Killer Fun with a Side of BRAAAAAINZ!!!

To celebrate the April 1st release of

Infected:

Hacked Files from the
GAMELAND Archives

I'll be publishing an excerpt from one of the "hacked files" in the book. 

KILLER FUN WITH A SERIOUS SIDE OF BRAAAAINZ!!! is an "article" published in the April 1, 2013, edition of The Edgemont Daily Register.

For those of you who read my short stories, you probably already know that many of my speculative tales take place within Edgemont and its environs.

KILLER FUN is both a celebration of the zombie genre (that's the fun part) and a study of the undead's recent meteoric rise in our popular culture (that's the serious, brainy part). It's fairly long for a blog post, so I'll be breaking it up and posting it in parts throughout the week.


If you've read the GAMELAND series, you know that the dystopic world in it is very complex. It's not your basic Z-poc plot. In fact, the apocalypse hasn't yet happened. You may have wondered how we, as society, came to be in such a sorry state as the one depicted within the series' pages. Infected offers a deeper look inside that world, provides clues as to who the key players are and their motivations (including characters we haven't yet met), and where the series may go in the coming months.

I've also included clues to some upcoming quizzes I'm planning for signed book giveaways, so now's your chance to get a leg up on your fellow GAMELAND fans. You can get Infected beginning April 1 at Amazon, with other retailers to follow in the next day or so. It will be available at an introductory price of just 99 cents through April 5, when it goes to it's regular price of $2.99.

So, without further ado, I give you part 1 of

KILLER FUN WITH A SERIOUS
SIDE OF BRAAAAAINZ!!!

by staff writer Janice Silvestre

Edgemont — Apr 1, 2013 — When was the last time someone asked you, “Do you remember your first undead?”

Chances are pretty good it wasn’t all that long ago. Chances are, you’ve recently donned your best tattered rags, painted yourself with costume blood and dusted off your graveyard groan. If you’re like so many other zombie fans out there, it might have been as recently as The Walking Dead’s mid-season premier. Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse. Also known as Z-poc — as true cold-blooded fans call it — or ZA.

Zombie events are cropping up all over the place. It doesn’t matter the season — winter, spring, summer, fall — or the reason, there’s bound to be a zombie fest, zombie walk, zombie prom, or zombie-themed bar mitzvah happening somewhere nearby on any given day at any given hour. It’s as if someone declared Halloween a year-round, world-wide, no-holds-barred holiday.

What is the cause of this sudden groundswell? Have zombies really begun rising out of the grave? Has the ZA finally actually arrived?

I’m not a real zombie, but I play one on TV

Some might argue the ZA has already begun. One certainly need look no further than primetime television to know that the undead are indeed among us. That they have already begun feasting on our brains. No, we don’t mean the talking heads at Fox News or the pols on Capitol Hill. It’s all about the popular AMC series, baby. And the explosion of ZA fiction. And undead films. And video games.

Even zombie-themed candy and lunchboxes are all the rage.

It’s a peculiar thing, this sudden fascination with the undead that’s sweeping across the globe. The idea of festering corpses seems to thrill us, their rigor-stiffened bodies emerging from hastily-assembled pinewood coffins topped by polystyrene headstones, rubber streamers of ketchup and mustard-colored entrails festively dangling from their waistbands.

We live in an age where zombies are celebrated in movies and in song (who here doesn’t know the lyrics to Zombie Jamboree or Monster Mash?). Health nuts and couch potatoes alike flock to zombie 5-K runs and charity events. We flashmob public sites — malls, bus stations, random Starbucks and senior centers — giddily dancing to scratchy mix-tape recordings of Thriller, sometimes blasted from bass-booming ghetto boxes, sometimes from the tinny speakers of a hundred unsynchronized iPods (because somebody forgot to bring the CD player; Yes, I’m talking to you, Eddie!) —not that it actually really matters, because when the fun starts, it’s all about letting the world know: We love the undead!

Do we? Why would we want to?

[[end of part 1]]

Part 2, coming tomorrow: "TeamDaryl!"

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Infected: Hacked Files from the GAMELAND Archives is a companion book to the epic cyberpunk thriller horror series GAMELAND.

SERIES DESCRIPTION:

In the center of Long Island's forbidden wasteland is GAMELAND, a virtual reality arcade where the privileged play horrifying, yet powerfully addictive, high-stakes game using zombies as avatars.

On a whim, six hackers decide to sneak onto the island, but while breaking in is a lot easier than any of them ever imagined, getting back out is one a hell of a killer.

EIGHT EPISODES

1: Deep Into the Game

Zpocalypto gamer Jessica Daniels and her gang of code jackers break into Long Island's Gameland hoping to catch a glimpse of the Infected Undead. Their excitement turns to dread as the dangers become all too real.

2: Failsafe

Jessie and Kelly clash after a member of their group gets stranded among the Infected Undead.

3: Deadman’s Switch

Unable to escape from Long Island because of the failsafe device implanted inside their brains, the group digs in until they can devise a way to neutralize it.

4: Sunder the Hollow Ones

A mutiny in the group splits the members, leaving Jessie out in the cold.

5: Prometheus Wept

After one member of their group is infected, Jessie makes a decision to hand over another to a mysterious group of Undead sympathizers in exchange for a promised antidote.

6: Kingdom of Players

Armed with a potential antiserum to the reanimation virus, Jessie races back to Gameland to save her infected friend.

7: Tag, You’re Dead

The Undead break into their stronghold, leading the group to their darkest hour.

8: Jacker’s Code

In the shocking conclusion to the high-tech horror thriller, GAMELAND, Jessie will do everything necessary to get her group home.

Available at all major ebook distributors

For more information, visit Saul's website.