Guest Blog and Giveaway with Author William Meikle

WHY I WRITE ABOUT VAMPIRES - WILLIAM MEIKLE
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I grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. Hammer horror movies got me young. And the one that hooked me was Dracula.
I first saw this in about 1970, on BBC2, on an old black and white TV which was about 10 inches square and made everybody look like short fat cubes. But even that didn't detract from the power of this film.

This Hammer horror version sticks fairly closely to Stoker's original novel, and as such is a purist's dream.

Lee plays the Count as no one before or since. His flat demonic stare sems to ooze pure evil. The count has become a cultural icon in the past forty years, and has even been parodied and made fun of (Count Duckula anybody?) but I challenge anybody to look Lee in the eye when he's on the hunt and not feel a frisson of cold terror.

Vampires have been humanised recently (and have even got a soul in Angel's case), but it shouldn't be forgotten that they are bloodsucking bas*ards - that's what they are, that's what they do. The high cheekbones, sex-appeal and good clothes sense are just nice-to-have after thoughts. And in Lee's case you can believe that the bloodsucking is the important part, judging by the relish he shows for the deed.

And just because Buffy can stake a dozen or so without breaking sweat, it shouldn't be forgotten that the vampire is traditionally a great evil force of destruction. Lee never lets you forget it.

Which brings me round to The Watchers trilogy, my retelling of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion in Britain. Bonnie Prince Charlie, and all his highland army, are Vampires and are heading south to claim the British throne. The "Watchers" of the title are the guards of the old Roman wall built by Hadrian, now reinforced to keep the vamps out. It is constantly patrolled by officers of the Watch, two of whom become the main protagonists of the series. I got the idea on a walk along what is left of the wall, and by the time I'd had finished my walk and had a few beers the first part of the trilogy was fully formed in my head. Think "ZULU" or "Last of the Mohicans" with vamps and you'll get a feel of what I was trying to do.

I was dealing with a retelling of the Bonnie Prince Charlie story, where romantic myths have subsumed the harsh reality of a coup gone badly wrong. I needed to strip all the romance out of the Highlanders and build them up from the bottom. Making them a shambling army of vamps and mindless drones seemed an obvious place to start. The Watchers series is a swashbuckler, but there is little lace and finery. What I do have is blood and thunder, death and glory in big scale battles and small scale heartbreak. I love it.

Watchers: The Coming of the King is out new in print and ebook

GIVEAWAY
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A free ebook of Watchers: The Coming of the King (MOBI, EPUB or PDF ) will be awarded to the best comment relating to this blog post, to be judged by William Meikle on Jan 31st

BOOK BLURB FOR THE WATCHERS TRILOGY
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The old wall is a border: England and Scotland, South and North, light and darkness.

It is 1745, and the long-awaited night as come. The Bloodking calls his army to battle, and armed with the powers of the undead and the damned, he will bring them South to claim his birthright: The throne of Britain.

Only the old Watchers on the wall stand in his way. They, their swords, and their faith. But too much time has passed and the Watch has grown slack and ill-prepared for the coming war. Only Martin and Sean have seen the horrors that lie ahead for humankind. Only they have the power to stop it. Now the two young officers of the Watch have a duty to perform.

Stop the Bloodking.

Or die trying.

ABOUT WILLIAM MEIKLE
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William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com/

EXCERPT
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They were a rag-tag bunch for an army. From his vantage point Sean saw kilted Scotsmen, the red-tunics of those who had once been in the English army, the tattered woollen overgarments of farm workers and, down there, just beginning to climb, the recently animated bodies of fellow officers of the watch killed in the last attack. They made up little more than a screaming, disorganised, mob; men, women and older children all united in just one common cause - to get over the wall and feed.

He aimed the nozzle of the bellows down at them and pressed the handles together. The stench of garlic suddenly filled his nose and brought tears to his eyes. As the water hit the attackers they fell back, hissing and mewling, leaving long trails of greasy marks as they slid back to the earth. Screams rent the air, inhuman screeches of pain. Some of them, only their heads touched by the liquid, kept trying to climb until being hosed down further. And still the throng pressed forward, walking over the bodies of the fallen. And everywhere that water touched it brought boiling lesions to the skin and fresh screams in the air.

"This is no way for a man to fight." The Warden shouted, and Sean had to agree with him, but anything that killed the Others so efficiently was welcome at a time like this.

He saw that the Warden was managing to pump nearly double the volume of water that he was capable of; the huge muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched and knotted tight under his overshirt. The Others had fallen in their scores below him and he was now beginning to create an empty buffer zone. However the enemy were getting smarter, and more of them were moving in Sean's direction, where the flow of the killing liquid was less.

"Close up," Sean shouted, and the Warden moved nearer. Sean kept pumping water down over the wall, and further along he could see another doing the same, and the Others kept coming, and they kept dying. The smell that came off the hissing, bubbling bodies stung his eyes and threaten to make him gag as it hit the back of his throat, but he kept pumping.

"Check the barrels," he shouted at the Warden. "We can't let them run dry."

"Too late," the big man replied. There was a sucking sound as his pump brought up air. He dropped the bellows.

"To me," the big man shouted. "More water. More garlic." At the same time Sean's bellows began to wheeze.

He turned, and saw a convoy of children labouring with buckets and gourds, heading for the wall, but it would be long seconds before they would be able to replenish his weapon.

One final squeeze left barely a dribble coming from the spout. Sean dropped the bellows and unsheathed his sword as the black swarm began to slowly make their way up the wall over their twice dead.

REVIEWS FOR THE WATCHERS SERIES
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"I'm always impressed when anyone can add a new twist to the venerable vampire canon. Hugely enjoyable fun to read." --Joe Gordon, The Alien Online

"...a confident and breathless romp through an alternative Jacobean history. Aims for entertainment, and hits the mark." --Simon Morden, Vector, the magazine of the British SF Association

"The book is very well-written. The language is rich, and... I found myself carrying the book everywhere, and taking slightly longer over lunch than I should have, as I just had to know what was happening!" --The Dracula Society

"The author is relentless; just when you catch your breath, something new and exciting happens, sending you spinning into another part of the adventure, and keeping you flipping pages to see what's next." --David Wilbanks, Horrorworld

Hellforged Release Day Party & Giveaway with Nancy Holzner

Got Zombies

First of all, I want to thank Roxanne for hosting my release-day celebration on Fang-tastic Books. I'm excited that Hellforged hits bookstore shelves today, and I'm thrilled to be here for the occasion. So thanks, Roxanne!

Since Deadtown came out last year, one question I'm often asked is, “Why zombies?” Although Deadtown and Hellforged aren't about zombies—they're about the struggles of shapeshifter Vicky Vaughn to hold back the demons that threaten both her and the city of Boston—zombies do form a big part of Vicky's world. What are they doing there? Zombies usually belong to the world of horror, not urban fantasy. They're gross. And their main purpose is often to kill off characters in horrible ways and then get satisfyingly slaughtered by the protagonist and allies.

My zombies aren't like that. In the world of Deadtown, a plague swept through downtown Boston, instantly killing every human it touched. The unstable virus quickly morphed into something no worse than a bad cold, but two thousand Bostonians lay dead in its wake.

Paranormals were immune, so they managed the quarantine zone and dealt with the bodies. Then, three days after the plague hit, the zombies began to rise.

Deadtown's zombies aren't shambling brain-munchers. They're intelligent, they can talk, and they have personalities, just like the people they were before the plague. Some believe that those afflicted were never actually dead—no doctor would go anywhere near the bodies to examine them until long after the threat of contagion had passed, so no official death certificates exist. Whatever happened, the virus took a permanent toll on its victims: they have spongy green-gray skin, blood-red eyes, and stiffness in their limbs. Zombies are nearly impossible to kill, but they don't heal, either. Sunlight destroys their skin. They have superhuman strength.

They're always hungry, but they can eat any kind of food. They do run into some trouble, though, when they catch the scent of fresh human blood; it stirs up an uncontrollable blood lust that tends to make social situations a tad awkward. That’s why they can’t leave Deadtown without a permit.

Deadtown's zombies may not fit traditional definitions of what a zombie is. Still, if a similar plague happened in real life, you can bet that someone, somewhere would call the survivors “zombies.” And the label would stick.

In Deadtown, I wanted to explore how society might react if a large chunk of the population suddenly turned into monsters. In a sense, zombies are Deadtown's lepers. They're seen as less than human, feared, shunned, and shut away from the mainstream. I also wanted create zombies who were characters, not just props for target practice. There's Sykes, the “good cop” in human-zombie Goon Squad patrol pairing; Clyde, the zombie doorman who was a minister before the plague; and Tina, zombified at fifteen and determined to live like a normal teenager—or her version of one, anyway.

In Hellforged, something is killing Deadtown's zombies—leaving them really dead—and I wanted to make this a problem that matters. After all, in most zombie fiction, dead zombies are a good thing. In Deadtown's world, plenty of Bostonians would agree. But these zombies are Vicky's friends, and she's determined to protect them. I hope readers will be rooting for her to succeed. When one of the members of my writers' group, reading an early draft, said, “Oh, my God. You just killed a zombie and I cared,” I knew I was on the right track.

Zombies symbolize many things in fiction, mostly fears. They've been said to represent the fear of death, of disease, of mindless consumerism, of the “other,” of the id untempered by any superego, even a bourgeois fear of the working class. Deadtown's zombies show the other side of such fears, that even those who fall prey to the very worst fate still have a point of view, still have hopes, dreams, and fears of their own. They raise questions about what's human and what's monstrous. I hope you'll enjoy reading about them!

You can read the first chapter of Deadtown here and of Hellforged here. Stop by Nancy's website to explore the world of Deadtown and say hello!

Giveaway Time!

Nancy has offered to give away a fun prize pack today- a zombie prize pack which includes a signed copy of Hellforged, a button that reads "My Zombie Ate Your Honor Student," and a bottle of Hard Candy nail polish in the color Zombie

To enter the giveaway please comment on this post with a question for Nancy, you could ask about zombies, her books, being a writer or anything you wish.

Open to US Shipping Only

Please include your email address with comment

Winner TBA Wednesday January 5

Kicking Off the 25 Paranormal Days of Christmas with Zombies & Yolanda Sfetsos

Christmas in Australia just isn’t what it used to be. Ever since the Earth cracked open, spewing forth demons, it’s become the loneliest holiday.

What do you give your zombie neighbors for a gift anyway? Certainly not your brains.

Some of us have survived. Hey Santa. Can I have a new baseball bat this year? My old one is broken and bloody now. I’ve been good...at killing zombies.

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Firstly, I just wanted to thank Roxanne for having me here today, and Kim for setting it up. It's great to be here. :)

With the festive season approaching most people are thinking about presents, trees, decorations, and dinner with the family. I mean, who’d think of zombies now, right?

Well, actually, I did. You see, I live in Sydney, Australia. Here, the Christmas season falls in the middle of summer, which is usually accompanied with scary bushfires. And that's how I got my idea for CHRISTMAS DAY OF THE DEAD. Zombies, Christmas and bushfires just clicked into place.

CHRISTMAS DAY OF THE DEAD is a zombie novella I wrote a few Christmases ago. Since the first draft, it’s been rewritten and edited a few times, but the idea hasn't changed. It's a story that starts on Christmas Eve and takes Jess to a local shopping center so that she can do some last-minute shopping. But what she finds, changes everything.

I love to toy with the what if? notion a lot. So when I got the idea to mix an otherwise lovely time of the year, with the zombie apocalypse, I started writing and went with it. I have to admit that I feel sorry for my characters–a small group of strangers who get thrown together inside a cinema because the shopping center is filled with the corpses of holiday shoppers who are rising as zombies. But it made for an interesting, gory zombie tale that ended up being a lot of fun.

I have to admit that I’m a huge zombie fan. I’ve actually got two zombie tales available from Damnation Books this month, because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like the end of the world, as a result of a zombie outbreak.

So, if you're wondering what happens when Sydney is overrun by zombies and the survivors have nowhere left to go, you might be interested in checking it out. Oh, and did I mention that it’s available for FREE download? That's right. All you have to do is go HERE, and type this promo code at checkout: 61DODholiday.

Go on, check it out. I hope you get into the zombie holiday spirit... and see why Christmas and zombies really do go well together. Actually, I think I might spend a lot of this month watching, reading, and maybe even writing some more zombie fun.

Merry Christmas!

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Yolanda Sfetsos
http://www.yolandasfetsos.com/

Yolanda Sfetsos lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband, daughter, and cat. She loves to spend most of her days writing stories. Her muse doesn't like genre restrictions and is always happy to toe the dark edge of storytelling. When she’s not writing she spends as much time as possible with her small family. She also enjoys watching movies, TV shows and reading.