HOW NOT TO TRAIN A ZOMBIE!!!

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Excerpt from HOW NOT TO TRAIN A ZOMBIE!!! 

An older model, dirty white utility van was parked in the gravel driveway next to a green truck with a blue tarp draped over the cab. The large, bold lettering on the side of the van was easy to read in spite of the thick layer of dirt.

Pratt’s Extermination

We take care of all your ZOMBIE problems!

Day or Night

Call

830-207-DEAD

Max grinned as he read the sign painted on the side of the van. “That’s so cool!” he said in an awe filled voice. Then he saw the sign on the driver’s door.

No ZOMBIE too big,

too small, or too rotten

for us to haul.

“That’s got to be the coolest job anyone can have. If my dad was a zombie exterminator, I would be bragging to everyone,” Max said as he slid off his bicycle and pushed it up the driveway.

Max paused at the back of the van. Standing up on the tips of his toes he tried looking in the back of it, hoping to get a glimpse of something—preferably a zombie. Preoccupied with trying to see something, he didn’t hear the crunch, crunch on the gravel.

“What are you doing?”

Max jumped back away from the van as if it were too hot to touch. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

Blurb Blitz Tour

I'm excited and nervous. Tomorrow kicks off the first day of a two week Blurb Blitz Tour for How NOT to Train a Zombie!!! I've never done a tour before so this is a new experience for me. I've posted the links to the bloggers who have generously given me a day on their blogs, and below is the dates for each stop on the tour. Stop by each day and leave a comment. At the end of the tour, I'm giving away a $25 Amazon gift card to one lucky commenter.

May 6    
The Muse Unleashed

May 7    
Andi's Middle Grade and Chapter Books
(STOP TWO) Straight from Library

May 8    
Mom With a Kindle

May 9    
Zombie Girl Shambling

May 10  
Deal Sharing Aunt

May 13   
Sandra's Blog
(STOP TWO) Long and Short Reviews

May 14 
Storm Goddess Book Reviews and More
(STOP TWO) Frankie Blooding's Bookshelf

May 15 
Books in the Hall

May 16 
J.C. Martin, Fighter Writer

May 17 
It's Raining Books

Looking Back Blurb from How NOT to Train a Zombie!!!

Here's an excerpt from chapter 1 of my Middle Grade book, How NOT to Train a Zombie!!!

“That’s not only the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’ll get us in all sorts of trouble.” Chad’s nasally baritone voice blasted its way through the crowded hallway. Only the clanks of locker doors slamming shut were louder, but not by much.

Up and down the hallway, students turned and stared at Chad and Max. Some pointed and laughed, but most just ignored them as if they didn’t exist.

“Sheesh! Can you talk a little louder? I don’t think they heard you in the band hall.” Max’s face turned several shades redder than the lockers lining the wall. This wasn’t exactly the kind of attention he wanted, especially not after yesterday’s Career Fair. How his mom found out about it, was beyond him. He had thrown away the first flyer asking for volunteers to speak to his class about their careers over a month ago, and he made sure to throw away every flyer he had gotten since then.

But somehow she found out.

And yesterday, she showed up in a bright pink flower shirt and her overalls and talked to the class about the joys of being a gardener. Max wanted to die. Gardening wasn’t even her career. It was her hobby! And everyone knew it. And then his mom singled him out when she left. Shaking hands would have been okay, but is that what his mom did?

Oh no!

She hugged him in front of the whole class. Even having Eddy Pratt’s dad talk about being a zombie exterminator couldn’t erase the embarrassment and humiliation Max endured the rest of the day.

Upcoming Events

Saturday, April 6, NO REST FOR THE SPIRIT AND OTHER GHOSTLY TALES is going to be free for the day at Amazon. So if you like ghost stories, here's your chance to download the ebook for free.
NO REST FOR TH SPIRIT AND OTHER GHOSTLY TALES and GUARDIAN OF ATLANTIS are both part of Amazon Prime. That means Prime members can borrow either ebook for free.

May 6-17 HOW NOT TO TRAIN A ZOMBIE will be on a Blurb Blitz Tour along with a giveaway at the end of the tour. Toward the end of the month, I'll post a list of stops on the tour. Be sure to check it out.

Friday and Saturday, April12 and 13, the Hubby and I are competing in a BBQ Cook-off. This is the first one we've done in awhile, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. We'll be BBQing brisket, pork spare ribs, and chicken. We're also entered in the Jackpot beans and Chef's Choice desserts, both of which have cash prizes. A day or two after the tournament, I'll post some pictures and let you know how it went and if we placed.

Looking Back Blurb from NO REST FOR THE SPIRIT AND OTHER GHOSTLY TALES

The following is an excerpt from "Marlow Bridge Specter" which can be found in NO REST FOR THE SPIRIT AND OTHER GHOSTLY TALES.

On cool nights when the moon is full, a woman can be seen walking up and down Marlow Bridge. Along with the sobs carried on the wind, the name Peter can be heard.

Rose Dillet grew up in an upper middle class family. As members of the country club, Rose was always going to dances and other social events in town. In school, she was a very good student. Her parents had plans of sending her off to a good finishing school and then on a chaperoned tour of Europe before they married her off. And they had even planned her marriage too, even down to who she would marry and the dress she would wear when she walked down the aisle on her wedding day.

There was only one problem.

Her parents never bothered to consult Rose or her heart which had other plans...

Guest at Honestly YA

I'm a guest over at Honestly YA today. 

Check out the blog and the giveaway. 

This is your chance to win a signed copy 

of How NOT to Train a Zombie!!!

My Zombie book is LIVE!!!

I'm so excited!!!

My first zombie book is now available as an ebook over at Amazon.

In a day or so, it will be available as a paperback from Amazon too, as well as an ebook for Nook and through Kobo.

Check it out. There is a preview of the book at Amazon.

BOOK COVER: How NOT to Train a Zombie!!!

What do you think?

A Few Zombie Facts

If you haven't noticed, I've been putting up a lot of zombie stuff. Well, it's because my zombie book , How NOT to Train a Zombie comes out next week. So, in celebration, I thought I would give you a few zombie facts today.

• October 8 is World Zombie Day.
• George A. Romero's 1968 movie, Night of the Living Dead, is credited as being the zombie movie from which all zombie movies today can trace their roots back to. The zombies in this movie are the result of radioactive contamination from a space probe returning from Venus that explodes in the Earth's atmosphere, and of course the resulting zombies are hungry for human flesh.
• According to the zombie lore, the only way you can kill a zombie is to somehow damage its brain or cut off its head.
• Yes, zombies are dead and they can move, but they don't have superpowers. In fact, zombies tend to have fewer abilities than when they were alive.
• Zombies don't generate or heal, so any damage is permanent.
• Zombies are affected by the same rate of decomposition as any other "normal" corpse. Eventually the top speed of a zombie will be reduced to a crawl or even get to a point they can't even move.

Some facts courtesy of Random Facts.

Possible Zombie Types

When it comes to zombies, whether you read books about hem, watch movies or television shows about hem, or play video games with them in it, there is always one thing you can be sure about--everyone has a different take on zombies.

Most of the time the zombies typically fall into one of the five basic types:

• "rise from the dead" zombies,
• voodoo created zombies,
• viral or parasitic zombies,
• radiation created zombies, or
• the experiment-gone-really-wrong zombies.

So where do the zombies in my book, How NOT to Train a Zombie, fall?

(And yes, I just revealed the title to my new ya zombie book that will be out in a couple of weeks!!!)

In my zombie world, a virus is what created my zombies. No one really knows how the virus started, it's just an accepted, highly contagious disease that must be dealt with. The virus causes dead humans to reanimate and go on a feeding frenzy. The virus is transmitted to living humans through zombie bites. If a human survives, he/she is doomed to turn into a zombie, which in turn, goes on a feeding frenzy.

Of all the types of zombies out there, what's your favorite kind?

Sunday W(ork) I(n) P(rogress) Zombie #4

Here's another excerpt from Chapter 1.

“Zombies aren’t like dogs. They can’t be trained.”

“Who says?” asked Max.

“The experts. Didn’t you listen to anything Mr. Carter said in science? Zombies may be slow moving creatures and they may look like your friends and family but they are not to be thought of as friends and loved ones. They are highly infectious and dangerous creatures. Only trained experts should handle them. Trained experts—zombie exterminators like Eddy’s dad.”

“What did you do? Memorize the pamphlet they gave us?” asked Max.

Chad’s cheeks turned bright red.

Sunday W(ork) I(n) P(rogress) Zombie #3

From Chapter 1

“But if we train a zombie, we’ll not only win the science fair, we’ll be doing the town a huge favor.”

“How? By getting ourselves put in jail or worse like—you know—infected? No! Thank! You! There are rules about zombies for a reason. They are extremely infectious. You should have read the pamphlet they gave us in science about zombies,” Chad reminded Max. “If you had, you’d know that.”

“We won’t get infected. It’s gotta bite you in order to do that and we won’t get anywhere near the teeth,” Max paused. “We’ll keep the zombie in a cage in either the backyard or the basement. And as long as we stay outside the cage, we won’t get infected. Then once we’ve got it trained, we won’t have to worry about it biting us.”

Sunday W(ork) I(n) P(rogress) Zombie #2

More from Chapter 1

“Quoting your mom is not cool. It just sounds stupid. Grow up! Eighth graders are top dogs. We don’t listen to our parents, we tell them.”

“Yeah right!” Chad glared at Max. “Your idea is stupid, not my mom. Now if you want cool, she’s cool.”

“My idea’s not stupid!”

Chad rolled his eyes. “It’s not only stupid, but you’re gonna break a lot of rules. Suspension doesn’t look good on transcripts.”

“I’m not gonna break any rules.” Max made quotation marks with his fingers when he said rules. “All it’s gonna do is make me—us the most popular guys in the history of this school.”

“This is so ridiculous,” said Chad. “What’s up with your obsession to be popular? Being popular is not everything.”

Max stared at his friend in disbelief. “How can you not want to be popular?”