Suddenly, Zombies

I first became aware of Amanda C. Davis's writing through the Zombonauts anthology, the dreadful piece of nonsense we both inadvertently sold work to* and - this being what caught my attention - which Amanda owned the hell out of.  I mean, I'd like to think that my Fear of a Blue Goo Planet** was one of the less awful pieces contained therein, in that it had been edited and used real words and had a start, beginning and end; but Amanda's Two Things was about the only tale that could genuinely be called good.  "Some lovely, witty writing ... and a slyly understated ending," I said at the time, and I think that about sums it up.

I'm normally far too self-absorbed to notice what anyone else in this industry does, but Amanda's name kept catching my eye.  We appeared in an issue of Redstone Science Fiction together - her On the Sabbath Day Be Ye Cleansed was (and is) entirely great - and I remember noticing that she'd racked up a load of great sales since the last time I'd looked.

Then Amanda got in touch a few days back and asked if I'd be okay with her quoting me on the cover of a mini-anthology she was putting out - Zombonauts having been dire beyond reason, it hadn't garnered a great deal of reviews - and obviously I said yes, because I love seeing my name on stuff even when it's stuff I can't rightly take any credit for.  Said mini-anthology turned out to be called Suddenly, Zombies, and there's the wonderfully lo-fi cover above.  As you can probably extrapolate, asides from the zombies-in-space story there's also a giant-zombie-gorillas tale in there, the perfectly titled Escape From Ape City, which is also both lovely and witty and which gets more mileage than you'd think would be possible from the simple joke of refusing to refer to Giant Zombie Gorillas as anything other than Giant Zombie Gorillas.

(It's to her credit that Amanda acknowledges this fact.)

Oh, and there's a third story too, which is exceedingly short and just the right ending for such silly zombie fun.  And look, 99 cents!  That's hardly even real money.  I mean, I don't know much about American money but I'm guessing that wouldn't even buy you a packet of peanuts, or a Winnebago.





* Not to say that I inadvertently sold the story, because that wouldn't make much sense.  No, my mistake was in thinking you couldn't possibly go wrong with an anthology about zombies in space.

** Which you can listen to in podcast here, should you so wish.