Free (Kindle KDP) What Will Come After by Scott Edelman [Zombie Mashup Horror Tales]

[ATDrake]

Today's KDP Select exclusive-or-else backlist sf/fantasy feature author is someone whom I'd have said I'd never heard of, but he turns out to be someone I kind of "know" from works he was involved with.

What Will Come After by Scott Edelman (ISFDB), is a collection of his market-trend-anticipating remixed mashup pre-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shorts by PS Publishing, which includes a bunch of Stoker-nominated ones.

It turns out that Edelman, according to his Wikipedia entry, has edited a bunch of science fiction magazines, including the glossy Science Fiction Age (I have a couple of back issues of this, which the used bookshop sometimes carries), and also the old Sci-Fi Channel (from before they rebranded themselves as the laughably illiterate "SyFy Channel" which incidentally also makes it sound like they're harbouring a sexually-transmitted disease involving spirochetes about which there's a pun to be made involving insertion and penicillin) website magazine, which I've read some of the stories from in the Internet Archive.

Anyway, free for who knows how long, probably without DRM (IIRC, the other PS Publishing books didn't have it) @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
During the three decades Scott Edelman has dedicated himself to the short story, his fiction has been called "darkly hopeful," "deep, disturbing, and emotionally draining," and "unnerving work that peers into the darkest corner of the human soul and makes one fear what lurks at the bottom of that abyss -- but also makes it impossible to look away."

In these nine tales, you'll also discover that long before the current craze of mashing up mindless shamblers with the literary classics, Edelman was remixing zombies with "Romeo and Juliet," "Our Town," and other famous fictional worlds.

In the Stoker Award finalist "A Plague on Both Your Houses," you'll visit a post-apocalyptic Manhattan that reads like a fever dream created by George Romero collaborating with William Shakespeare, in which the living son of the mayor of New York City falls in love with the daughter of the zombie king. In "Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man," another Stoker nominee, you'll lock yourself in a library as a writer struggles to keep his sanity by making sense of the zombie uprising the only way he knows how. And in "What Will Come After," original to this volume, you'll learn what happens to Scott Edelman himself when he faces his own inevitable end.

Gathering his complete zombie fiction to date, Almost the Last Stories proves that the undead can be more than just rampaging braineaters -- though you'll find plenty of gory gorging in these pages as well -- but also a lens through which we can see that the living and the living dead are not so very different after all.

The slushpile keeps fluctuating and seems far from settling. This is what I bothered to look at and I mostly skipped over the repeats.

ISFDBed former Dorchester-published horror writer W.D. Gagliani offers a suspense novel with a bonus crime short: Savage Nights

Sometime a year or two ago, we received one of Timothy Hallinan's novels as an official freebie (I think it was HarperCollins). He offers the 6th in a series and apparently previously published from the Booklist and Publisher's Weekly reviews, but the paperback isn't linked and I'm not going to bother digging for whomever first printed: The Bone Polisher (Simeon Grist Mystery)

Small-pressed crime writer Anthony Neil Smith returns with a thriller about a murder investigation getting entangled with Somali warfare: All The Young Warriors

Much paperbacked Robert W. Walker returns with another batch of assorted thrillers & horror, some new: Linkage for the lot, which will also pull up some of that Prime "free" stuff which Amazon refuses to filter out, so caveat 1-clicker

Harlequin-published Karen Rose Smith returns with another contemporary romance: Forever After

ISFDBed Robert Stanek offers the self-explanatory: Complete Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches (The Complete Series Omnibus)

Keta Diablo who's had a book out with specialty erotic romance small press Noble Romance offers a paranormal historical erotic romance which she warns contains fairly explicit content: Cradle Of Dreams

Minor ISFDBed Lee Allen Howard returns with a "bone-chilling gay horror" short: Stray

I.J. Parker returns with the 7th in her Severn House-published historical Japanese sleuth mystery series, out in 2010: The Masuda Affair (A Sugawara Akitada Novel)

James Reasoner (ISFDB) offers a pulp aviation-inspired short which was originally published in a Joe R. Lansdale-edited Subterranean Press anthology: DEVIL WINGS OVER FRANCE (A Dead-Stick Malloy Story)

ISFDBed Robert E. Keller offers a repeat of: Fantasy Stories -- Volume I

Mark Yarwood who wrote for TV shows including UK comedy Smack the Pony returns with the "dark noir tale": Welcome To Killville, USA

ISFDBed Aaron Polson offers some sort of high school-set supernatural suspense thriller: Mutiny

Kaye George has two paperback listings from Wildside and Mainly Murder Press. She offers a collection of mystery/crime shorts including a story she says was nominated for an Agatha Award in 2010: A PATCHWORK OF STORIES

Five Star-published Michael Haskins returns with another short in his series: The Drumstick Murder: A Mick Murphy Key West Short Story (Mick Murphy Key West Mystery)

Ellora's Cave-published Valerie Douglas returns with a high fantasy romance novella: Not Magic Enough (The Coming Storm)

So it turns out that one of "Leda Swann"'s writing co-publishees from the Wharekohu Bay imprint for New Zealand authors is one "Paris Alexander". I hope they've also got a "Cassandra Apollonia" or a "Cressida de Troyes" writing for them as well. Anyway, here's their short erotic tale: Maid for Seduction (Stolen Moments)

Kate Silver, another Wharekohu Bay alumna, repeats her 2002 Kensington historical romance if you missed it a couple of months ago: On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all)

Previously-included Lisabet Sarai, who's had a number of stories included in anthologies by LGBT specialty press Cleis, has a mini-collection of BDSM erotic romance shorts (f/m, from the looks of it), offered via Books We Love/BWLPP: Just A Spanking: Tales of Dominance and Submission

Another BWLPP title is a repeat of Jude Pittman's Vancouver BC-set murder mystery with First Nations people in it. Apparently this expired early the last time it was included, so here it is again in case you missed it: Bad Medicine

I'm not sure what's going on with this. Margaret Fenton's suspense thriller was published by Oceanview in 2010, but either she's offering it herself now, or Oceanview's messed up the listings by creating two versions of the same book at different list prices, which is not a situation which has happened for their previous freebied books, IIRC, (or the author was premature with her rights-reversion celebratory uploading, or there's a non-exclusive distribution contract in place or whatever). Anyway, enjoy it while it's still free, whether it's official or not: Little Lamb Lost

I'm not sure what's going on with this, either, but it looks considerably (and cracktastically) easier to figure out: A tale of tyrannosauruses... and sixty five million years later

Outside of Edwin Abbott's classic Flatland and the number of published fanfic derivatives established writers have created over the decades, there don't seem to be very many novels based on actual mathematics (Life of Pi does not count), so I hereby include this one, which is apparently aimed at kids by author Colin Davies, who's probably not the same guy who has an ISFDB entry for illustration credits in the 80s: Mathamagical: An Alice in Wonderland Styled Tale set in the World of Mathematics

Happy reading, especially if you learn some useful things about math (or manage to teach any to whatever kids you might know) from that last book.

[Synamon]

Thanks for the tip on Little Lamb Lost, the "other" copy has good reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist.

[Dr. Drib]

Regarding Robert Stanek, for a full report on him, I suggest reading this highly researched report on the spam he's been spreading about himself and his books, located here:

http://conjugalfelicity.com/robert-stanek/

One interesting fact is that nearly 200 5-star reviews disappeared from Amazon. According to the article, there are two ways this can happen:

1) The reviewer deletes his or her review
2) Amazon deletes the reviews.

As the author comments, "what are the odds that 200 authors would all get online and simultaneously decide to delete their glowing review of one specific book within about a week of each other?" The reporter says that #1 is a highly unlikely scenario, and concludes that more than likely the answer lies with #2. This would only happen, he adds, if Amazon's terms and conditions were violated. In other words, Stanek created over 200 sock puppets to promote his own books and then gave them 5-star reviews

I found this investigative report (for there is no other way to think about it, in my opinion), to be highly researched and as entertaining as a good mystery novel.

I was tempted to download the Stanek title, but upon checking it out I found it to be horribly written and virtually unreadable. -- This is my opinion. I will not be downloading this free book.


Don


ADDED: From page one of the Report on Stanek:
“In prison, people like them usually get shanked.” – Robert Stanek, speaking about his critics

[ATDrake]

Hee. Free entertainment! Thanks.

Yeah, there's a lot of review cheating and such going on at Amazon.

Threads where authors are found out pop up every so often on the Kindle and Kindle Books discussions boards and it's a useful way to find out who to avoid buying books from if authors who are not necessarily the same as the "caught" ones go around defending the practice on the grounds that they're poor downtrodden creative souls who need all the marketing help they can get.

I never bother looking at the 5-stars on Amazon because they're probably mostly just made-up lies anyway and the chances that a newbie amateur book is really "BESTEST THING I READ, EVAR!!!!!" for multiple people is very low, unless all 50 reviewers have only ever read that book and a Jack Chick Tract.

ETA: Stanek may not have sockpuppeted all 200 reviews himself. According to this thread in the Amazon Kindle Books discussion boards on another suspicious author who had 200+ glowing reviews deleted, there are a couple of MAKE MONEY @ HOME!!!!! services which offer desperately unethical authors reviews for pay.

Also, remember that guy who wrote Zombiestan who claimed to have had his books picked up for republication by local Indian publishers? It turns out that he, too, is a review faker who made the mistake of defensively responding to a negative review pretending to be "just another reader" but under his author account.

[Blue Tyson]

Interesting. As the Dhar books are actually good. Certainly professional level etc.

I read an earlier Reasoner pulp short (the oceangoing one) which was pretty good. So will give this a shot - and certainly have read a few G-8 books which he compares the story to. The title certainly could be a G-8 or Bill Barnes etc. title.

[DrNefario]

I thought I'd heard of Stanek, and now I realise it was probably in the context of these dodgy reviews. Thus proving the old "no publicity..."

Still, I didn't actually pay any money.

[Indio777]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Regarding Robert Stanek, for a full report on him, I suggest reading this highly researched report on the spam he's been spreading about himself and his books, located here:

http://conjugalfelicity.com/robert-stanek/


ADDED: From page one of the Report on Stanek:
“In prison, people like them usually get shanked.” – Robert Stanek, speaking about his critics

Jeez, a bit sensitive when it comes to getting bad reviews, isn't he? Thanks for the link. Interesting reading.

I tend to stay away from books whose "reviews" mostly consist of "THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN!!! EVER!" or something similar. Especially if there are one or two negative reviews by people who went to the trouble of actually trying to read the book in question.

[ATDrake]

It's very sad when authors seem to have nothing better to do with their lives. And embarrassing (yet hilarious) when they photoshop themselves without legs next to a famous dead author so that they can claim acquaintance.

Minor updates. I skipped a lot of repeats and stuff in categories I flat-out don't care about unless the author was someone recognizable or had a hover-over pop-up blurb claimed credential that was easily checked.

Sky Purington was included before for having some stuff out with one of the specialty romance imprints, IIRC. Here's her fantasy historical romance set amongst the ancient Celts: The King's Druidess (The MacLomain Series- Prelude)

Another fantasy romance in the same setting as above by Valerie Douglas who writes as V.J. Devereaux for Ellora's Cave: Setting Boundaries - a novella (The Coming Storm)

Barbara Bretton has stuff currently out from Berkley. Here's her contemporary romance: The Marrying Man

Irish writer Tim Vicary who's been published by Simon & Schuster and as it happens, writes educational children's books for Oxford University Press, returns with a crime & justice legal thriller: A Game of Proof (The trials of Sarah Newby)

Imajin/n Books who did not participate in RAEBW this year since they can no longer offer freebies directly off their website due to exclusive-or-else-ing their entire catalogue, from the looks of it, have an historical romance written by Kat Flannery: Chasing Clovers

I.J. Parker returns with the 1st in her historical Japanese sleuth mystery series, this volume originally out from St. Martin's Press in 2002: Rashomon Gate (A Sugawara Akitada Novel)

Fellow MR member author Paul Levine's action adventure thriller is probably a repeat, but it's old enough that I don't have it in the newer just-for-KDP auxiliary account: Ballistic

Richard Mason who wrote columns for an Arizona wildlife federation newsletter and whose historical novel series about a boy growing up in the Deep South in the 50s has been slowly offered piece by piece now offers something completely different: "I Will Drink Your Blood" The Vampire-Werewolf of Flat Creek Swamp

R.J. Jagger returns with a book he says was originally published under the title Night Laws: Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller 1)

Gerald Hausman's literary short story collection is a repeat, but a relatively notable one since he claims to be a winner of the American Folklore Society Award and assuming his Wikipedia entry is not an elaborate Stanek-like hoax, does seem to have credentials that check out as far as having a Simon & Schuster official author page go: The American Storybag

UK writer Robert Grossmith also repeats his literary short story collection, and very helpfully provides the exact print provenance of each one and the specific award nomination he claims for it in a little descriptive blurb before the appropriate story in the sample. He also quotes praise from a local Scottish newspaper in the blurb and we don't get very much verifiable decent-ish litfic and he also manages to reference Oulipo, possibly my favourite literary movement, so: The Book of Ands and Other Stories

Previously-title-featured Canadian Governor General's Award for Children's Literature winner Morgan Nyberg repeats a bunch of his assorted fiction written for kids and/or adults, including the award-winning kidlit novel: Linkage for the lot if you missed them last time

I think someone said they missed this the last time around. If so, here's Lise McClendon's 1930s set historical murder mystery again, originally 2001-St. Martin's/Minotaured: One O'clock Jump: a swing town mystery for the young at heart (Dorie Lennox Mystery Series)

At this point I'm just waiting to see what previously-included video game artist Stephen Beam is titling his sf/fantasy/horror shorts. This one has the sort of cover which will probably provide you with a spontaneous horrified laugh at the sheer cheesiness of it all and the conviction that the author should stop talking to whomever suggested it was a good idea: The Teddy Bear Singularity (a bizarre alien invasion invokes an unlikely savior)

More sfnal comedy from previously-included self-pub ISFDB self-entry "Barry Barroldson", who according to comments in the What Are You Reading thread in Reading Recs is probably pseudonymous, but enjoyable, according to those fellow MR members who've read him: Pizzas In Space

I don't know what the quality of this self-pub mashup is, but it looks fun and the author's got a great disclaimer in the blurb for it. If the actual story is even half as entertaining as the description, then he'll have done well with: Cthulhu in Wonderland (The Madness of Alice)

Happy reading, if you manage to catch something you regretted missing when it originally appeared.

ETA: Previously-included minor ISFDBed Edward G. Talbot, who is the penname for two other authors who also have their own ISFDB entries, offers a mini-collection of shorts, which happens to have some guy in a formal suit with a clown face on the cover, for those of you who are interested in mini-collections of shorts with guys in formal suits with clown faces on the cover: A Funny Pair Of Shorts There's actually three inside, so maybe they're wacky mutant shorts.