This has to be one of the signs that you've made it as an author:
Your ARC shows up on ebay:
For posterity's sake, I have taken a screen shot of it. To wit:
I am Exceptionally Excited about this book as Kirsty is one of the fabulous Gripers I regularly meet with to write and workshop stories. I read this story when it was still in its infancy, all marked up with line-edits and comments, through numerous plot-changes and different endings and I have to tell you, I was at the edge of my seat with every reading.
Kirsty has a special knack with her narratives - no doubt informed by her experience writing plays for children's theater back when she was in the UK - by setting a pace that is as relentless as the undead mob in her story. Regardless of time restrictions or any responsibilities I may have needed to be well-rested and alert for the next day, once I started reading her story - EVERY SINGLE TIME - I got sucked into it and could not put it down.
This story is about teenagers, zombies and the remote, wintry highlands of Scotland. If you are a zombie fan, you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens. I mean c'mon. It's a zombie story, right?
srsly. Just look at the cover!
But as you begin to read the story of a re-displaced Bobby (back in the UK after too much time in the US with her weird-science parents), good-for-trouble Smitty, class queen-of-mean Alice and nerd-boy Pete you see that you're not just stuck with a bunch of stock-characters and horror-tropes. Kirsty sets the stage with them, sure, but as the story unfolds, so do the characters and this, I believe, is part of the secret of her fast-paced plotting success. The setting takes shape. The characters grow on you. They become real and you worry for them at every icy hairpin turn on the road. Your hopes for their rescue will be in turns crushed and rekindled and you will continue to plod along with Bobby, because behind you They are coming and you just have to find out if a fortified bunker with food for years and zombie-seeking, automatic guillotines is lurking behind the next page. Because you just need to hold out long enough. Help is coming. Right?
So grab a copy of UNDEAD - available in the UK September 2011 through Chicken House and through Scholastic here in the US - and check out Kirsty. You can find her on facebook and twitter and her website is here with all sorts of ringing endorsements from people with Big Names.
CHECK IT OUT! Undead is a fabulous YA zombie romp, but I'm quite certain the zombie-reading adults out there will enjoy this as well.
For posterity's sake, I have taken a screen shot of it. To wit:
I am Exceptionally Excited about this book as Kirsty is one of the fabulous Gripers I regularly meet with to write and workshop stories. I read this story when it was still in its infancy, all marked up with line-edits and comments, through numerous plot-changes and different endings and I have to tell you, I was at the edge of my seat with every reading.
Kirsty has a special knack with her narratives - no doubt informed by her experience writing plays for children's theater back when she was in the UK - by setting a pace that is as relentless as the undead mob in her story. Regardless of time restrictions or any responsibilities I may have needed to be well-rested and alert for the next day, once I started reading her story - EVERY SINGLE TIME - I got sucked into it and could not put it down.
This story is about teenagers, zombies and the remote, wintry highlands of Scotland. If you are a zombie fan, you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens. I mean c'mon. It's a zombie story, right?
srsly. Just look at the cover!
But as you begin to read the story of a re-displaced Bobby (back in the UK after too much time in the US with her weird-science parents), good-for-trouble Smitty, class queen-of-mean Alice and nerd-boy Pete you see that you're not just stuck with a bunch of stock-characters and horror-tropes. Kirsty sets the stage with them, sure, but as the story unfolds, so do the characters and this, I believe, is part of the secret of her fast-paced plotting success. The setting takes shape. The characters grow on you. They become real and you worry for them at every icy hairpin turn on the road. Your hopes for their rescue will be in turns crushed and rekindled and you will continue to plod along with Bobby, because behind you They are coming and you just have to find out if a fortified bunker with food for years and zombie-seeking, automatic guillotines is lurking behind the next page. Because you just need to hold out long enough. Help is coming. Right?
So grab a copy of UNDEAD - available in the UK September 2011 through Chicken House and through Scholastic here in the US - and check out Kirsty. You can find her on facebook and twitter and her website is here with all sorts of ringing endorsements from people with Big Names.
CHECK IT OUT! Undead is a fabulous YA zombie romp, but I'm quite certain the zombie-reading adults out there will enjoy this as well.