Welcome to The Coffin Hop! Follow the links for some great Halloween reads, prizes, giveaways, and more, including a free preview copy of COFFIN HOP: DEATH BY DRIVE-IN.
And... don't forget to come back here Weds. 10/25 for the start of my giveaway and my annual event, the 2012 Halloween in Miniature Party!
What's coming!! More zombies - with a twist! Coming in 2013: my YA novel, GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie (Be sure to follow the blog and check my website for news and the cover reveal in the months ahead... - Follow the GIRL Z page on Facebook.) - Keep reading for the synopsis, today's post and details on my "zombie lite" short story.
Life can suck when you're sixteen. It can suck even worse when you're not- quite- dead.
Sixteen-year-old Rebecca Herrera Hayes faces every teenager's biggest nightmares: bad skin, bad hair, and worse . . . turning into one of the living dead.
Becca's life changes forever when her cousin Spence comes back to their small Wisconsin town carrying a deadly secret—he's becoming a zombie, a fate he shares with her through an accidental scratch.
The Z infection, however, has mutated, affecting younger persons like her, or those treated early enough, differently. Now she must cope with weird physical changes and habits no girl wants to be noticed for. Then she meets Gabe, a good-looking part-Z like her and fears falling for him. After all, how can he, who shows hardly any Z symptoms, be interested in someone like her?
But time is running out... Becca needs his help as she and her cousin Carm search for their missing mothers and fight off hungry Zs.
Most of all, she needs to find something, anything, to stop this deadly transformation before it is forever too late...
Why do we love getting scared?
I love Halloween! It's a great time to let your hair down and let your "inner ghoul" out. haa!
Ever since I can remember I've loved the scare that comes from a spooky book or movie. I still haven't forgotten the creepiness of Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart (book and movie), or the way I jumped when the dog moved and scared me while I was at the end of Stephen King's book, Pet Sematary.
Non-horror fans often say that real life is scary enough. True. But most fictional horror presents a probably-can't-or won't-happen scare - the zombies coming after you - the witch turning you into a horrid monster - the thing that grabs at you from under the bed, or out of the closet.
It's letting your imagination take you places you never expected - or would ever, ever want - to go. Unlike the real life horrors out there, this is a "healthy" scare, if you will. It's like walking into a haunted house and the heart-building apprehension building of what's around the corner. In fact, it's probably a great tension reliever. Real life scares are usually never funny. At least with fiction or a good movie, you can get scared, and then laugh about it.
* I call my short story THE KILLER VALENTINE BALL "horror lite," it's zombies with a twist and a dash of humor....Every girl dreams of going to a "Killer Valentine Ball"... For Jess, it becomes a night she'll never forget...