When I reached out to the zombie community to ask ‘WHY ZOMBIES?’ I got so many terrific responses that I broke the blog into two parts. If you missed part one, here’s the link to Why Zombies? – Part 1. And here’s part two. It includes comments from Joe McKinney, John A. Russo (co-writer of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), Dr. Kim Paffenroth, Lyle Perez, Nicole Amburgey, Paul A. Freeman, Robert Hood, S.G. Browne, Stephanie Kincaid, Scott Baker, Tim Long, Todd Jepperson, Todd W. Brown, Tonia Brown, Tony Faville, Tony Schaab, Walter Greatshell and Zombie Zak!
JOE McKINNEY: Why zombies? I’ve had plenty of interviewers ask me, “Why horror? Why not write police procedurals? You being a cop, wouldn’t that be a natural thing?” Well, I write horror because it is my first love. It was a horror story that gave me that first “Wow, this is cool!” feeling, and I’ve found myself gravitating back to horror ever since. But zombies…Why? Well, that first horror story, that first “Wow, this is cool!” moment, it came while watching Night of the Living Dead. I keep coming back to zombies for the same reason I keep coming back to horror. They hooked me early and didn’t let go.
JOHN RUSSO: At first we didn’t call them zombies, we used the word “ghoul.” Technically, not every zombie is a flesheater. Ghouls are the ones who eat human flesh, usually dead flesh at that. As a kid I went to see just about every horror film, and I never thought that zombies were heavyweight fright material like vampires or werewolves. When we turned them into flesheaters, that seemed to do the trick — we struck an atavistic chord in people, an intense element of fear that probably goes back to when we were prey for wild beasts. George Romero wrote part of a story that gave rise to the screenplay for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and I told him I really liked the story but he never said who these creatures were who were attacking Barbara. He said he didn’t know. So I said, “They seem like they could be dead people.” He said that was good, and I asked what they were after, why were they attacking? Again he said he didn’t know. So I said, “Why don’t we use my flesheating idea?” I was referring to a screenplay I had started which involved aliens coming to earth in search of human flesh. George liked that idea too, so that’s how we gave birth to the modern kind of zombie that hungers for human flesh.
KIM PAFFENROTH: For me? I think they have a perennial appeal to young males, because they’re such good targets, and also because the whole scenario of a zombie apocalypse lets us not just think about shooting them, but about planning all the various things we’d need to survive. So when I saw the original Dawn of the Dead I was hooked, since I was a teen at the time. But when I returned to them more recently, having thought about theology and human nature in the intervening years, I found a lot more to like about them as symbols, as conveying deeper meanings than just a survivalist fantasy.
LYLE PEREZ: Zombies have always been a big part of my teen and adult life. I was first introduced to the genre because of the Resident Evil games. I began playing them and slowly fell in love with the concept of zombies taking over the world. In my opinion Zombies are the most horrifying threat to humanity, if they were real. They never sleep, they never need to stop, and their one goal is to consume all life on earth. Other than being living dead cannibals, I feel that Freud’s concept of the uncanny plays a major factor in the terror zombies bring. For example, it is your wife but then again it isn’t your wife. The virus, the spirit, whatever it is has taken over her body. On the outside it is your wife but on the inside it is not. That I feel would be the most horrifying part about a zombie uprising but then again that fear is why I love zombies so much. The civil war was the most devastating war in US history. The thought of a family killing each other for their cause is upsetting. But having to kill your mother because she is infected and trying to eat you, is far more disturbing.
NICOLE AMBURGEY: Zombies represent the last great mystery to me. Other baddies are fun to read about – but I think zombies are the last real hold-out that have the possibility of existing or becoming a reality. You see walking metaphors every day, victims to the exposure of advertising and marketing and politics. No one wants to make decisions for themselves, they want to be controlled and told what they want and what they need. Historically, there are traces of zombies throughout Haitian voodoo culture that stem back to West Africa. There is so much about the human body that we simply do 
not know. For instance, in 1884, there was a Frenchman by the name of Jean Baptiste Vincent Laborde who conducted experiments on freshly severed heads. During one of his last experiments, he had dog blood pumping through it and it came as close as he ever got to restoring normal brain function. Its jaw snapped, muscles twitched, pupils contracted, and it had facial ticks – this was twenty minutes after being severed from the body! He wondered what would happen if he was able to do it before brain death set in. There were also many experiments conducted in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s involving transplantations on animals. During the 1970’s, a neurosurgeon named Robert While conducted experiments involving rhesus monkeys where he would cut the head off one and graft it to the neck of another. The “new” monkey would last anywhere from six hours to three days. My point being, zombies, to me, are the last unknown frontier. We don’t know the effects of everything that can be inflicted on the human body – natural or man-made. That’s what makes them the best – that’s what makes them “real.”
PAUL A. FREEMAN: I came into Z-lit quite by chance. Until three years ago I was better known as a writer of crime fiction and long narrative poems (along the lines of Geoffrey Chaucer) rather than horror. Then, on the Café Doom forum, a thread was posted calling for flash fiction submissions for Coscom Entertainment’s zombie anthology, Bits of the Dead. My short story Hunger was accepted and my love affair with zombie fiction began. The following year Coscom Entertainment opened submissions for Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes, an anthology of zombie poetry. My five-page narrative poem, Payback Time, caught the eye of the publisher, A. P. Fuchs, and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse – if I wrote an 18,000-word zombie poem as a stand-alone novella, he would publish it. The rest, as they say, is history. Into existence came Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers – A Canterbury Tale by Paul A. Freeman, for which Writers’ Forum magazine dubbed me ‘Poet of the Undead’.
Robert Hood: Stumbling inexorability, strong visual qualities, apocalyptic spectacle, the rapacious past made flesh. Zombies offer writers a strong context for human drama, suspense and profound horror. They are metaphorically rich and vastly entertaining. They can be adapted artistically to a wide range of tones, from deep terror to comedy.
S. G. BROWNE: Because they used to be us. Because I saw Night of the Living Dead on Creature Features when I was eleven and I fell in love. Because they’re relentless. Because they’re socially relevant. Because they’re tragically comical. Because a werewolf apocalypse is just ridiculous.
Stephanie Kincaid: Zombies speak to one of my biggest fears. To me, there is nothing more terrifying than the threat of losing control of one’s own mind. Brain injuries and neurological disorders frighten me like nobody’s business. But zombies themselves don’t scare me, even though the threat of a zombie bite usually implies eventual loss of control and loss of self. Instead, zombies have always held a degree of fascination for me, probably because they allow me to explore that deep fear in an exaggerated way under the guise of entertainment that holds no true threat.
On a more lighthearted note, there’s also the fact that sometimes zombies are just plain funny. Sure, some will argue that we laugh at zombies because the fact of death makes us uncomfortable, so we giggle to allay our discomfort. But we wouldn’t laugh at any old rotting corpse, provided it behaved itself. A dead guy lying in the ground like he’s supposed to isn’t funny. Once he gets up and starts walking around, he has the potential to be a laugh riot. Like a duck or a penguin or a platypus, a zombie is oblivious to its own intrinsic silliness. It has no idea how goofy it looks tottering about with its limbs in the wrong places or shedding vital bits at inopportune moments.
SCOTT BAKER: Zombies are the most frightening monster out there. They have no emotions of fear, and few vulnerabilities. And they’re relentless in their efforts to get at humans. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of zombies bearing down on you, and you have the ultimate horror.
TIM LONG: Because vampires just aren’t dead enough. When you are dealing with the classic monsters, nothing is newer than or as popular as zombies are right now. Sure they have a long history in myth but only the last 40 years have seen them rise and lurch toward us like a tidal wave. They are everywhere, movies, books, comics, even the ad you see before a movie which tells you to turn off your cell phone. Zombies are scary because they are us. They are our neighbors, our friends and co-workers. They give us the opportunity to show how the worst in people can come out, in both survivors and the dead … and how to take an ax to their heads.
Todd Jepperson: Strangely, I started with Zombies because I was taking my art too seriously. I was getting frustrated with the direction that I was trying to go. I thought to myself that nobody could take a zombie comic seriously, and my style was born. Little did I know that it was gonna be like trying to relax on a razorblade sofa. My art has taken a turn for the better, but, I found that there are quite a few people taking zombie comics very seriously.
TODD W. BROWN: First I have to give all the credit, or, blame if you will, to George A. Romero and Tom Savini. Dawn of the Dead made a huge impression on me. I’d seen Jaws and The Exorcist, and gotten a bit of a chill. Dawn was the first film that complete engrossed me from start to finish. It was so…open to “what if” conversation. I remember the days of actually going from mall to mall with my friends, seeking our own bastion against the inevitable rise of the zombies. I will say that I have been proudly hooked since 1978. Writing about zombies has allowed me to live out every adolescent’s dreams and nightmares. The zombie, in my opinion, is the perfect monster. His most effective disguise is that he is one of us.
Tonia Brown: Life is a chore, living even more so. As humans there are many nasty facets of our lives that we don’t want to deal with, so we create monsters to personify those parts of ourselves. Werewolves deal with our inner beasts, straining to get free and run wild. Vampires speak of the pitfalls of seduction and the consequences of wielding unspeakable power. But I love zombies most of all because they embody the worst of human fears; losing your identity and your humanity, the struggle to survive against overwhelming odds, and most of all facing your own mortality.
Zombies are terrifying because they take the concept of peace upon death, and slap it in the face. They are walking death. They are torture of endless existence, and an endless appetite. How terrible it would be to spend your entire life seeking sustenance and rest, only to have your corpse driven to a state of permanent hunger and tireless animation.
The very idea of it mocks everything we spend our whole life striving for.
TONY FAVILLE: That is a very good question, and I have two answers to offer. One, not only are we, as in people in our daily lives, zombies, but ultimately, the zombies are us. We get up every day, go to work for a company that doesn’t care about us as people, we come home, we eat, we go to bed, only to get up in the morning and repeat that cycle, every day for fifty to sixty years. If that does not qualify as a zombie, then I don’t know what will.
Two, there is nothing more frightening than having your wife, friend or other loved one attempt to kill you and eat your flesh, except maybe the thought of having to fight that individual in a fight to the death. Think about it, that is the person that you promised to love, honor and cherish until death do you part. Are you ready to give the head shot necessary to put them down after reanimation?
Tony Schaab: Zombies are the ultimate “unstoppable force” – they don’t care about you, they won’t rest and won’t stop until they’ve gotten to you, they are insanely hard to permanently halt, and all they want to do is cause you harm by eating you alive. Honestly, what could be scarier than that?
WALTER GREATSHELL: I just like ‘em. When I was a little kid, my mother and I lived in Hollywood, which was a much seedier place than it is now, and one night she took me to this cruddy old movie palace to see ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ That scene with the young couple being burned alive and then eaten was about the most horrible thing I had ever witnessed—for years I wasn’t sure whether I had really seen it or just dreamed it. Those sounds and images are inextricably linked to my childhood. So, for me, zombies are pure nostalgia.
ZOMBIE ZAK: Because, I hunger. No, seriously…Because they amuse me, or more accurately, people’s reactions to them amuse me. Because, “..we is them and they is us..”
Because I have plans for complete and total dominion of the planet and they are very useful tools to that end. Because I think they are a great device in commenting on both society as a whole and upon the actions and interactions of people as individuals. Zombies provide a great means by which to highlight both the good and ill of the body social and of the person as tasty units that comprise many different groups and types of groups.
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Meet our Panelists for Part 2 of WHY ZOMBIES?
JOE McKINNEY is a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department who has been writing professionally since 2006. He is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of Dead City, Quarantined, Dodging Bullets and Dead Set. His upcoming books include Apocalypse of the Dead, The Ninth Plague, The Zombie King, Lost Girl of the Lake, and The Red Empire. As a police officer, he’s received training in disaster mitigation, forensics, and homicide investigation techniques, some of which finds its way into his stories. He lives in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio. Visit him at http://joemckinney.wordpress.com for news and updates.
JOHN RUSSO wants everyone to know he’s a really nice guy even though he loves to scare people. He started it by co-scripting the horror classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. one of the greatest fright flicks of all time. He also wrote the screenplays and/or stories for MIDNIGHT, SANTA CLAWS, THE MAJORETTES, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and INHUMAN. He has authored fifteen terror-suspense novels, including LIVING THINGS, THE AWAKENING, VOODOO DAWN and HELL’S CREATION. His nonfiction books, SCARE TACTICS and MAKING MOVIES, are considered bibles of independent filmmaking by film students and horror fans. With long-time friend and partner, Russ Streiner, who produced NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and is chairman of the Pittsburgh Film Office, he directs a top-notch movie making program at DuBois Business College in DuBois, PA. His screenplay, ESCAPE OF THE LIVING DEAD, was made into a five-part comic book that made the Top Ten nationally, and is soon to be made into a movie that he will direct. He resides in a suburb of Pittsburgh and to his knowledge none of his neighbors are zombies, although “there is one guy around the corner who is rumored to have devoured the mailman a few years ago.”
Kim Paffenroth is a professor of religious studies at Iona College. He is the author of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006), which won the Bram Stoker Award. Since then he’s been writing zombie fiction, including Dying to Live (Permuted, 2007), and its sequel, Dying to Live: Life Sentence (Permuted, 2008). His most recent novel, Valley of the Deadth century, where the medieval Italian poet Dante is in a life and death struggle with a zombie infestation. (Permuted, 2010), combines his theological and literary interests, taking us back to the 14
LYLE PEREZ is the creator of www.UndeadintheHead.com, a website dedicated to zombie books and the authors. Lyle feels it is his responsibility to review all zombie literature presented to him. Lyle was recently offered a position at BuyZombie.com as lead book reviewer. The job was eagerly accepted and he is one step closer to his goal of bringing the zombie genre to a wider audience. Humbled by the success of Undead in the Head, Lyle decided to give writing his own zombie fiction a try. His very first zombie short story, Dement, was submitted to May December Publications for their First Time Dead anthology. Dement was accepted and is set to print early 2011. A full length zombie novel is also in works from this young writer. His love for the zombie genre is expressed in every review and in every story he writes. Expect more zombie literature and reviews from Lyle. He truly has undead in the head.
NICOLE AMBURGEY is a long-time horror fan, bookseller, and most recently, the voice of Abbie Cadaver reviewing books for Creepshow Radio. George Romero opened up my world to zombies with Dawn of the Dead and I have never looked back. To this day, I scoop up any zombie novel or film and give them a shot! I’ve also taken part in many crawls and a Thrill the World event – both as a zombie and doing makeup for participants. Currently, my fiance and I are planning our very own zombie wedding! (Seriously 
)
PAUL A. FREEMAN is the author of several zombie short stories which are due to be published this year in various Library of the Living Dead anthologies. He currently works in the United Arab Emirates where he lives with his wife and three children. www.paulfreeman.weebly.com
Robert Hood has been writing horror/SF for several decades and has been referred to as “Aussie Horror’s Wicked Godfather” (Black Magazine). He has published several zombie-themed stories, including part 1 of “Moments of Dying” (Black Magazine), “In the Service of the Flesh” (Aurealis), “A Place For The Dead” (Bloodsongs), “Behind Dark Blue Eyes” (Exotic Gothic 3), “Heartless” (Aurealis) and “Wasting Matilda” (forthcoming in Zombie Apocalypse, edited by Stephen Jones for Mammoth Books). Zombies also feature in some of his award-winning film articles, most notably the multi-part “Nights of the Celluloid Dead: A History of Zombie Cinema [to 2000]” He maintains a rather extensive zombie cinema listing on his film blog Undead Backbrain: http://roberthood.net/blog/index.php/zombie-movie-listing/ and his interview with George Romero, “Master of the Living Dead” can be read here: http://roberthood.net/blog/index.php/2009/01/15/master-of-the-living-dead/. Website: www.roberthood.net
S. G. BROWNE is the author of Breathers, a dark comedy about life after undeath. Think Fight ClubShaun of the Dead, only with the zombies as the good guys. “A Zombie’s Lament,” his short story upon which Breathers is based, can be found in the John Skipp edited anthology Zombies: Encounters With the Hungry Dead, while “Zombie Gigolo” will appear in the upcoming anthology The Living Dead 2, edited by John Joseph Adams. www.sgbrowne.com meets
Stephanie Kincaid is a freelance editor and writer. Some of her latest zombie tales have appeared in 23 House’s Dead Set and Living Dead Press’s Book of the Dead Volume 3, as well as at Everyday Fiction (http://www.everydayfiction.com/shes-a-biter-by-stephanie-kincaid/). More of Stephanie’s zombie fare will appear in the upcoming Moron’s Guide to the Inevitable Zombocalypse; Letters From the Dead; Through the Eyes of the Undead; and Zombidays: Festivities of the Flesheaters from Library of the Living Dead Press. The most recent zombie-intensive books she has edited are the fabulous Lucky Stiff: Memoirs of an Undead Lover by Tonia Brown (a zombie story like you’ve never read before), and The Apocalypse and Satan’s Glory Hole by Timothy W. Long and Jonathan Moon. (Yes, there are zombies at the Apocalypse. You won’t want to miss it!) Stephanie’s current pet project is a collaboration with Tonia Brown on The Velveteen Zombie, a heartwarming story of a boy and his zombie, friendship and love, and what it means to be a Real Monster.
SCOTT BAKER has authored several short stories, including “Rednecks Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,” which appeared in the autumn 2008 edition of the e-zine Necrotic Tissue; “Cruise of the Living Dead,” which appeared in Living Dead Press’ Dead Worlds: Volume 3 anthology (August 2009); “Deck the Malls with Bowels of Holly,” which appeared in Living Dead Press‘ Christmas Is Dead anthology (October 2009); and “Denizens,” which appeared in Living Dead Press’ The Book of Horror anthology (March 2010). Shadowfire Press is publishing The Vampire Hunters trilogy as a series of e-books. Scott is currently putting the final touches on the last two volumes of The Vampire Hunters trilogy and is finishing his next novel on how a small band of humans/vampires strive to survive the zombie apocalypse. Blog: http://scottmbakerauthor.blogspot.com/
TIM LONG has been writing tales and stories since he could hold a crayon and has also read enough books to choke a landfill. He has a fascination with all things zombies, a predilection for hula-girl dolls, and a deep seeded need to jot words on paper and thrust them at people. Tim is the author of the horror novel Among the Living. He has sold stories to almost a dozen horror anthologies, the most recent of which are Eric S. Brown’s War Wolves and Rhiannon Frater’s Witchology: Tales From the Cauldron. Tim swears that if he is ever stuck with a zombie, no matter how attractive, he will bash in her brains. Really!
Todd Jepperson is an industrial machinist living in Orem, Ut. He is currently pursuing a degree in English and Secondary Education at Utah Valley University. Jack of all trades and master of none, his hobbies include board sports, martial arts, gardening and music. His current work has him spending entirely too much time developing cutting edge poly-crystalline diamond products for the energy industry, and not nearly enough in graphic art, cartooning, writing, and illustrating.
Todd W Brown lives in Portland Oregon with his wife and 2 of our 7 children. He writes stories about zombies and also owns May December Publications LLC where he publishes zombie anthologies and horror novels. He has two short stories in anthologies from LDP – Daddy’s Little Girl is in Book of the Dead 3 Dead and Rotting, and Kherfin is in Dead History, a Zombie Anthology. His novel, Zomblog is available on Amazon and Dead: The Ugly Beginning is published by May December Publications. He has two two short stories to be published in Zombology III and Zombology IV for The Library of the Living Dead Press. www.maydecemberpublications.com
Tonia Brown has been a fan of zombies for more years than she cares to admit. From her erotic novella The Blooming to a plethora of zombie short stories, she can’t seem to stop writing about the darned things. Her upcoming novel Lucky Stiff: Memoirs of an Undead Lover features a zombie with an unusual appetite for sex, while her current project The Cold Beneath marries her love of steampunk and the undead. She has also undertaken a collaborative project with fellow author Stephanie Kincaid, turning a beloved children’s classic into an undead feast, the result of which has become The Velveteen Zombie.
You can find more about Tonia at her website: http://www.thebackseatwriter.com
And also on Face Book at: http://www.facebook.com/backseatwriter
TONY FAVILLE is the first time author of Zombie novel Kings of the Dead, a project he completed last November for the National Novel Writing Month. He is currently working on his next project and has made the time to submit two different short stories to two different anthologies. Tony is a former US Navy Hospital Corpsman, former Chef, firearms enthusiast, soon to be certified NRA Instructor, huge fan of all aspects of the Zombie genre, and an Officer in his local chapter of the internationally known Zombie Squad. He is currently married and has been since 1998, and lives in the Portland area with his wife, two dogs, and a cat.
Tony Schaab is a 31-year-old writer, currently living in Indianapolis with his wife, dog, and newborn daughter. In addition to having stories published in humor, horror, and sci-fi anthologies, Tony has a special affinity for zombies: he runs a zombie-centric review blog, www. TheGOREScore.com, which is in the process of being compiled for a book release, and is currently working on his first full-length fiction novel, “Zombies Can’t Dance.” In his free time, Tony works as a DJ, is Troupe Manager of the improvisational comedy troupe “IndyProv,” and volunteers at his local Humane Society. Visit Tony and read more of his work at www.TonySchaab.com.
Walter Greatshell is the author of ‘Xombies: Apocalypse Blues’ (originally published as ‘Xombies’) and its sequel, ‘Xombies: Apocalypticon’ (Penguin). He is currently at work on the third book of his Xombies series. His short story, ‘The Mexican Bus,’ will appear in the upcoming zombie anthology, ‘The Living Dead 2.’ For more about Walter Greatshell’s books and colorful illustrations, visit his website: www.waltergreatshell.com or his blog, Xombierama.
Zombie Zak is an expert in the munching of brains, cookies, and bacon. Often beset by the fine art of diatribe and/or poetic eruption. A plethora of skills both mad and happy, he can be found everywhere online that you may or may not want to be. Canadian born, he has established his base of operations in the friendly city of Toronto and is expecting to continue his depredations upon the rest of the world. Both living and not so much, by the short and deadlies: Zombie Zak – Feed him, fear him, don’t leave your cookies near him. http://www.facebook.com/ZombieZak.ZZ
Jonathan Maberry is the New York Times bestselling, and two-time Bram Stoker winning author of the Joe Ledger series of Novels, Patient Zero (St. Martins Minotaur, 2009), The Dragon Factory (St. Martins Minotaur, 2010) and King of Plagues (St. Martins Minotaur, 2011); The Wolfman (Tor Books 2010); Rot & Ruin (Simon & Shuster, October 2010) and Dust & Decay (Simon & Shuster 2011).
His nonfiction works include Zombie CSU: Forensics of the Living Dead (Citadel 2008); They Bite! Endless Cravings of Supernatural Predators (Citadel 2009); The Cryptopedia: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange, and Downright Bizarre (Citadel 2007) and Wanted Undead or Alive: Vampire Hunters and Other Kickass Enemies of Evil (Citadel 2010).
His work for Marvel Comics includes issues of The Punisher, Marvel Zombies Return, The Black Panther and Doomwar.
His short story, Family Business, is featured in Christopher Golden’s zombie anthology, The New Dead (St. Martin’s Press 2010)
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We kick off our rolling series of ZOMBIE PANEL DISCUSSIONS by addressing the fundamental question: Why zombies? 
roach of the monster world; if you’ve seen one, you know there are thousands more where it came from. Also, they’re scary because they can’t be reasoned with. They’re worse than children. But seriously, their lack of reasoning and their pure need-driven motivation are what make them frightening. That and the fact that they’ll tear you limb from limb and devour all your soft tissue. Individually they’re just gross and unsettling, but they always come in mobs and mobs are by nature terrifying. 
like Katrina or the riots in LA in the nineties, it looks like we’re watching a zombie film. So in a way zombies are a way for us to deal with the fear of society run amuck. Plus you can hack away at zombies with chainsaws and axes and it’s fun to watch. It would not be so fun if you went after a group of rioters with a bandsaw, for instance. That would just be weird and creepy. 
zombies as metaphor aside – zombies terrify me, and the things that terrify us inevitably become a source of fascination. I should clarify that it’s not so much the zombies themselves that terrify me (I don’t actually expect to meet one strolling down the street); it’s more the *idea* of what a zombie *is* – an animated corpse, generally devoid of self or intelligence, motivated only an uncontrollable hunger for human flesh. As a concept, zombies are just so wonderfully *wrong*. What’s not to fear? Or love? 
in a big way. And in the sixties they still weren’t happening. Sure, a handful of films trickled through the door, like Zombies (1964), Plague of the Zombies (1966), and Cemetery of the Living Dead (1965). It should also be noted that in 1968 George Romero dropped Night of the Living ‘You Know What,’ but still… we’re looking back in time through rose colored glasses. Night of the Living Dead was an indie-film. It had a budget of 
$114,000 and had a hard time finding distribution. Big money wasn’t thinking zombies. Nobody was. In the 1970s, nothing changed. In the 1980s, again, nothing changed. Vampire films outnumbered zombie films 100 to 1. If you want to drop names like Lucio Fulci, Brian Yuzna, Sam Raimi (and whoever else you got tucked away in your bag of zombie tricks) go ahead. Doesn’t change anything. Bottom line is this: zombie films didn’t take off like other films… and zombie literature? Forget about it. You’re reading stories from a near-empty book shelf. 
frickin’ Dead?
And the films people were spending their money on in 1978 were Grease, Superman, and Animal House––in that order. Point is, there was so much going on in the 1970s that zombies were not the hot topic, nor should they have been. If we fast-forward to 1985 we can contemplate Day of the Dead, but with its budget a mere 3.5 million, and it being considerably less successful at the box office than Dawn, once again, zombies didn’t take off. Not yet. 
Sure, The Sex Pistols blew up. But in general, punk rock doesn’t ‘blow up.’ The Misfits didn’t blow up. The Ramones didn’t blow up. The Stooges didn’t blow up. They––like a fine wine––became more appreciated with age. In time, some punk bands gain an ever-expanding, hardcore following. Zombie films are like punk. They might even be punk. They gain new followers generation to generation. But there’s a flipside to gaining popularity exponentially. When enough time passes, and punk-like things become too popular, they become mainstream, which is, almost by definition, the opposite of punk. Its hard to believe that on a day like today I can walk into my local mall and buy t-shirts, stickers, and posters, for the same bands that needed to be special ordered when they were trying to get noticed. But that’s the way it is with punk. And that’s the way it is with zombies. The odds of buying a Night of the Living Dead t-shirt back in 1968 weren’t good. In fact, you couldn’t find a t-shirt no matter how hard you looked. But today? Oh yeah. Every major chain carries a whole rack of them. 
JAMES MELZER
AARON ALPER is a writer/photographer. Raised in Melbourne, Florida, Aaron migrated slightly to Eckerd College, where he graduated in 2004 with a degree in Creative Writing. After dabbling in music journalism solely so he could interview his hero Tori Amos (which he proudly did in 2004), Aaron returned to graduate school to study English Education at University of South Florida St. Petersburg. It was there that he met his fellow Zombie St. Pete editors, and quickly discovered that his eccentric obsession with horror could actually be used productively. Aaron is currently working on his Masters in English and hopes to one day interview Tori Amos again. In person. Find him at www.zombienationpublishing.com and www.facebook.com/zombiestpete 
BRAD C. HODSON’s on-again, off-again love affair with zombies began with the very first piece of fiction he ever wrote. It was terrible and he never sold it. But since then he has gone on to receive the Roselle Lewis Award for Outstanding Achievement in Short Fiction and has made the short list for the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award. His first horror novel, DARLING, will be released some time before the end of the world by Bad Moon Books. He also co-wrote and co-produced the feature film “George’s Intervention,” a zombie comedy that’s been racking up wins at film festivals all over the globe. For more information, check out www.bradchodson.com and 
DAVID WELLINGTON is the author of seven novels. His zombie novels “Monster Island”, “Monster Nation” and “Monster Planet”(Thunder’s Mouth Press) form a complete trilogy. He has also written a series of vampire novels including (so far) “Thirteen Bullets”, “Ninety-Nine Coffins”, “Vampire Zero” and “Twenty-Three Hours”, and in October of 2009 began his new Werewolf series, starting with “Frostbite” (all with Three Rivers Press). In 2004 he began serializing his horror fiction online, posting short chapters of a novel three times a week on a friend’s blog. Response to the project was so great that in 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press approached Mr. Wellington about publishing “Monster Island” as a print book. His novels have been featured in Rue Morgue, Fangoria, and the New York Times. 
ROBERT KIRKMAN is an American comic book writer best known for his work on The Walking Dead, Invincible and Marvel Zombies. 
DAVID DUNWOODY is the author of the zombie novel Empire, of which the 2nd edition was recently released by Gallery Books and Permuted Press. His weird zombie tales have appeared in anthologies such as Zombology, History is Dead, and all four volumes of Permuted Press’ The Undead. Dave lives in Utah. Links: 
DAVID JACK BELL is the author of two novels, including the zombie novel, THE CONDEMNED from Delirium Books. Of THE CONDEMNED, David Morrell, author of FIRST BLOOD, said, “Gave me the tingle I felt when I read Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND for the first time…” His short fiction is forthcoming from Cemetery Dance and Shock Totem, and he can be reached through his website www.davidjackbell.com. He is at work on a sequel to THE CONDEMNED called TOWN WATCH. David Jack Bell | 
ERIC S. BROWN is the author of such titles as Season of Rot, War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies (soon to be re-released by Simon and Schuster), World War of the Dead, and numerous other zombie books. He is a life long fan of the genre and horror in general. Some of his non-zombie works include How the West Went to Hell (an epic demon plague story set in the old west) and Bigfoot War. He lives in NC with his loving wife and son where he continues to write tales of blazing guns and rotting flesh. Most of his titles may be found at www.amazon.com www.pillhillpress.com features a bibliography page for Eric S. Brown and he has a presence on www.facebook.com should like to stay in touch with his current projects. 
FRED VAN LENTE is the New York Times bestselling author of three entries in the Marvel Zombies series, as well as Incredible Hercules (with Greg Pak) and the American Library Association award-winning Action Philosophers. His original graphic novel Cowboys & Aliens (co-written with Andrew Foley) is being adapted into motion picture form by Dreamworks and Universal, starring Daniel Craig. Van Lente’s other comics include Comic Book Comics, MODOK’s 11, Iron Man Legacy and Amazing Spider-Man. Learn more about him than you can possibly stand at his web site, 
GARY KEMBLE: I wrote my first zombie story, Back From the Grave, when I was nine or 10, before I even knew what zombies were. It had guns, a black TransAm and decapitations left, right and centre. My most recent effort is ‘Dead Air’ (first published in Robert N Stephenson’s Zombies, and reprinted in Brimstone Press’s Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror vol 3. I’ve written about the phenomenon for BLACK magazine (Brimstone Press) and ABC News Online. On top of that, I’ve written various film trivia articles for Articulate about zombie films: Dawn of the Dead (78 and 04), Day of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, The Zombie Diaries. 
JAKE BIBLE is a writer living in Asheville, NC. He his the author of The World’s First Drabble Novel, DEAD MECH, which is currently being released as a serialized audiobook at jakebible.com, podiobooks.com and in the Library Of The Living Dead podcast. DEAD MECH is a high paced, ultra-violent, scifi-horror story pitting zombie hordes against futuristic giant, robotic battle machines in an Apocalyptic wasteland populated by feudalistic city/states, cults and cannibals. It asks the question: What happens when a human mech pilot dies and becomes a zombie? Dead Mechs are born! Mr. Bible has been a zombie fan for years and his most recent zombie story, “Zombie Blues”, is available in the April 2010 issue of Necrotic Tissue. For more information about DEAD MECH and to find out what a Drabble Novel is, go to 
JAMES ROY DALEY
JAMES MELZER is the author of the forthcoming novel ESCAPE (March 2011 Permuted Press/Simon & Schuster), the first book in The Zombie Chronicles Trilogy. The novel can be heard for free right now on his website, where you can also find lots of other free material, as well as his interview series, UNLEASHED. 
Freelance writer JAN KOZLOWSKI fell in love with the horror genre in 1975 when the single drop of ruby blood on the engraved black cover of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot mesmerized her into purchasing it. She began writing horror for her own amusement almost immediately, but didn’t begin publishing it until she sold her first story, Psychological Bacchanal to the EWG E-zine in 1997. Her short story, Parts is Parts, won awards in both the International Writing Competition sponsored by DarkEcho’s E-zine and Quoth the Raven’s Bad Stephen King contest. Another short story, Stuff It, was sold to an independent film producer and went into production as a movie short called Sweet Goodbyes. She is also proud to have her zombie stories included in two amazing anthologies- Show Time in Remittance Girl’s A Slip of the Lip Anthology and First Love Never Dies as part of Lori Perkins’ Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance. For more information, stories, blogs and gooey zombie goodness, check out Jan’s websites 
JASON NAGY: After watching Dawn of the Dead at an early age I was smitten. Or scarred. I guess it depends on who you would ask. Being only seven, that movie and the concept of zombies forever burned itself into my brain. Dreams of zombies were common then and continued throughout my life. My zombie contingency plan was established at a young age and I was constantly sizing up my surroundings in case of an attack. Now, nearly 30 years later, I have combined my two favorite pastimes together: zombies and toys. Launching the website zombiesandtoys.com in 2008, it originally began as a place where I would simply post zombie news I stumbled upon. While that is still the root, it has become a type of network for zombie fans of all types. In addition to news about movies, books, and games, we also feature interviews with artists, authors, toy designers and more. We have contests every month where we give away video games, toys, books, and movies. Our Facebook page has become a place where fans communicate and share ideas. And, of course, we also feature The Zombie Toy Store. There, you can find zombie toys of all types. Plush zombies, crafts, exclusives, vinyl art zombie collectibles, vintage zombie toys, designer toys, and more can be found in The Zombie Toy Store. No stone is left unturned in our search for new zombie toys. Links: Facebook = 
