The Book Plank

Guest Blog: A Life Less Zombie by Colin Sinclair As soon as I noticed that Abaddon Books were hosting another open door, I knew exactly what to do. I had a sure-fire stellar pitch already prepped and good to go. There would be zombies, and Nazis, and Nazis fighting zombies, and Soviet Special Forces battling Nazis, zombies and, yes, Nazi-zombies. All of this whilst our heroes infiltrate underground bunkers of eldritch Egyptian magic and delve into dungeons of dark betrayal. Maybe there'd be a plucky upper-crust British officer sort—isn't there always?—keen to Do His Bit in the war against the undead masses of the Last Reich. I'd probably also need a hard-eyed Mademoiselle from La Résistance , seeking vengeance for a (mostly) dead family in war-torn France. In essence, though, we're talking endless, tireless ranks of brain munching shamblers. It would be zombies-zombies-zombies, all the way down. Except. I'd tried something similar for a prev...

Author interview with Una McCormack  Author Bio: Una teaches writing at undergraduate and graduate level. Her background is in sociology, and she has taught organisational behaviour at Judge Business School, Cambridge, and Cambridge University Engineering Department. Una is the author of several science fiction novels (including a New York Times Bestseller!), and numerous short stories in that genre. She is also a prolific fanfiction writer, setting up and organising a number of online writing groups and resources for fanfiction writers. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, Matthew, her daughter, Verity, several daleks and no cats. ---------------------------------------------- Hi Una, welcome over at The Book Plank and for taking your time to answer these few questions for us. BP: First off could you give us a short introduction as to who Una McCormack is? What are you hobbies, likes and dislikes? UMc: I have a young daughter, so I don’t get m...

Media Alert: Incoming all new Judge Dredd fiction I never broke the law. I AM THE LAW! It was a celebration that reached around the world as a huge fanbase that proudly includes Simon Pegg, Johnny Vegas and the band Anthrax among its hundreds of thousands of supporters turned the online world a shade of Dredd! Yesterday’s annual ‘Day of Dredd’ to campaign for a sequel to the 2012 movie was a riotous day of celebration that took over the internet, rocketed DREDD to the top of the UK DVD charts and caused a blue-ray sell-out in America. Even Judge Anderson herself, actress Olivia Thirlby, delivered a heartfelt message of thanks via the Hollywood Reporter… These are the upcoming books from Abaddon: Judge Dredd: Year One  Three acclaimed Dredd writers – Carroll, Ewing and Smith – take you back to Judge Dredd’s first year on street in this collected edition of novellas, which marks the start of a brand new series from Abaddon Books that follows the beginn...

Double Dead by Chuck Wendig, Double Dead #1 (Tomes of the Dead) Coburn’s been dead for close to a century, but seeing how he’s a vampire and all, it doesn’t much bother him. Or at least it didn’t not until he awoke form a forced five-year slumber to discover that most of human civilization was now dead – but not dead like him, oh no. See, Coburn likes blood. The rest of the walking dead, they like flesh. He’s smart. Them, not so much. But they outnumber him by about a million to one. And the clotted blood of the walking dead cannot sustain him. Now he’s starving. And on the run. And more pissed-off than a bee-stung rattlesnake. The campire not only has to find human survivors (with their sweet, sweet blood), but now he has to transition from predator to protector – after all, a man has to look after his food supply. I have heard a lot about the creative writing of Chuck Wendig. How he is one of the authors to watch out for. I haven’t had the chance to read Blackbirds o...