DANA FREDSTI: The actual original concept for Plague Town came from Lori Perkins with Ravenous Romance, who approached me about writing a trilogy that would be “Buffy.  But with zombies.  And different.”  Like the Egg Shen quote says, it started very small.  I jumped at the chance. I definitely used some of my own experiences to build Ashley’s character, as well as the setting and some of the other characters, but much of it was made up on the spot as I wrote.

I also thought in broad strokes about what made Buffy so popular and connect with so many people and tried to incorporate those elements into the book without having any thing that would raise cries of “BUFFY RIP-OFF!” Hopefully I was successful.

DF: Heck, no!  I really don’t want to be in the middle of a zombocalypse, no matter how seductive the idea of raiding a shopping mall might be. I like the question, though, because a lot of people have asked if Ashley is based on me.  I am very good with swords (of various types), I can shoot a gun (although I don’t have nearly as much experience as I’d like), I  can hold my own in a verbal confrontation if I have to, and I would definitely go back for the cats.  If there’s anything about Ashley I’d love to have as my own, it’s the wild card enhanced strength/agility/senses.  I’m starting to feel the aches and pains of impending age and I resent it bitterly.  Other than that, though, I have to say I really like who I am, where I live, and what I’m doing with my life.  I’d like to think Ashley would mature into someone like me!

DF: When I started writing Plague Town, the first thing that popped into my head was the quote by Egg Shen  from Big Trouble in Little China, “That’s how it always begins.  Very small.” Once I ‘d written that down, I knew I wanted to show Plague Town’s “patient zero.”  Maggie and her family are the beginning of the plague and I grew attached to the idea of following them on their undead journey. I almost kept Maggie alive (in a zombie sense) till the end of the book, but decided other stories needed to be told, not just hers.
Also, the problem with writing in first person is you only have the main character’s point of view, so I wanted a way to show what else was happening in Redwood Grove and thereabouts.  So the italicized “interludes” became a way of doing that.

DF: I pestered friends and family in the military with questions.  I also got tons of info from my wonderful ex, Brian Thomas, who is a weapons handler in films as well as a history buff, and my friend and fellow author T. Chris Martindale, who is a firearms enthusiast (and if you haven’t read his horror novels, you are SO missing out).  I also googled extensively and watched YouTube gun demo videos (sent to me by T. Chris). I still made some mistakes, though, and am determined to get it all correct in Plague Nation.

DF: Well, my idealized writing routine would be something like this: I arrive home after work to find the house sparkling clean, my felines staring up at me adoringly as they clear a path to my office, which is a cozy nook of a room overlooking the ocean. Food magically appears to sustain me as I write for three to five hours every night, the gentle purrs of the cats and some sort of music serving as white noise to drown out any distractions as my
characters beckon me on to tell the tales of their adventures.  I wear some sort of lounging pajamas made of silk, of course, and have character notes and plot points carefully posted on three by five cards, which I move around on the wall until they make sense.  The words flow until interrupted by a delicate yawn, which signals it’s time for bed.

The reality is I get home from work, immediately spend an hour cleaning up over beloved felines as they attack broom, mop and litter scoop because Mom’s home and it’s PLAY TIME!  Then I make some sort of dinner for me and my boyfriend (he chops things, but isnt much of a cook), and throw myself down on the couch in the living room and turn on my laptop. I shoo random cats off my laptop (and lap) so I can work without arms pinned down, turn on music and re-read work from the night before.  I try to coax my characters,
now all missing in action, to come back so I can continue a: chopping through an overgrown jungle of ideas that make no sense or b: wander a barren desert until something, anything, springs to mind and kickstarts the evening’s writing process.  I try to ignore the sound of random cat fights or things falling over in other rooms (do I really want to know what they did? No, I really don’t) and forge ahead until a jaw-dislocating yawn cracks my face in half and I fall face forward on the living room coffee table,
ready for bed. This generally happens anywhere from 9 to 10pm, no matter how into a scene I might be. I go narcoleptic at a certain point and there’s not much I can do about it.

On weekends I tend to start writing at 2pm and go until I can’t write any more. I’d like to start earlier, but the mornings and early afternoon tend  to be relegated to exercise (beach walkies!), household stuff, and catching up on emails and social networking. The rest of the routine (cats, etc.) is pretty much the same.  And it’s not really that lonely because I have the afore-mentioned felines keeping me company, as well as my boyfriend (also a writer), who works on his stuff next to me on the couch.

WZ: Dana, I want to thank you again for the interview; you’ve provided some great insight into the book and you as an author. In closing, can you tell us a little about book two – Plague Nation? How about giving us some hints on what we can look forward to.

DF: Plague Nation is going to see the spread of the zombie outbreak outside of the 100 square mile quarantine zone around Redwood Grove into the rest of the United States and adjacent countries/continents. I’m gonna kill at least one familiar character (I say that so callously, but I assure you I will not be happy while killing this particular character) and introducing new ones, and setting up plenty of challenges for Ashley and her fellow wild cards. One of my favorite things to do at any given time is imagine how I’d use a particular place/setting for my books and I’m definitely going to have a chance to put some of my ideas on paper … or in my computer, rather. Sigh.  I just carbon-dated myself, didn’t I? 

CHRIS WADE: This is my first zombie fiction book yeah. I started wriitng as a kid, very odd surreal little stories, and I also used to do zombie comics when I was about 13 because I was mad on Romero’s films, especially Day of the Dead. I started giving writing a proper go in 2009, when I did a book on the ex Stranglers singer Hugh Cornwell, which he sold on his tour and Hound Dawg Magazine, a free arts thing I still do now when I get the chance. I’ve done a range of stuff, books on Romero’s films and fiction audiobooks with comedians like Rik Mayall and Charlie Chuck, but I have always wanted to craft a zombie story and I finally started it at the back end of last year. I finished it in February and I really enjoyed doing it.

CW: I have an office that I almost religiously go to and I always write something every day. I get up early too, around 7 or 8 everyday and always go check emails and do things in the office until dinner time and then see where I go for the rest of the day. It’s a kind of natural thing for me really, so there’s no conscious decision made to devote time to writing. I stay motivated because I can always find something to write, whether it’s a song, something towards a novel, an article for the magazine, a review or a short story.

CW: Yeah that is exactly what I was going for and I am glad that is easy to pick out from all the chaos. Certainly I love zombie gore but I wanted to make some points about society too. England is not in a good way at the minute and I wanted this to be reflected in the book. The class system and its snobbiness is explored with the two characters Reginald And Stanford and I even touch on the lootings  that happened in England last summer with some hoody type criminals who take advantage of the zombie outbreak and raid the shops. That careless and materialistic side of society bothers me too. But I was imagining how people would react if hell rose out of the badness and gave them a taste of their own medicine.

WZ: Why did you name the town Promiscuville? There’s very little sexual activity going on there, at least overtly.

CW: There’s a lot of sexual activity going on there because there’s a lot of prostitutes and perverts there; what a lovely little place eh? My girlfriend came up with the town name because it sounded mucky and scummy, which that place really is. I just loved the name. I thought it was very unusual sounding and maybe would get people wondering what it’s all about.

CW: Maybe next year I want to start another book in the Promiscuville series, following other characters at the same time. There’s an audiobook of Promiscuville coming out soon and I’ve got other projects that need sorting out first, but I would love to revisit the genre again when I can. I loved writing about zombies so much!

CW: Not sure about this. I was always a fast runner so maybe if it was Romero zombies I’d be able to run away from them, but if it was rage type zombies I’d be fucked. I would literally soil myself in fear so I am not sure how long I would last. I’d like to think that something inside would take over and I’d become a tough guy, but it just doesn’t sound right me even saying that. I’d quite like to see what being a zombie was like, although sometimes when you switch on day time TV I think that feeling is pretty close to zombification.

CW: As advice I would say write what you enjoy, not what you know. Apart from that, I would maybe starting your own publishing house, screw the big wigs! (Down with Thatcher too! Oh, it’s 2012…) To people who’ve enjoyed any of my work, I really appreciate it, after all, it’s what any writer loves.  Thanks again Bill

The show’s producer, Robert Kirkman, says he is testing AMC to see how disgusting the zombie kills can be. I think he would like to make things a little gorier.  “It’s my goal to get to that point, I want to know that limit,” he said.

Promiscuville is a very bad town – lots of prostitution, crime, adultery – a perfect setting for all hell to break loose. Wade seems to be making a statement on our current society with this book, and perhaps we should all take heed. The story starts off with Beth, a crazy woman being treated by psychiatrists for killing her wife-beating husband in a very disgusting and grotesque way. She claims innocence, but of course no one believes her. As I read about Beth, I felt that I was reading a cross between a Stephen King novel and a George Romero movie script. There was something creepy about this lady, so I wasn’t sure whether to like her or not. I was able to decide by the end of the book, though! Beth and a group of survivors have to make decisions if they want to stay alive, and not everyone makes good decisions.

I think Wade could have given us more background around the criminals – there is a lot of potential for weirdness there, but my imagination filled in the background for me, and I’m sure yours will, too. This is a great read, and I think Wade is on to something with the setting of Promiscuville. I can see a franchise of sorts similar to the famed town of Necropolis, with lots of ongoing stories as the town evolves through the apocalypse. Definitely worth your time to read this one.

doctors, gas stations, hospitals and police stations (stay away from these), and even the closest liquor store. When I picked a random spot on the map, it was nice to find out that beer was only 2 blocks away, provided it hadn’t been looted already. That would be a nice feature, an updated status on the liquor store’s inventory. The data comes from Google places as well as keyword searches, so the accuracy is limited. Still, it’s a great idea and perhaps we all should create a personal Google map of our area with accurate information and keep several copies in our bug-out bag.

Parker, our heroine, recovers from the flu and returns to school, hoping to get on with her life. That’s not in the cards, it seems, as Parker and her boyfriend, out on a picnic, are attacked in the woods. Waking in the infirmary, she discovers she’s been bitten and begins waiting for the inevitable, which never comes. She discovers she is immune to the virus, and is drawn (in more ways than one) to a strange instructor at the college who turns out to be involved in a secretive paramilitary branch of the government whose mission is to track and destroy outbreaks such as the one in Redwood Grove.

Parker finds out she is a “wild card”, and there are others like her who have been recruited into the fighting group, trained, and sent out to fight zombies. Parker reluctantly joins the group and thus begins a new phase in her life – soldier. At first I was hoping that someone would put a bullet through her head; she seemed like such an annoying freshman, crushing on the young instructors, looking gorgeous, etc. However, as she began to mature (quickly) she changed and took the role of soldier seriously and with valor. By the end of the book, I liked her and was impressed with her level-headed thinking and her ability to handle the M-4 rifle, sword, and other weapons. Looks like humanity has a hope, and hope just happens to be beautiful, which is why I’ll think of this book as “The Rise of Ashley Parker.”

There are many surprises along the way for Parker and her newly-formed group of wild cards, and you’ll enjoy yourself as things get real ugly, real fast, which is of course why you read zombie novels.  The author, Dana Fredsti, is not a new author, but this is a new branch of her writing, and there are plenty more leaves on her tree. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, partly to see what Ashley will do next. If you’re a female fan of the zombie genre, get this book. If you’re a male, get this book – you’ll also like it.

Check out the video of the complete one hour panel discussion with Robert Kirkman, Norman Reedus, and Steven Yeun. At times the audio on the video is hard to understand but if you’re a Walking Dead or Kirkman fan, it’s worth watching the entire panel discussion.