Today I have the pleasure of an interview with R.J. Spears, author of Zombie fiction! But before we get to my questions, let’s learn a little bit about R.J. first…
R.J. lives in Columbus, Ohio and writes mystery/crime and horror fiction. His stories have appeared across the web at Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter, the HorrorZine, and Flashes in the Dark along with several other sites. His novel, Sanctuary From the Dead, was published by J. Ellington Ashton Press. The first two books in his Forget the Zombie series, Forget the Alamo and Forget Texas, are available on Amazon.
Welcome R.J.! Now let’s right into the questions… Tell us about your zombies? If the dead were to rise, do you think you’d stand a chance against them?
My zombies are the Romero slow movers. They can be avoided in singles or in pairs, but in hordes, they are deadly.
As for being able to survive zombie apocalypse, I’d hold my own if I could stay away from crowds of the undead. I live in a fairly large city and while I don’t have a defined escape plan, I’d definitely get out of here. I fear that cities would be death traps.
I agree, the cities are going to be hell when the dead rise! What was your first experience with zombie media? Was that experience what drew into writing the genre?
My first exposure to zombies was like being immersed in boiling bloody shark infested waters. It was George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and I had no idea what I was getting into. I entered the theater with a few friends and we were simply blown away. Heads blown off with shotguns. Heads sliced off with helicopter blades. Zombies eating entrails. Nothing had prepared me for that. While gore is somewhat common place today, back in the day, this made quite an impression. It stuck with me for years and certainly was a huge hook into the zombie genre.
That’s a good point about the level of gore that was present in ‘olden’ times. 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?
Fortunately, I’m sitting next to my fireplace and there’s a fairly hefty fire poker sitting there. While it’s not a sword, a baseball bat, or a chainsaw, it would do in a pinch. As for long term survival, though, I doubt it would take me the distance.
Pokers are pretty hefty and the one I have would likely last me a long time. List your 5 favourite pieces of Zombie media.
- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- 28 Days Later
- Shaun of the Dead
- The Walking Dead (TV Show)
- We’re Alive – Zombie Podcast, full cast audio drama (If you haven’t checked this one out, you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s great fun and quality stuff.)
Great choices! I’ve been a fan of We’re Alive for quite some time! 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?
If it were truly sadistically bad luck, the worst song in the world that could get stuck in my head would be Alison Gold’s Chinese Food. I beg you, for your own sanity, don’t look this one up on YouTube. It’s like the Black Death, Pompeii, and total insanity wrapped into one horrible ball. You’ll wish you were zombified just to get the song out of your head. I listened to it once and it was like falling into one of H.P. Lovecraft’s hellish mouths of madness.
For those of you who’d like to torture yourselves, here’s the video:
Anyone else not the young girl talking about clubbing?? C’mon!!
And now let’s take a look at R.J.’s Sanctuary From The Dead…
Eight months ago the world turned upside-down in the most horrifying way. The dead came back to life and started killing the living. Within weeks, zombies ruled the world. In a small southern Ohio town, Joel, a twenty-something underachiever finds himself holed up with a group of survivors as they take refuge in a church. Fighting the undead in a desperate attempt to survive, they try to maintain some semblance of what makes us human. In this grueling post-apocalyptic world, they discovered that while the undead are terrible, the living can be just as merciless and even more deadly.
Sanctuary from the Dead tells the story of a group of survivors who desperately try to maintain their humanity as they try to survive in an undead world.
Clicking on the cover will take you to Amazon.
Thank you R.J. for taking the time to answer my questions. If you’d like to keep track of R.J. you can connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, his Amazon Author Page, his website, and his blog.
Days with the Undead 