Zombies, Grunts, and Cormac McCarthy

What do these three things have in common? Well, if you read Blood Meridian you'd know. I was recently interviewed about my writing and asked about influential authors. Here's what I said about Cormac McCarthy:

Cormac McCarthy. Besides the fact that I’m envious because he can get away without any of the usual punctuation, there is no one out there writing with such power about the relationship and constant battle man (humankind) has against nature, be it the nature of self, the physical nature of the universe, or the nature of an idea. He is a master of it. Perhaps my favorite part of any text in any book, other than the section below (from The Sound of Summer Running by Ray Bradbury), is from the last thousand words of the second book of his Plains series called The Crossing. The pang and loss the main character feels as well as his inability to do anything about it is so stark and powerful, the passage left me breathless.

 But not everyone is ready for McCarthy. The move The Counselor directed by Ridley Scott and starring Cameron Diaz and Michael Fastbender wasn’t a hit. I personally think that the movie is magnificent. It’s pure McCarthy. But what viewers want is a happy ending. They want to see a happy character arc. But as I mentioned, McCarthy is the master of man versus nature and in the movie man comes up against the intractability of nature. Realize, with nature, you can’t argue with it, you can’t fight against it, it’s there. In this case, nature is like a zombie.

 One last thought on McCarthy. I'd never read any of his work prior to 2000. The reason I picked him up was because the New York Times came up with a list of the top fifty books of the last fifty years of the twentieth century. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy was number one. Based on that, I had to read it. Talk about a powerful book about man versus nature… Blood Meridian will scour your heart and make you weep.

 The rest of the interview can be read here.

Scaring the daylights out of Amy B. Smith

Salton Sea Zombies. A review just in of my 2010 Zombie novel EMPIRE OF SALT from Abaddon's Tomes of the Dead series. Hachi Snax gives it a 9 out of 10. I suppose of you're jonesing for something new in zombies this would be it. The review manages to be very comprehensive without ruining any major plot or character arcs. Good job.

"So, what was Ochse's take on the shambler trope? And how did it fare? Empire of Salt is, quite simply put, an excellent zombie yarn. It combines a fresh take on the often stale undead formula, mixes in a good amount of shoot-em-up action, and incorporates a solid young adult underpinning that is enjoyable, not annoying or cloying. This is no mean feat."

The review can be read in it's entirety here. 

Something Grunty This Way Comes. Another review of Grunt Life. What can I say? It's become everyone's favorite military sci fi novel. A lot of the thanks goes to the solid editing staff at Solaris Books. While I can write, they can edit and made some recommendations that seriously helped the book along.

Man, this book amped me up! It shakes up the genre and gives it a much-needed shot in the arm...GRUNT LIFE is a huge win for me, and I highly recommend it. Author Weston Ochse is ex-military, and his extensive knowledge of the armed forces shines through in this novel, resulting in a high energy, high entertainment read. I can’t wait to see where book two takes the story. GRUNT LIFE is available now in a variety of formats, so give it a look.

For the full review click here.

You see? 

And you didn't think I could put zombies, grunts and McCarthy together.

Do me a favor... at the very least, go out and buy a copy of Blood Meridian. Sure, I'd like for you to buy my books too, but I'd also like you to share in my admiration for a master- Cormac McCarthy.


“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Zombies Attack Barnes and Nobles - Authors Survive... barely

Metropocalypse 2012

It was meant to be a fun day of book signing, zombie walking, costume contesting, and general undead frollicking. No one anticipated it would turn out the way it did. No one thought it would be so devastating to the community. As of current count, 177 Barnes and Nobles customers were turned into zombies this past Saturday. On one hand, the undead population of Phoenix rose by a fraction, allowing the undead to join  the new minority of the un-taxable, but on the other hand, 177 Barnes and Nobles customers stopped reading. They exchanged their voracious hunger for books for a voracious hunger for the other white meat-- People!

 Shown here is a man who once read Hardy Boys, loved books on the Civil War, and had a subscription to Cat Fancier.

No More.

He can now be found downtown, feeding on the homeless.

And these young zombies. They meant well. They'd planned to come for the scavenger hunt and maybe check out some new Adam Nevill or David Moody books. Then they were infected, and all they wanted to do was a cha cha out the door to flavortown.


Probably the saddest of all is this young wanna be Barnes and Nobles customer turned into a zombie before she even knew what the letter Z was.

Okay. He's waayy to cute for me to continue this lie. In truth, no one really died or became undead or whatever.

It was all part of Metropocapylse 2012. Put together by Sarah and Dallas at the Metro Barnes and Nobles, it was everything zombies and apocalypse. I was asked to come because they love me to death, and I was asked to bring some other partners in zombie and apocalyptic crime.

Joe McKinney, Joe Nassise, and myself were on hand to sign a ton of books. (ashamedly I forget the other gentleman's name)

At one point there were more than 150 people in the store for the event. It went over tremendously well. I know a bunch of my fans came. They already owned my books, but left with other swag.

It was a terrific day all around.

They want to do it again next year... this time, bigger and better and more undead.

I plan on being there.

What about you?

Books and Kids of All Ages - Signing Story

Yesterday's book signing at Barnes and Nobles (Westside) in Tucson went terrifically. Mary, the publicity manager, had pre-positioned my table for several days. She'd also had a sign announcing the event since the first of the month. Add to that they were having a Teacher Appreciation Day and there was a load of traffic.

I posted the event on Facebook, which drew out a bunch of my confederates, including Joe Palmer (and wife), Scott Glenner (and wife), Jason Reinhardt and his brother and sister-in-law (Joe and Jennifer I think), Rebecca (and sometimes Klingon husband), etc. My parents, who live in Tucson, took me and Yvonne out to lunch, along with Nephew Tynan and GF Maria.

But I also had some folks show up based on their love of Empire of Salt. A young family traveled from Casa Grande to see me, have me sign a copy of Blood Ocean and chat about the Salton Sea (setting for Empire of Salt).

Some additional folks showed up because they were fans of Abaddon's Afterblight series.

 On a funny note, I was positioned beside the customer service desk and the escalator. A pair of kids was driving the staff absolutely mad running up and down the escalator. There were moments where I absolutely believed that if the staff had been allowed to kill just one person, it would have been a certain kid driving them absolutely batty.

On a more serious note, Mary and I talked about the state of bookstores, and especially as it relates to signings. With the closure of Borders, Barnes and Nobles is the only big chain store left in America. Mary, like her counterparts in all the other stores, gets inundated with requests for signings. She turns most of them down, because she checks sales records and such. This directly affects self-published and small press authors, especially those who have books price pointed above $15.

I was glad she asked me to come back to the store. But then again, in her eyes, I earned that right. I don't sit behind the table. I stand and greet everyone who comes by. I engage people. I sometimes ambush them. In the end, I sell a lot of books for the bookstore. I remember one signing when I sold out all the books they had of mine. I still had an hour left, so I went and found some books my friends had written, like Joe McKinney, and sold them. I even signed two of Joe's books as the 'Fake Joe McKinney.'

Bookstores, whether they be a big chain or an independent, expect authors to help sell books. Doing a signing in a bookstore is less of an honor than it is a job.

They had two rare copies of Empire of Salt which sold immediately.
They also had four copies of Scarecrow Gods which sold as well.

Caleb came back five times and finally convinced his dad to buy a
copy of Blood Ocean. Check out the look in his eyes. Man was he
excited.

Daniel is a fan of Afterblight and was psyched that I was coming  for a signing.

It was a terrific book signing. I sold most of the books you saw on that table. Mary invited me back. I'll probably do it in June or July, so if you live in Tucson and you missed me, you'll get another chance.

Thanks Barnes and Nobles!  Thanks Mary! And thanks everyone for coming out to my signing.

Blood Ocean Primer (3 of 3): Why I Wrote This

As promised, here is your third and final primer for Blood Ocean. If you haven't read the first one, which discusses the Pali Boys, you can find it here. And if you haven't read the second one, which discusses character and setting, you can find that here. 

So why did I write this? I mean besides the fact that I'm getting paid a fine sum of English pounds with worldwide distribution of a beautiful-looking paperback book. I can't include that in my reasons, because I never knew any of that when I first pitched Abaddon when they first started out way back when.

I don't know where I was at the time, but I do remember that I heard about a new publishing house called Abaddon Books and asked for their bible about Afterblight. I sent a quick pitch, and I mean quick, and I got back an email from Jon Oliver, then Editor-in-Chief of Abaddon, now Editor-in-Chief of both Abaddon and Solaris, that he was intrigued about the idea and would I send him a full pitch, which has a sample chapter as well as a chapter by chapter outline. So I found myself working on this for about a month. In fact, I finished the pitch while I was in a hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia, working on my laptop while the Steelers beat the Colts in the Superbowl.

My pitch at that time was about Native Americans in the Southwest, who must team up with an L.A. gang of biker samurai to fight off the Radiant Dawn - the white folks who want their blood. It was a damn good pitch. I sooo wanted to write that book. But the problem was that every Tom, Dick and English Harry submitted a pitch about Native Americans too.

Needless to say they didn't need me.

So I did what every other writer would do in my shoes... I sulked and wrote something else.

Then about a year later, I was at the Book Expo of American in Los Angeles. My agent and I went around and had some table-side chats with a few of the editors, one being Jon. This was our first face to face. Being an outgoing person - those of you who know me will agree with this - I enjoy face to face conversations. I thrive on them. Jon and I got to talking. He mentioned that he liked my pitch and was sorry to have to pass on it, but why not send him a pitch for a zombie novel.

Sweet Nadine who was too scared to go past Chapter 3

A zombie novel? It had never occurred to me to write a zombie novel.

But I did. I sent him a pitch and it became Empire of Salt which sold out everywhere and was a smash hit! (still available as a used book and on kindle)

But I still wanted to to write an Afterblight novel. There'd been a burning inside of me that had not gone away. So even as Empire of Salt was premiering in Brighton, England at the World Horror Convention, I was verbally pitching Jon a sprinkle of an idea. He told me to put it on paper when I returned to America and send it to him. I think he saw how eager I was, plus, I think I was keeping him from the pub. So whether or not he meant it or not, I took that as a YES, mentally pumped one arm, and began to work on an idea which revolved around an idea of a monkey being surgically attached to a person's back.

And when I returned to America, I wrote the pitch. Took me about a month as everything came together. And to be totally honest, at first he wasn't sure and didn't accept it right away. But like a dog with a dead rabbit, I shook that idea and shook it, and tweaked the pitch until finally he liked it enough to say those magical five magic words - I'll send you a contract.

And in a few days everyone can read Blood Ocean.

I'm extremely excited about this book. There's some violence. I've done some horrendous things to some nice people and made a nice race do something terrible. As I was writing this, I tried not to pull any punches. I wanted this to be as graphic a novel as anything I've ever written, but with my usual characterization. A few reviewers have socked me for doing some of these things, but I didn't write this for them. I wrote this for me. And I wrote this for you. And I wrote this for all of you who grew up on Post-Apocalyptic novels and movies. Fans of The Horseclans and Road Warrior will dig the hell out of this, because they know that when society crumbles, so do the niceties. Our behaviour is traded in for survival and we'll do whatever it takes to do that, whether it is to kill, maim, lie, cheat, or eat our neighbor.

Please drop me a line when read Blood Ocean.

Until then.

Shaka!

Weston Ochse
Enroute to Australia
Somewhere over the Pacific

eBook Monday

Wow. I just realized I have a lot of eBooks out there. My good friend Hal Bodner just got a reader and he asked me what I had out. I had to look them up and POW!

Scarecrow Gods
Butterfly Winter
Nancy Goats
Velvet Dogma
Empire of Salt
Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors
Appalachian Galapagos

Made me realize that although I have it marked as a link on my webpage, maybe everyone doesn't know that I've created a book store (I'm not selling the books, I'm just pointing you to the places you can buy them. Additionally, I've provided links to online book retailers out of pure convenience. I have a lot of favorite brick and mortar bookstores, but these have worked with me and regularly carry copies of my work. I encourage you to try them first. They do ship books as well. Mysterious Galaxy, Book Soup, and The Poisoned Pen.)

So what follows is a capture of my work in progress of my"book store." My intent is to have a quick set of links as well has having a dedicated page. I still have a ways to go.

So. Comments? Critiques? Secret recipes? Want me to sign your eBook? You know that I can do that, right? I am a  member of Kindlegraph, so if you want your eBooks signed and inscribed, then we can do that too.

NOVELS

Published by Crossroads Press

info|Kindle|Nook|All Others

Published by Abaddon Books

info|Amazon.uk|Amazon.us|Barnes&Nobles

Published by St. Martin's Press

info|Amazon.uk|Amazon.us|Barnes&Nobles

Published by Abaddon Books

info|Amazon.uk|Amazon.us|Barnes&Nobles





Published by Bloodletting Press

info|Horror Mall





Published by Delirium Books

info|DarkFuse|Amazon.us|Barnes&Nobles|Kindle|Nook





Published by Delirium Books

info|DarkFuse|Amazon.us|Barnes&Nobles





Published by Delirium Books

info|Horrormall|







NOVELLAS







Published by Darktales Publications








Published by Delirium Books

info|Darkfuse|Nook







Published by Crossroads Press

info|Kindle|Nook|All Others








Published by Burning Effigy

info|Burning Effigy Store|






Published by Bad Moon Books

info






Published by Bad Moon Books

info





COLLECTIONS






Published by Dark Regions Press

Info|Dark Regions Store








Published by Crossroads Press

info|Kindle|Nook|All Others





Published by Crossroads Press

info|Kindle|Nook|All
Others











MASS MARKET ANTHOLOGIES






Demons|The Dead that Walk|House of Fear|The
Children of Cthulhu





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Rue Morgue Magazine is Awesome

I've been a fan of Rue Morgue Magazine since they did a spread on by bud Brian Keene in 2002. He wasn't the huge star he is now, he was just Brian and they gave him the royal treatment. Since then they've occasionally turned their Canadian eyes in my direction. I especially like the full page spread they did on me and my buds Mike Oliveri and John Urbancik when we were doing Muy Mal. I think it was the Godzilla issue.  Just awesome.

Our page in Rue Morgue -- Nice!!!

Empire of Salt came out last year as you all know because each and every one of you have read it (nod your heads in unison please-- thanks). I'd heard that they reviewed it, but two different people told me it was a bad review. I was thinking to myself, a bad review? What? Couldn't happen. I asked one of them to get me a copy. When the issue came out, I was traveling and wasn't able to get to the store in time to get it... although it never occurred to me to actually contact the magazine for a copy.

I finally got a copy of the review which came out June 2010 in the mail today. Monica Kuebler, the editor of this might periodic tome, sent me a copy. I opened it today and read it with more than a little trepidation. Then I read it again. Then once more. There wasn't a single thing wrong with the review. It was an awesome review. Are you kidding me?  I like how they said I am 'upping the bar with his tale of undead antagonism" and "challenging other authors to follow suit and keep the subgenre of roaming revenants going strong.

It was just an awesome review. Since the book is out of print in the U.S. (I think it's still available in Canada and U.K.) and the review is more than a year old, I'm going to reproduce it here. If someone asks me to take it down, I'll do so in a hurry though.

Thanks to Rue Morgue. I'm sorry I didn't thank you sooner and more profusely. I know my publisher's going to be thrilled about this. What a wonderful review. You guys are my favorite Canadian magazine!

National Public Radio Interview - Weston Ochse

Yesterday was pretty exciting. Mark McLemore interviewed me for the local NPR affiliate. We actually spent two hours together. Not only did I talk about writing, SEAL Team 666, Blood Ocean, Empire of Salt and Multiplex Fandango, but we also talked about our shared passion for horror. He'd recently seen the movie The Sentinel for the first time, recently, and we talked a lot about that. Wow. What a terrifying movie.

We also did some fake man on the street recordings, but I won't give that away until I'm sure it made it into the broadcast. Additionally I read a 1000 word essay about a Halloween when I was seven years old.

The broadcast is scheduled for 27 and 28 Oct. Not sure what time yet, but my work and interview should be a good portion of it. When I have times, I'll make sure I post them along with links for those of you who don't live in the general vicinity. That way you'll be able to listen online if you want.

Here are some photos, courtesy of Yvonne Navarro:

Being interviewed by NPR