When I got my mitts on a copy of “The Kill Crew”, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it. I’d never heard of author Joseph D’Lacey before and had no idea what to expect from him. The book itself is only a slim eighty pages and most of my experiences with novella’s of this size haven’t been exactly stellar. However, it was as good of a time as any to dig in and see what Mr. D’Lacey had to say, so I did.

At first my expectations began to dwindle in the first few chapters. The Kill Crew tells a tale about a group of survivors dealing with the aftermath of a zombie like plague. All the zombie fanatics out there will find familiar territory in these first few chapters, especially fans of the comic series The Walking Dead. The zombie’s types here are referred to as “Commuters” due to the fact that they only come out at night and because the majority of these things in life were the commuting white-collared desk jockeys and similar professionals still garbed in their professional attire.

Director Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is not a horror movie. It’s not even a horror-comedy. It’s really a fairly straight forward comedy-comedy, the back drop of which involves zombies. And as such it works pretty well, just not as well as its components suggest it should.

The world has been overrun by zombies and a most unlikely survivor nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is heading east across the country toward home hoping to find others, his family in particular. As fate would have it, he crosses paths with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), another survivor heading east and Columbus’ polar opposite in just about every way. Soon the two of them run into a bad girl nicknamed Wichita (Emma Stone) and her twelve year old sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). These girls were conning men out of their money before zombies became an issue and have since parlayed their game into a post apocalyptic art of survival as they head west.

Calling all zombie lovers! Crackle.com is getting into the spirit of Halloween by offering free films, previews of ZOMBIELAND and an original comedy series entitled WOKE UP DEAD starring Jon Heder (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE).

The folks over at Crackle.com are really excited to show their love for the shambling, brain-eating undead. In the first half of October, they’ll be offering zombie films for fans to legally watch on the web for free.

The end of the world has come and gone. The dead have risen, and they’ve won. No more rallying of the troops. No miracle cure or weapon. Just lots of dead people walking around. If the living dead won, what would the world be like? This collection of eighteen tales-including entries from David Wellington, Jack Ketchum, and Gary A. Braunbeck-take up the call to answer that question. People go to work. Have sex. Get drunk. Fall in love. Take revenge. Raise families. Watch TV. Laugh. Mourn. Murder. Pray. The world is dead, but life goes on.

The World Is Dead is available now at Amazon.com.

With the runaway popularity of Zombies these days, it isn’t surprising that we’re seeing the shambling undead teamed with nearly every other concept imaginable, from video games to Jane Austen. Even lighthearted zombie treatments are gaining a strong foothold, like Shaun of the Dead, the upcoming film Zombieland starring Woody Harrelson, and, of course, Zombie Mosh from Bucephalus Games.

Zombie Mosh is exactly that, a game about zombies bashing each other apart in a mosh pit. Players select one of six different character cards, then shuffle the Zombie cards and deal four to each player. The dealer then draws two cards and randomly places them in the “damage” row of each player, including himself. Each card has two different results, facing the top and bottom of the card, so orientation of each card matters.

DriveThruHorror.com has all kinds of spooky stories, terrible tales and features some of the best horror authors available today. One of our favorite genres is the pulse pounding survival horror of the undead…zombies!

Here are just a few of the awesome zombie tales available now at DriveThruHorror.com:

Dead Science – Coscom Entertainment
Book of All Flesh – Eden Studios
Down the Road – Permuted Press
Reign of the Dead – iUniverse
The Lifeless – Coscom Entertainment

All these and many more available now at DriveThruHorror.com!

All Things Zombie comes from Two Hour Wargames. Wargaming is a very different hobby than role-playing, which I take part in most often. I’ve tried a few games over the years with minis. Some were true wargames like WarZone while others were toned-down versions like Savage Worlds or HeroClix. The deciding factor for these games to win me over was speed of play. I don’t want to check charts constantly when I’m playing a game. A character sheet and perhaps a index card-sized grouping of key rules is more than sufficient. I’ll allow for each player to work with their own screen because some games dictate that.

At the end of the day though, a game system better have something backing it up if it plans on being convoluted. I realize that some people want as much realism as possible in their miniature combat. I’m not writing this review for those people. I’m writing from the other side, the side where realism takes a backseat after a spell. I’ll elaborate more as I continue.

Tired of your rights as a member of the living dead being violated? Sick of people putting you down or worse, screaming and trying to smash your head with a cricket bat? We don’t deserve to be treated like this! We will no longer stand for being viewed as lesser citizens. We need to fight for our rights and demand equal treatment.

The Coalition Of the Living Dead (COLD) will gather on Saturday October 24th at 2:00 pm at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, and lurch for our rights as zombies. COLD encourages zombies and zombie supporters to come equipped with signs and slogans to make our point. We will raise our voices and we will not be ignored. We will lurch from the capitol down State Street to the Memorial Union.

The Flash Fire Mini-Reviews series has crawled out of its grave and returned as a regular feature on the Flames Rising website.

To celebrate we’re going to be taking a look at several kinds of undead this week. We’ve got a mix of games, books and more. This particular edition of Flash Fire Mini-Reviews is going to feature a few different reviewers.

We’re going to take a look at Zombie Haiku, Vampire: the Eternal Struggle, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Geist: The Sin-Eaters and The Estuary.

A school full of kids.

A mysterious yellow rain.

High school will never be the same.

They are outcasts and misfits, teenagers lost on the path to adulthood, living day-to-day inside a high school culture of taunts, humiliation, and isolation. They are the misunderstood, the neglected, and the abused. They are . . . The Lifeless.

For them, every school day is a nightmare.

But on Monday, October 2nd, they will discover the true meaning of terror.

Classes are cut short by news of explosions in the city across the river, part of a series of horrific terrorist attacks that paralyze the nation. But that is only the beginning: amber clouds fill the sky, burning rain pelts down, and the surviving students of Verlaine High learn that their tormentors have mutated into something far worse-reanimated corpses with a primordial instinct for murder.

It’s time to stand up to the in-crowd . . . or be consumed by it.

The Lifeless: A Zombie Novel is available at DriveThruHorror.com.

Hello Flames Rising readers,

Below is a very important message from David Wong, author of the soon to be re-released John Dies at the End. Please read it carefully as your life may depend upon the information it contains…

—

My most terrifying experience reading a novel was when I opened my copy of White Fang and a dead spider fell out.

I’ve always felt like that’s what a good horror novel should do. That is what I told Jacob at Permuted Press when it came time to put John Dies at the End into print a couple of years ago. My idea was to rig each copy with a plastic spider that would jump out at the reader when they opened page 42. It was as simple as cutting a compartment into the middle pages and rigging some kind of spring mechanism.

As the sixth installment in George Romero’s zombie film series, Survival of the Dead offers a new storyline and (of course) more zombies. Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in mid-September, the film’s announcement has been met with mixed results. Some zombie lovers are groaning at the thought of another film in the series; others are interested in the story about a group of survivors who leave their island to find a cure and save humanity.

There are a number of stills from the movie that have recently been released through the TIFF website.

Official Survival of the Dead Movie Premiere at TIFF.net

Featuring the terrifying tales of 13 authors, Dead Science brings you stories of the undead unlike any you’ve ever read before. Prepare to go behind-the-scenes and learn about the causes of various zombie uprisings and the havoc these creatures wreak upon the living.

Stories by: Gustavo Bondoni, Eric S. Brown, Michael Cieslak, Lorne Dixon, Anthony Giangregorio, Glen Held, Becca Morgan, Mark Onspaugh, Gina Ranalli, Vincent L. Scarsella, Jason V. Shayer, Ryan C. Thomas and Adam J. Whitlatch.

Dead Science is available at DriveThruHorror.com.

Chicago’s Wildclaw Theatre company takes, as its mission, the restoration of horror to its rightful place on the stage. Its previous productions include theatrical adaptations of Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” and H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” showing a solid grounding in the classics. Their newest show is the Midwest premiere of Scott T. Barsotti’s The Revenants, a drama of love and zombies.

Without spoilering anything, I can say that the play is a thoroughly successful melding of the relationship drama and the zombie apocalypse; neither component was bolted on after the fact, and each provides vital momentum and plot turns for the other. WildClaw’sWitch House also concerned apocalypse, though interestingly a less personal — and more cataclysmic — one than Lovecraft’s story. It, also, featured a relationship drama, although one cast as a parallel investigation; a despairing Thin Man story wherein Nick and Nora meet only for the catastrophe.

A modern take on the classic “apocalyptic” novel, Hater is similar in tone to the seminal works of H.G. Wells, and also the recent films 28 Days Later and I Am Legend. Hater tells the story of Danny McCoyne, an everyman forced to contend with a world gone mad, as vast numbers of the human population suddenly become irrationally violent, killing all who cross their path.

Flames Rising is pleased to bring you the first chapter of David Moody’s Hater, which is currently available at Amazon.com.

Mississinewa Miniatures is a little-known miniatures company from Indiana. Specializing in Zombie-themed figures, they have an impressive selection, if not a broad range – yet. Mississinewa sent Flames Rising a generous selection of figures to review. Sadly, I can’t do justice to them all so I’m going to concentrate on what they do best: Zombies!

The zombie line is reasonably well- fleshed out; 18 different models shamble their way to your gaming table, and while the variety isn’t truly spectacular, it’s solid. The first six are all naked zombies. Before you get too excited, let me first point out that there are no naughty bits in evidence; they’re more like zombie mannequins than anything else.

So to be perfectly honest, I’ve been going back and forth on whether on not I actually wanted to write this review. It basically came down to ‘not burning bridges’ in a very small universe, or being honest with my readers. (I know, all three of you.)

When I weighted it out, I decided a bad review treated fairly and note based on gut reaction might be better for the internet as a whole then a blank space. Plus, that way, as new readers show up, (I’ll welcome you, reader number four,) they can feel secure that I’m reviewing for honesty and not just for links.

Review by Filamena Young

George Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) is a lot like Jell-o to my cinematic palette; that’s to say there’s always room for more zombie flicks from the man who invented them.

Diary tells the tale of a group of film students and their professor from the University of Pittsburg as they shoot a “mummy” movie in rural Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, a zombie plague breaks out, quickly spreading around the world. The cadre of survivors packs up their film equipment and hits the road in search of sanctuary from the pending apocalypse. They soon turn their equipment toward the unfolding catastrophe, documenting it on the fly and posting it online.

Review by Jason Thorson

Amanda Feral is back and just as glamorous (and bitchy) as she was in Happy Hour of the Damned. But make no mistake: Road Trip is a very different book than its predecessor. Sure, there are still risks of zombie “mistake” outbreaks, partially digested food, and gruesome murders (only some of which are performed by our heroes–and really, the murders they perform are a public service, not a crime).* But unlike Happy Hour, Road Trip begins with the assumption that the readers already know how Amanda’s world works. There’s much less meandering into explanations of zombies, vampires, and other supernaturals and more delving into Amanda’s troubled past.** Now that Amanda’s mother is on her death bed, Amanda struggles to come to terms with a childhood she’d really rather forget.

It’s already too late to run…

The Zombie Apocalypse is upon us!

The End is HERE!

In this book, you’ll find ways to introduce zombies into any game, set any time and anywhere. A multitude of zombification theories are presented for use or inspiration, as well as campaign ideas to fight against them. The core of the book centers around creating the undead machines, and using 13 separate qualities, each with 4 separate levels of ability, any kind of zombie can be created. Any type of zombie can be emulated from any source, or you could create your own. Eleven types of sample zombies are given in the book, from the easy to put down, easy to run from Slow Zombies, to the deadly assassins known only as Shadow Stalkers.

Zombacalypse is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.