

A YA supernatural novella, coming from Lycaon Press 20^th August.
Add it to your Goodreads shelf HERE. 
Sign up to my no-spam newsletter HERE to get early sneak peeks at covers, and news of the latest releases, giveaways and contest.
Buy here: Lycaon Press!

 

Guest post: Why the heck zombies??

I've suffered from bad nightmares all my life. In recent years it's finally lessened somewhat, and I've taught myself to wake up before things get too scary. But not always. So as a child, I was banned from watching horror films—not that I would have chosen to watch them anyway. I avoided anything scary like fairground rides or horror—even the Hammer House films. (Funny, but climbing the 14 foot willow tree in our garden, or charging around bareback on my horse didn't qualify under 'scary'. Not for me anyway. My parents probably had regular heart attacks).

So zombies might seem entirely inappropriate thing for me to even want to write about. And yet, looking back, I realize I've been reading about zombies all my life. Just not the brain eating monsters from the movies. I met my zombies in Piers Anthony and Terry Pratchett. Jonathan Zombie in Castle Roogna, the poor lost soul who, being deprived of the love of his life, chose suicide and zombie-hood as he waited for her through eternity. The comic yet tragic Reg Shoe, a regular in the Night Watch books. Wizard Windle Poons who had to go back to his body because Death had been given the sack in Reaperman. And the resurrected Baron Samedi in Witched Abroad, seeking revenge for his murder. These somewhat sad yet humorous figures in my favourite books are a huge contrast to the Hollywood classic.

So maybe that's why I fell for R in Warm Bodies. He might still be the brain-eating variety zombie, but we get to see life from his POV. His character was far more like the zombies in the books I'd read and loved—a tragic figure rather than a mindless monster. All he wanted was to make a connection to someone. I not only sympathized with his character, but desperately wanted him to get his Happily Ever After.

But when muse suggested zombies, my first reaction was 'hell, no!' I couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't write zombies. How could I write something I'd always claimed to hate?! It was an insane idea!

Luckily for me, muse didn't quit. She got her zombies. I got a story that my editor called adorable. And now I hope you have a reason to try it even if you don't like zombies either. ;)

Bio:

After spending twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force. Although happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.

You can stalk her at her website, or at her blog, but without doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.