This Friday, THE FINAL CUT, the long-awaited conclusion to The Infection trilogy, publishes on Amazon. Between now and then, the first two books in this classic zombie series are now free for Amazon Kindle!
Get THE INFECTION (book 1) here.
Get THE KILLING FLOOR (book 2) here.
Preorder THE FINAL CUT (book 3) here.
(New audio versions of the first two books and for the third book are coming out in early 2022. The paperback edition of THE FINAL CUT comes out around Friday.)
Thanks for reading!
UNDERCARD, a debut novel by David Albertyn, follows the lives of four old friends who reunite in Las Vegas and, over 24 hours, have their lives completely upended. Slightly noirish and set against the backdrop of the War on Terror, Black Lives Matter, Las Vegas corruption, and professional boxing, it’s a powerfully written, in-your-face read. It’s missing a strong moral that makes noirish fiction work–at least I missed it–but overall I liked it as a simple story that packs a punch.
The novel focuses on four people who grew up in Sin City. There’s Antoine, a professional boxer three years out of prison with a personal vendetta; Tyron, a Marine returning home after a decade of war overseas; Keenan, a cop who shot an unarmed teenager and is the subject of BLM protests; and Naomi, a professional basketball player retired to turn coach, loved by each of them. Tonight, Antoine will fight a renowned boxer, a prizefight he must win to earn his name and possibly his vengeance, which will set them each on a path to right old wrongs and hopefully survive.
The writing has a nice energy to it, a hard noirish tone, and heavily developed characters, each of whom is flawed but likeable and somewhat larger than life due to their rich (if a little improbable in combination) backgrounds. The violence and passion of the prizefight serves as the novel’s centerpiece that ties the old friends back together, and it’s delivered with a terrific power. The ending brings it all home nicely, though after the fight the novel loses some energy and never regains it, not even in the climax, and I was left wondering what the point was in bringing all the backdrop issues–BLM, War on Terror, etc.–into the story other than purely to flavor and titillate.
Overall, I liked UNDERCARD a lot. It’s a fun read that delivers a solid punch for its strong characters and style.
Rebecca Silver Slayter’s THE SECOND HISTORY tells the story of a young couple struggling to survive in the Appalachians after the world has irrevocably suffered due to climate change. I found it quite interesting and powerful, though the last act slows the pace considerably with secondhand conflict.
It’s sometime in the future, and humanity is much smaller than it was after decades of drought and tsunamis and pollution producing a widespread genetic defect. Now most of America lives in cities, while the rest stubbornly try to survive in the rural areas, which have grown increasingly wild. Living on their own, Eban and Judy, a young couple, eke out a living, though Judy is restless: Raised on stories about the cities and living among the ruins of the old world, she wants to discover that world for herself. Content with his life but unwilling to lose the partner he adores, Eban joins her in a journey of discovery. Along the way, they face increasing challenges that tests their humanity and their relationship.
It’s more of a literary read, with intense emotional detail, as this isn’t so much a story about environmental catastrophe as what that catastrophe does to human relationships, and an emotional journey between seeking out the old world and making a new one. In some ways, I was reminded of STATION ELEVEN, which meandered sometimes seemingly without goal between past and a post-apocalyptic pandemic future, though the meandering didn’t bother me much because of the beauty of the writing and the sense of nostalgia and melancholia it produced. While THE SECOND HISTORY has a tighter narrative focus, its last act felt diluted to me and not the best kind of meandering, as the protagonists are stripped of most of what little agency they had left, we’re told a lengthy historical conflict, and while some answers are revealed, they aren’t quite powerful enough to bring it all home, at least for me.
So overall, I liked Slayter’s novel. While it didn’t come together in a very satisfactory way for me as a reader, I have a feeling my appreciation for it may grow as I digest it.
THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK has been discounted for the month of November 2021 as part of a Kindle Monthly Deal at Amazon. You can now download this chilling cult horror novel for just $2.99.
Check it out here!
I’m excited to announce that THE INFECTION, the classic zombie series, is now a trilogy, with the third book, THE FINAL CUT, available for pre-order with a release of December 10, 2021.
THE INFECTION was published by Permuted Press in 2011 and did very well. It was always intended to be a standalone, but the publisher wanted a sequel, and so I gave them THE KILLING FLOOR. Permuted asked for a third book, but my writing journey went on a different trajectory to working with Simon & Schuster and Hachette and also self-publishing. All the while, I often thought about returning to THE INFECTION’s grimdark world to round out a trilogy and provide a stronger sense of closure to the story.
In 2021, I was able to get the rights back to both novels and decided to finally do it. And so THE FINAL CUT was born, where old and new characters struggle with the final question of Infection—extermination, accommodation, or assimilation—and each makes a final choice. I was happy to be able to get to know these people again, give them new life and a voice, and help them find the end of their stories.
Here’s the synopsis:
Infection turned the world into a slaughterhouse. Months later, America is exhausted and dying, its military stalled in the fight to save what’s left.
In the ruins of a West Virginia town, a band of survivors count their losses after a horrific battle to secure a pure sample of Infection. Their destination: “Fort Doom,” USAMRIID, the Army’s germ warfare laboratory, which is under siege.
With humanity facing the possibility of extinction, the Army wants to use the sample to build a superweapon against Infection. One scientist hopes to control Infection; another believes she can cure it. And outside the fort’s walls, a lone survivor offers a new way to survive what’s coming. Each will choose how far they’ll go to survive and what they’re willing to lose to save humanity.
In THE FINAL CUT, Craig DiLouie’s brutal vision of the apocalypse concludes with a revelation of the final mysteries of Infection. Will humanity survive the end of days?
Click here to learn more and pre-order.
On January 6, Americans were mortified to see Trump loyalists overrun the police guarding Congress while it certified Biden’s electoral victory over President Trump. Driven by ridiculous conspiracy theories resulting in more than 60 failed court challenges and Trump himself, the rioters poured into the Congressional chambers, murdering a police officer and wounding others, threatening the safety of Congress, and seeking to overturn the people’s democratic decision to elect Biden as president. It was nothing short of an insurrection, though thankfully an inept one. Nonetheless, the transition between Biden and Trump was one of the most dangerous periods in American history, more dangerous than most people know.
PERIL by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa takes you behind the scenes of the failed January 6 putsch. Based on interviews of more than 200 people at the center of the insanity and a vast trove of documents, the book describes how simultaneously resilient and fragile our republic is. You’ll learn how Trump was a polarizing figure even inside his own party and administration with a portrait of a psychopath with narcissistic personality disorder–and that’s just how the Republicans in the book describe him. How he simply refused to accept Biden won, making him prone to an unhinged Rudy Guliani and a crowd of conspiracy theorists and grifters selling a story about the election being stolen. How fascists in the administration wanted Trump to declare martial law. How Trump viciously turned on Mike Pence, his most loyal supporter, when Pence would not go along with an insane Constitutional theory the vice president can simply nullify election results the way he sees fit.
You’ll also see how disgusted, horrified, and panicked White House and Congressional insiders in both parties were after the failed insurrection, how military leaders came together to cage Trump so he wouldn’t start a war or use military force against American citizens, how time and time again Trump was his own worst enemy, and how sometimes the only thing holding him back from doing even more damage was a number of stalwarts in the White House who loved the law and Constitution more than they loved their boss.
PERIL is a fascinating read, recommended for people who love our Constitution and republic and have the stomach to revisit January 6.