Published: March 25th, 2014
Description:
The Corpses are up to something.
U.S. Senator Lindsay Micha has been kidnapped and replaced with a “dead” ringer, the sister to Lilith Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Dead. Now Will Ritter must go undercover in our nation’s capitol to ferret out the truth and try to stop this ambitious deader. But his mission becomes even more dangerous when he learns of a mysterious ten-legged monster that prowls the halls of the Capitol Building — a lethal monster with a taste for Corpse flesh.
The Undertakers: Secret of the Corpse Eater is book three in the wildly popular The Undertakers series from Ty Drago.
This book is exciting, thrilling and constantly evolving. I started the book Friday night and finished it Saturday night. The characters are written so well that you can feel them maturing as you read. - Stephanie (Goodreads)
The Undertakers was a fast-paced thrill-ride that will spark the interest of the most reluctant readers - just like my husband. I'd recommend this book to everyone, from adults to middle graders and everything in between. It's just that good. - Missy (Goodreads)
GUEST POST
Let's talk about zombies
Certainly, they're one of my favorite topics. As the author of a middle grade horror series called “The Undertakers,“ which deals with an invasion by alien beings who animate and possess fresh cadavers, I spent a lot of time thinking about the walking dead. What they are. Where they come from. And, perhaps most importantly, where they are going.
But let's start at the beginning.
The etymology of the word “zombie” is actually a bit muddled. It seems to derive from the African word “zombi” and refers to a soul (or part of a soul) that is captured by a sorcerer and imprisoned in a bottle. In some stories, this gives the sorcerer control over the soul's now empty vessel of a body. In Haiti, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobiologist discovered a combination of chemicals and toxins that, in correctly administered, could render a person into a deathlike trance. Then, after the poor victim was mistakenly buried, they could be dug up and made a slave, their mind having been broken by both the toxin and the trauma.
But in both this cases, there's nothing that suggests a zombie as craving human flesh (or brains, depending on which film series you're watching). All that didn't come about until 1968, with George A. Romero's classic “Night of the Living Dead.” Interestingly, the word “zombie” isn't used in the movie, but it nevertheless marks the birth of the myth in popular culture. The cause of his plague of the walking dead is never explained, though it's clearly a virus of some sort, in which a victim is either eaten alive or, failing that, falls ill, dies and is reborn as yet another zombie.
Romero's monsters are generally put into the category of “slow zombies,” the shuffling, moaning variety that move in fits and starts and generally overcome their prey by weight of numbers. These have given way to the notion of “fast zombies”, those that are spy and quick and run down their fleeing victims like cheetahs chasing down a zebra. I should probably mention that Romero had publicly resisted the notion of a fast zombie. Not that it matters.
Fast zombie movies include “Resident Evil” and “28 Days Later”. But, in both these cases, the use of the term zombie to describe the monsters is problematic. They're not actually dead! In “Resident Evil” they're mutated humans, and in “28 Days Later” the killers are normal living people rendered savagely insane by a virus. But, in both cases, their hearts are still beating. One very recent exception is “World War Z,” in which the zombies are dead, and yet are not merely fast but are often nearly Olympian in their speed. Interestingly, the film is based (very loosely) on the book by Max Brooks, in which the notion of fast zombies is discounted. Hollywood.
Since it's so current, I should probably point out that the “walkers” in “The Walking Dead,” another venue in which the word zombie has, so far, never been used, fall into the slow category.
Fast or slow, alive or dead, the zombies in all these examples have one thing in common: They're stupid. Really stupid. Tragically stupid. There are precious few examples when this isn't the case. Among them is “The Rizing” by Brian Keene. In that book, and its sequel “City of the Dead,” the zombies have both intelligence and the power of speech. It presents a very different, less visceral, more thinking reader's sort of horror — the notion of the dead not merely rising, but taunting the living.
In the Undertakers series, by Yours Truly, the dead aren't rising so much as being risen, possessed by evil aliens who come to Earth without corporeal form. They wear the bodies of the freshly dead, much like suits of clothing, until these hosts literally rot out around them, at which time they “trade up” to a fresh cadaver. All the while, these Corpses (we never call them zombies!) project an illusion of normalcy around themselves, so that no one knows what they really look like or smell like. Except, of course, for the heroic Undertakers.
Do I think the zombie as a shambling moron is forever gone? Hardly. Jonathan Maberry has reignited the genre with his young adult “Rot and Ruin” series. But I do believe there's room to expand the mythos, and by presenting them to middle grader, we invite in a whole new class of readers to share in the gruesome and scary joy that is the ZOMBIE!
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Author's first UNDERTAKERS novelette, NIGHT OF MONSTERS, is currently available for FREE on Smashwords and Barnes & Noble
In addition to the first two books in UNDERTAKERS series, RISE OF THE CORSPES and QUEEN OF THE DEAD, Ty Drago is the author of PHOBOS, a Science Fiction whodunit and THE FRANKLIN AFFAIR, an historical/mystery about Benjamin Franklin. His short fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the 2009 anthology YESTERDAY, I WILL ..., and he has written articles for WRITERS DIGEST.
Author's Giveaway
5 comments:
the book sounds amazing! Definitely cant wait to read it!
This sounds like an awesome series for my entire family who is currently on the biggest zombie craze imaginable! Thanks for sharing.
i have never read a zombie book, so i think i would like it so this is going on my list thank you so much
I look forward to reading your book. Thanks for the opportunity to do so.
thanks for the giveaway! :D
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