Cover Reveal for Dead Over Heels by Alison Kemper

So I've been sad for a few months that neither of our schedules allowed for me to beta read Alison Kemper's next book, Dead Over Heels. But I won't be sad for long, because this book will hit the e-shelves soon! In the meantime, Alison and Entangled revealed the cover:

Ava Pegg isn’t sure exactly what her parents were thinking when they bought a vacation home in dull-as-dirt Glenview.

Then the cute-but-really-annoying boy next door shows up at her place in a panic…hollering something about flesh-eating zombies attacking the town. Now the undead are walking in Glenview, and they are hungry.

Panicked, Ava and Cole flee into the forest. No supplies, no weapons. But that’s the funny thing about the Zombpocalypse. You never know when you’ll fall dead over heels for a boy… 

Add Dead Over Heels on Goodreads here!
(And this is another cover design by X-Potions Design, who also did my cover and Alison's first book, Donna of the Dead)

Happy Book Birthday to Alison Kemper!

My crit partner, Alison Kemper, has her debut today with Donna of the Dead, a teen romance in the thick of the zombie apocalypse! As part of Entangled Teen's March release promo, Donna is only .99 for a limited time! Click on the cover (designed by another friend, Kelley York, btw) and get your copy!

And while you're waiting for it to download, here's a catchy zombie song to entertain you

Congrats to Alison Kemper and Donna (of the Dead)!

The details of writer-friend Alison Kemper's book deal were announced today:

Debut YA author Alison Kemper's DONNA OF THE DEAD, about a teen girl who has to face the obliteration of the human race to a virus that makes people act zombie-like with only the help of a rag-tag group of high school classmates, including her long-time crush, in the campy humor-meets-action vein of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Entangled Publishing in a three-book deal with the first book releasing in 2014.

I've read the first book as a beta, and I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy! Go congratulate Alison on Twitter

FIDO: ever faithful

Zombies seem to be everywhere these days, so my husband rolled his eyes when I put in the disc for FIDO, another zombie movie. But we both ended up liking this one. Zombies give me the heebie-jeebies, but I can tolerate them better with a dose of humor.

FIDO delivers on the wry humor (I almost said "tongue-in-cheek" but that takes on a different tone when you're talking zombies)--like Pleasantville meets Shaun of the Dead (another must-see that I've blogged about), which sounds like an odd mix but actually works. I was surprised when I looked back and saw that it got an R rating for "zombie related violence." I've seen gorier movies with a PG-13 rating.

Here's the trailer:

Sometimes I Scare Myself

I am a total wimp about scary movies--I can only take them if they also have a large dose of comedy. I can handle Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and movies like that, but I hate the jump-out-and-get-you type especially.

To this day, my husband teases me about when we were watching The Changeling, and I left the room after a moment that I will freely admit was only a "gotcha". A stained glass window burst, and I'd had enough, after all the other spooky stuff that came before that. And as much as I love and admire the LOTR movies, I can't watch them within a few hours of bedtime because they are just too disturbing for me.

As you might expect, my wimpiness carries over into scary books too. I don't even attempt most horror books.

But I've been stepping up the paranormal in this rewrite of my book, and sometimes after I write a scene, I have to set it aside and not look at it for a while. Not because I need to set it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes, but because it scares me! That just might be a new record for wimpitude.

But I do have to say I've had some weird things happen before, so I have plenty of genuinely creepy stuff to draw on. In the end, I don't think this novel will be classified as horror, but I hope I've done my job and at least unsettled a few people.

My Brain Hurts

Doesn't that look just like a lovely rosy cabbage? I should preface the following link with warnings that:

1. I have been spending much of my free time on revisions of my novel, which means I've been hanging out in the spirit world, and with ghosties .

2. In between, I've been reading/and or listening to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and the Graveyard Book.

So that will hopefully explain why I haven't been blogging lately, and why I found these so very amusing.

How My Mind Works (or Doesn't Work, You Be the Judge)

I had a conversation last week with some friends about emergency food stores, and at the time I realized that I might need to pay special attention to having staples on hand since my food allergies wouldn't let me just go loot some Doritos at the end of days.

Didn't think anything more of it, until I had a dream last night. A dream where the zombies were coming (old-school slow, shuffling zombies) and we were going to have to pack up the car and hightail it to the desert or some other unpopulated place. So I'm running around searching the cupboards, and a whole army of the living dead is coming up the street. At one point, there is an old man trying to chomp my arm through my sweater, and I'm yelling to my husband, "All we have is applesauce! And garbanzo beans!"

Horrifying! Especially because I hate garbanzos--applesauce is all right though. And zombies are bad, of course.