Today I have the pleasure of presenting an interview with Bram Stoker Award-winning author Lisa Morton. Let’s take a minute to acquaint everyone before we begin…

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, Bram Stoker Award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” Her most recent books are the novels Netherworld (JournalStone) and Zombie Apocalypse: Washington Deceased (Constable & Robinson), and forthcoming (from Reaktion Books) is a non-fiction history of ghosts. She lives in North Hollywood, California.

Welcome Lisa. Now let’s get to the questions… Tell us about your zombies? If the dead were to rise, do you think you’d stand a chance against them?

Probably not. In the Zombie Apocalypse books, the zombie virus can be spread by a bite or even just a scratch. I’m a klutz and always the first one to get whatever flu’s going around, so I’d probably be toast early on.

What was your first experience with zombie media? Was that experience was drew into writing the genre?

It was a midnight showing on opening night of Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead; I was in film school, and I tagged along with some of the other students who urged me to go because they knew I liked horror. Oddly enough, I had absolutely no idea what I was in for, and it haunted me for…well, years, really. And yes, from that point on I was dying (no pun intended) to write zombie stories.

Puns are always welcome! Now it’s time for the Pop Quiz: The item to your left is your only weapon during the Zombie Apocalypse. What is it and what do you think are your chances at survival?

There’s nothing to my left but a door going out to my balcony, but to my right is a nice screwdriver. Remembering the amazing screwdriver scene from Dawn – yeah, I might stand a chance with it, but it’ll get messy.

If you have an exit to your left, that just might be a good thing. You could think of it as a never-ending escape hatch. Oh, that gives me a story idea… List your five favourite pieces of Zombie media.

#1 must be Romero’s Dawn of the Dead

#2: The Book of the Dead, the original zombie anthology edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector

3: Romero’s Day of the Dead, a movie that I think is massively underrated

#4: The anthology Mondo Zombie, edited by John Skipp – this is largely a sentimental favorite because my first piece of zombie fiction (“Sparks Fly Upward”) appeared here

#5: Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead, which is still one of the best horror comedies ever made.

We all know that we sometimes have bad luck. Keeping that in mind, what song do you think would get stuck in your head, playing over and over again on an incessant loop?

The theme song from The Blob has been an earworm for me. That one’s especially embarrassing, because you start unconsciously mouthing the ludicrous words: “It creeps, and crawls, and slides and glides across the floor, right through the door…” Oh God, yeah – it’s stuck again.

You know, I’ve heard worse Lisa… LOL! Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

If you’d like to connect with Lisa, you can find her on Twitter, Facebook, her Amazon Author Page, her website, and her blog.

Now let’s take a look at Zombie Apocalypse: Washington Deceased which is available for pre-order… Click on the cover to be taken to Amazon!

A novel set within the Zombie Apocalypse! mythos created by Stephen Jones for his bestselling trilogy, Washington DC is sent during the second half of Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback, when the zombies’ intelligence is increasing and they have formed themselves into a society, and an army. New York and Los Angeles have fallen to the walking dead and there has been no news out of Chicago, but Washington DC is still holding out and the South is still free. Time is running out, though, for the battalions defending Capitol Hill …As the most powerful symbols of American democracy begin to fall, the President and her advisors must be protected at all costs. But what if there are people in her own government who are prepared to do a deal with the living-dead invaders to retain power at any cost? Meanwhile, ‘Zombie King’ Thomas Moreby is making his own plans to rule the United States as his control increases across the country. Moreby claims to have ‘foreseen’ his victory, but there are emerging factions in his own ranks who are starting to question their role in the war between zombies and humans. And how does the mysterious New World Pharmaceuticals fit into the New Zombie Order?