You might be surprised to know that I did a zombie story that just came out in an anthology. All of the other authors were predominantly horror writers. I wrote one vampire novel years ago (The Hunger). In fact, I prefer vampires, then liches for my undead needs. But I mentioned to one of the people involved, Greg Ferrell, who lives in Tallahassee, that I would be interested in writing a zombie story. As said, all of the other authors are well known in the field, including some best sellers. But I have sales numbers in my genre, and that will get you a lot of invites. So there I was. And as some very successful people have told me in the past, don’t turn down an invitation if you are able to do what they want. It always helps to get exposure. And thanks to authors Mike Evans, Kindra Sowder, Claire C. Riley, Katie Cord, James Dean, William Allen, Kya Aliana and of course, Greg P. Ferrel.
Lockdown is set in a state of the art building that has been locked down at the beginning of a zombie outbreak. We could choose any kind of business we wanted. The only restrictions: no firearms; and the world must have never before experienced a zombie outbreak. I was given the eighth floor, I believe, and I chose a medical supply company run by an ex-doctor and a woman who had been a combat medic in Iraq. That gave me a lot of possibilities for the characters to come up with zombie killing weapons when the floor started flooding with undead.
The release was just over a week ago, and it shot up to number one in new release horror, jumping ahead of some superstars in the field. They had a big online party. I really didn’t participate in that, since I’m not really one of the in crowd in this genre. Surprisingly, I found some people on there who were fans of my space opera. One mentioned that he wondered if I was that Doug Dandridge, the writer of his favorite science fiction series. I’ll just say one thing about that. As far as I know, there are three Doug Dandridge’s in the United States, and I think I am the only author. I lucked out on the name, one that doesn’t have to compete with a bunch of people with the same nom de guerre. Good luck if you’re John Smith.
I gained some new Facebook followers from that promotion, many of them fellow authors. It’s always good to connect with these people. You never know when an opportunity might arise to work on something, or to promote each other. Lockdown was a fun project, and I would be open to writing more horror in the future, though science fiction and high fantasy will always be my true loves. Lockdown is available on Amazon.
