by Jay Wilburn

*Jay walked into Tom’s third floor hotel room and waved his hand in front of his face.*

Jay Wilburn: What is all this smoke from?

*Tom pointed to the window and Jay looked through the jagged glass. The city was on fire in the distance. Burning zombies wandered the streets setting more houses and trees ablaze.*

Wilburn: This isn’t good. Should we cancel the interview?

Tom Clark: No, we should be fine. Go ahead.

Wilburn: What book do you have coming out soon?

Clark: Good Boy. It landed with a good publisher and will be here soon.

Wilburn: That’s good news. Give me the convention table pitch.

Clark: Watership Down with zombies.

Wilburn: That’s a great pitch. Who is the main characters?

Clark: Jackie, a Jack Russell Terrier and a group of animal companions. It’s told from a Dog’s POV. Very much an aspect of one of my favorite werewolf novels, Wayne Smith’s THOR (aka the movie Bad Moon).  As a result, I gave it no dialogue.  Dogs can’t talk. Words in ALL CAPS are command words a dog knows, as they have vocabulary of roughly 130 words.

Wilburn: What were your influences on this story?

Clark: WATERSHIP DOWN, THE PLAGUE DOGS, THOR, I AM LEGEND. It was written for my Dad, who passed away last year.

Wilburn: That’s cool. Is this going to begin an ongoing series?

Clark: It’s the first of a trilogy, to be continued in GOOD GIRL and finally, GOOD DOGS. Each is told from the POV of a different dog character. GOOD BOY, a travelogue survival horror story, is Jackie, our narrator. GOOD GIRL, a last stand Fort Apache scenario in a green house, features his mate, Brighty. And finally GOOD DOGS, a survival horror riff on the Seven Samurai, is about their pups facing off against a partially infected Bull Mastiff named Ghost Eye and a pack of coy dogs: Rocket, Willie, Ratchit, Titch & Bronson (Titch is a female, the rest are boys).

Wilburn: Having spoken with you before, I know that you can run hot and cold on the zombie stories out there. Does that get in the way of writing a zombie story yourself or does it help?

Clark: I don’t like zombie stories anymore. They’ve become passe. And here I am, saying this and I’m on the Summer of Zombie Tour. I swore I would never write a zombie story unless I could do something different. When it became obvious the only way to tell Jackie’s story was to use the survival horror trope, I knew I could make this into a zombie story. Zombie stories are, at their heart, a study in human nature and character. So I asked myself, what would a domesticated dog’s motivations to survive during such an event be?

Wilburn: What do you hope readers get from it?

Clark: The same sense of awe and wonder I got from Watership Down.

Wilburn: That’s a lofty goal indeed, but I’m sold on the story and on for the ride. Check out Good Boy when it comes out in the near future, everyone.

Clark: Who are you talking to?

*Jay stared out the window at the burning zombies*

Wilburn: Um, no one, I guess. Nevermind …

*Jay left the room before there were any follow-up questions.*

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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