Write your own version of The Walking Dead

Get your teeth into writing a zombie novel

I never expected to be able to write a zombie novel. I thought horror was best left to three of my favourite authors – Shaun Hutson, James Herbert and Graeme Masterton.

Then this image came into my head of a couple lying in bed when there’s a knock at the door. One of them pads down the hall, opens the door and finds his friend Archie standing there. Archie looks like he’s been mugged. Then they notice that his insides are dripping out…

And so Dead Bastards was born. It's now available worldwide:)

Along the way I’ve learnt a few things -

1. Don’t concentrate on too many people’s stories.
This is a big mistake. Too many characters and too many stories distance the reader from the story you are trying to tell. You want to being everybody into the world you've created. 

2. Respect the genre. 
When it’s a genre that people are well acquainted with like zombies, you need to stick to the rules. By all means push the limits. I recently read a book by a well known author who gave one of his zombies the gift of thought. Bad enough, but he also gave them the cloak of invisibility. I threw that book across the room in a hissy fit. 

3. Make your characters distinctive.
People should know who’s speaking even without speech tags. This is tricky to do. 

4. Every step of the way, your characters must have a goal.
Simply surviving isn't enough. Just look at The Walking Dead. They always have a goal, whether it's to get revenge, find the rest of the group or help take Eugene to Washington because he says he has a cure.

For instance, in Dead Bastards they had to go to a shopping mall for supplies. There was no way out of it. Having goals creates conflict and brings your characters to life. Put your characters into a situation and see how they get out of it. 

5. Don’t do what writers of The Walking Dead’s did and get too bogged down with one aspect of your plot.
In the case of the hit show, they focussed too much on the Lori, Shane and Rick love triangle. In the end, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who got bored with it. If I wanted that kind of storyline, I'd watch a soap opera. 

In a zombie novel, the zombies must be king. 

Now for the zombies

Now yo've got the book sorted, it's time to think about what kind of zombies you'll have? 
Will it be the shufflers or the runners?

Will they be smarter zombies or the standard slow kind? 

Choose wisely, then run (or shuffle) with it.

Remember, it's your story and nobody can tell it like you can:) 

Why not check out my zombie novel? 

Check out the cover. It's pretty cool and is actually a scene from the book.

Dead Bastards is available in paperback and Kindle (although a book's probably better as a Kindle isn't much use against a zombie - trust me, I've tried). 

In a zombie apocalypse, shoot the children first

(WARNING - if you haven't seen the Walking Dead mid-season finale, don't read this)

Is Lizzie the most dangerous person in the Walking Dead?

In a zombie apocalypse, it’s only right that the adults protect the kids, but maybe the adults need protected from the kids.

Well, one kid in particularly – Lizzie Samuels. Because there’s a pretty good chance that she was the one who killed Karen and David, and Carol’s protecting her.

Here’s why.

Lizzie has an unhealthy obsession with walkers - In 30 Days Without An Accident, Lizzie is seen with other kids naming the walkers outside the prison. Carl tells her they shouldn’t name them because they’re not people and they kill people. Lizzie responds by telling him that people kill people and they have names.

In Infected, the hand of someone is seen feeding the walkers rats using a flashlight to point their way. That’s something a kid would do and it might have led to the illness that the people in the prison suffered.



NOT GUILTY
but did Carol indirectly cause Karen and David's deaths?

Lizzie offers to “kill” her father so he won’t come back as a walker. Would a normal little girl be able to do that? In the end she couldn’t and Carol branded her weak.

After that, David and Karen are found dead.

Could Lizzie have reacted to Carol’s “you’re weak” comment by toughening up and killing the pair? Sounds like a possibility.

If Lizzie did kill David and Karen, and Carol found out about it, she could blame herself for what Lizzie did and take the blame. Carol could also have dragged their bodies and burned them to protect Lizzie.

Her little sister Mika, tells Carol that Lizzie isn’t weak, she’s just “messed up.”

Lizzie cries when her favourite walker Nick dies for good

Lizzie runs off crying when she finds out the walker she called Nick has been killed. Again, this suggests an unbalanced mind.

Carol tells her: “Lizzie, those are walkers. Nick was a walker. You don’t feel bad about that walker dying, you feel bad about your dad. You loved him and he’s gone.”



Natural born killers?

She knows how to kill
Lizzie is there when Carol teaches the kids how to use knives in their makeshift classroom.

Just as we were worried we were about to see the demise of another character, Lizzie save Tyrese by drilling a bullet into Alisha’s forehead and another soldier. And that leads to another prospect – did Lizzie team up with her younger sister to kill Karen and David? The dead pair wouldn’t have seen that coming.

Rick also found a very small, low handprint on the door near where Karen and David were found. A child's handprint.

Daryl knows Carol didn’t do it

Daryl when told that Carol killed David and Karen says, “That aint her.” Nobody knows her better in the show than Daryl.

Here’s the dialogue from the scene -

Rick: Hey, hey, she killed two of our own. She couldn’t be here. She’s going to be alright. She has a car…supplies…weapons. She’s a survivor.

Daryl: I don’t believe it.

Rick: She did it. She said it was for us. That was in her head. She wasn’t sorry.

Daryl: So, she deserved it. Well, that ain’t her.

Did a deathbed promise make Carol cover for Lizzie?

Carol’s promise to the girls’ dad

On his deathbed, Lizzie’s father asks Carol to look after his two daughters. When Carol makes a promise, she sticks to it and the two girls were her chance to be a mother again after losing Sophia.

Would that extend to Carol covering for a pint-sized sociopath or even sociopaths? I think so.

Only time will tell. One thing’s for sure, we can’t wait for the series to return on February 9^th.

What do you think?

Leave your comments below and remember, stay safe and keep aiming for the head.