Monster Island(99)

We’re a long way from being done so nobody start crying on me. The next part of the tale belongs to Nilla, who some of you have probably already guessed starts out as a yoga instructor in California on the worst day of her (living) life. She will become one of the first victims of the Epidemic and that’s just where the book starts. I don’t have a title yet. “Monster Island 2” doesn’t really work since the story takes place on the mainland. For now I’m calling it “Nilla’s Tale”, which sounds like the story of an adorable runaway puppy. Believe me, any puppies in this story will fall far short of being adorable.

In the meantime, please do check out the links in the righthand sidebar. They were all hand-picked by either Alex or myself (if you don’t know who Alex is, see below). Here are some other things to keep you busy:

For those of you like Adrian who like to write your own zombie stories, please do check outhttp://www.undeadanthology.com, which is accepting submissions of original work. I won’t be able to publish anything here for you but you can also submit stories to DeadKev athttp://www.allthingszombie.com/fiction.php#a or to Hell’s Library athttp://moviesonline.ca/phpBB2/zombie-fan-fiction.php. I’ve dealt personally with these sites and they’re a swell bunch of folks.

If you know how to draw and you like to draw zombies, I really, really want to see some pictures. Send them to the contact address over to the right. Please only send me JPEG or GIF format files. I can’t open PSD or AI or EPS files and I can’t put PDF files up for display in an image gallery. Let me know in your email if you don’t want your pictures posted here for all the world to see, but send them to me anyway. Please! Be advised that we cannot pay you for your work or provide any kind of remuneration but we will always credit work back to its creator.

If you just want to talk about zombies, or zombie books, especially “Monster Island”, please do visit the fan group set up by Feral Fish athttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/monster_island_fan/. I’ll be dropping by whenever I get a chance so I hope to see you there.

If you have not signed up to be notified by email of future updates to this site, you may wish to do so now. Just enter your email address in that box on top on the right, just above the bit where we ask you for money. That way you’ll know when Nilla’s story gets going. It will also let me inform you should there be any news or announcements here. Anyone who has already signed up for updates is on the list and doesn’t need to sign up again.

Okay. That’s enough business. Here’s the part where I get maudlin.

I want to thank everyone who read even a chapter of “Monster Island”. Thanks for your time and your interest. Those of you who stayed to read it all deserve special thanks and I wish I knew your names to thank you personally. The one thing that made this project worth doing was the readership, the most encouraging and intelligent bunch of folks I’ve ever had look at anything I did. Those of you who commented on the chapters-(in no particular order) the Lauras, Don and Donny D, Fred, Liam, Digbeta, Marbo, Alnjo, Ann Towey, Pat, Nadra, Mel, Davidkaye929, James, Igame3D, Mike, Feral Fish, Delacoix, Mendoza, Lady Cass, and on and on and on (please forgive me if I left you out)-well. You guys already know how hard you rock but I’d like to say it again: you rock.

I’d like to thank Adrian Padden especially and I think we all know why. You so crazy in a very, very good way, weird chap.

I owe a real debt of gratitude to DeadKev of Allthingszombie and Paul of F-Train, our contest winners who did a lot toward getting us some attention in the early days.

Fred VanLente watched me write a big part of this book and sometimes he even contributed advice without which I would have been lost. Thanks, Fred.

Big, big thanks go to Elisabeth Wellington, my lovely and well-loved wife, who inspired some major portions of the story and who took me away from all this just when I needed a break and who made me the happiest man in the world by kicking serious zombie ass for me and supported me throughout. Love ya, sweetie. Mean it.

And finally… to Alex Lencicki, who made it all possible, major league thanks. Alex is the mastermind creator and proprietor of Brokentype, which some day will be the first and foremost among online publishing houses that started out as blogs. At a time when I was almost ready to give up on writing Alex posed me a single question: what did I really want? Fame, money, power, women on yachts and heaps of jewels on the women? The answer was that I wanted roughly two hundred people a day to read whatever I wanted to write and that they would enjoy it and be able to tell me that they enjoyed it. Alex made it happen. If you had fun during your visit to “Monster Island” you owe him your thanks, too.