It’s finally here! Now I can tell you all about Dead Girl!
Check out my review.
Check out the awesome cover art and don’t forget to enter the giveaway!
You won’t believe what is being given away and won’t want to miss your chance to win some amazing prizes!
Dead Girl: A Romantic Zombie Tale of Revenge
Written by Stavros
Illustrated by Charles Hearn
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Publisher: Crazy Duck Press (CDP)
Date of Publication: August 2011
ISBN: 9780982812198
Number of pages: 266
Cover Artist and Illustrator: Charles Hearn
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Book Description:
“…Death was a dream of sleep where the eternally dying dream the sleep of death. The undeniable evidence in the stillness of her being, the stark paleness of her complexion, and the lack of blood pooling from her cuts after climbing through the window whispered dark truths in her ears. Rigor Mortis. There was nothing familiar to Jamie about her skin. Time and time again, she found herself asking what had happened, only to arrive at the hard won conclusion that she, Jamie Lund, wasn’t alive anymore. Somehow in the foolhardy night, she’d been a dumb girl. She’d gotten herself killed…”
From the mind of Stavros, the critically acclaimed author of Blood Junky, comes a new twisted tale of horror and adventure. An average girl, living in the city is murdered. Nothing new, right? It happens every day. Just another statistic. That is…until she woke up dead.
Trapped within her own decaying shell, the dead girl struggles to piece together the awful events of her untimely death and hunt down the man responsible. Armed only with a kiss from an ancient Egyptian God, a pockmarked memory, her ex-boyfriend, and a murder of crows Jamie Lund comes face to face with something more terrifying and real than mere death…she suffers the agony of being undead!
With twelve black & white illustrations and a full colored cover from tattoo artist, Charles Hearn, this sardonic tale comes alive like no other zombie story, popping from the page with stunning, unnatural brilliance. Dead Girl: A Romantic Zombie Tale of Revenge will keep the reader on the edge of their seat suspended in this unique supernatural thriller.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KThnGvCrijU]
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My Review
Jamie’s story begins and ends on the bank of the river.
Pulling her battered body from the cold, sucking mud, she’s disoriented, with no memory of how she got there or who she is.
In the distance she can see the lights from a city. The only other thing she sees is crows. Lots of them.
On auto pilot, she heads toward town and manages to get to her apartment. With no purse or keys, she’s forced to break a window to get in.
Once inside, she takes a look at herself. There’s a lot of blood but nothing is bleeding anymore. Her neck has bruises and her eyes are blood shot.
She moves on to what happened. How did she end up on the riverbank, why can’t she remember what happened last night?
She stumbles to her bed. As she lies there, some memories are returning. She gets flashes of a party and a man following her into a bedroom. Maybe someone slipped her a roofie.
As she lay there, the hours pass. When she tries to rise, she can’t move. She can’t even wiggle a toe! Then it sets in. The signs are now clear. Rigor Mortis!
At 22 years old, Jamie has been murdered.
She can’t go to the police for help so she turns to her ex-boyfriend Billy. But how to tell him she’s dead?
And those crows continue to follow her.
Jamie may technically be a zombie, but I think of her more as reanimated. She doesn’t go around moaning, “Brains…” and doesn’t eat humans.
The only thing she craves is vengeance. She’s determined to confront whoever did this to her, even if it kills her…again.
The story is told from two perspectives, Jamie’s and Billy’s, which works well as these two used to be lovers and it explains why Billy would go to the lengths he did to help Jamie.
There are some laughable moments too. As Jamie’s body slowly begins to decompose, Billy gets creative with the duct tape. And when the maggots eventually make their appearance, Jamie starts naming them.
There’s also a surprising element in the story that shows how Jamie came back from the dead.
Dead Girl is creative, funny, and sad. I especially liked the ending. It was perfect.
I recommend Dead Girl to zombie fans and those who like some humor, some get what’s comin to ya, and some gore with their love story.
5 Stars
Quotes I liked:
“Crows swarmed above her as a single mood.”
“Millions of nerve endings reported nothingness back at her.”
“Even in death she was beautiful and that beauty gnawed at Billy’s gut with teeth.”
“…Jamie wanted this maniac, this destroyer or youth…to taste the river as she had, and feel death’s cold embrace as she had – slow and sinking.”
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Praise for Dead Girl: A Romantic Zombie Tale of Revenge…
“A Bittersweet punch with a suspenseful plot and somber romance, showing us the vulnerable perspective of death from the other side. Definitely, not to be missed!” -Tara Lindsey Hall; Writer/Editor
“I couldn’t put it down. I loved it. You are a great writer. Can’t wait to read the next one.” -Bethany Tanner-Evanko, a Facebook Post
“Just wanted you to know…I was about to wrap Dead Girl in festive Christmas paper but decided to read the first page…now I’m on page 88 and I’m keeping the book…and I’m not going to bed anytime soon.” -Sabrina Buckman, a Facebook Post on Dec 21, 2011
“WOW! Holy shit…Thank you for this. Thank you for bringing forth a story that more than restores my faith in a type that has gnawed at my entrails for over a decade. It was different, it was refreshing, it was a damn awesome break from the “same old, same old” crap this genre is filled with. It’s so hard to find an original zombie tale any more. And even harder to find someone who can make an old story their own in some personal way. But this? Definitely not the same old crap.”
-C. Dulaney, author of the Roads Less Traveled series
“OMZG! (Oh My Zombie Goodness) I absolutely Loved this book. Dead Girl is not the conventional zombie book, but a great one! It’s a book of mystery and revenge with Egyptian influence felt within the pages. Plus the actual attention to detail of rigor mortis and decomposition of the body is spot on and a great additive to the book. I love this book and highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good revenge tale. Plus I couldn’t put the book down!”
-Sunshine Rose, Chicago, ILL. April 2013
About the Author- Stavros:
Notorious Poet. Fool. Born in WashingtonDC. Stavros was a writer and editor for The Independent Underground Magazine. Raised in Southern Maryland, he fled the Chesapeake Bay to the wilds of the New Mexican desert. He is a single father of two, whose poetic works have been published in several online and print publications, including Central Avenue, The Sword That Cuts Through Stone, Poets Against The War, Conceptions Southwest, The Mynd, Imagine: Creative Arts Journal, and Bartleby, where he won a specialty award for his poem, Blackbird.
In 1999, he won an Official Selection into the Writer’s on the Edge Festival for his play, The Redline. In 2001, he created the Poetry Television Project for public cable access in Albuquerque, NM. All eight volumes of Ptv’s ground-breaking show were broadcast to over 100,000 viewers on a network of regional PAC channels throughout the Southwest and Baltimore. He helped to launch Unpublished Magazine, sponsored the monthly poetry series, The Word Café, in the Duke city, and produced a political compilation, Poetic Democracy. In 2007, he released the award-winning documentary film, Committing Poetry in Times of War.
In 2010, he launched the production management company, Organic Ghetto, and released its first imprint, Crazy Duck Press, with his first novel, Blood Junky. Blood Junky received exceptional praise and review, even being called “one of the best vampire novels ever written,” by Living Dead Media. The following year he helped to launch BioGamer Girl, undertook a bigger East coast tour where he began selling his original photographic art, and released two new novels through Crazy Duck Press. Dead Girl: A Romantic Zombie Tale of Revenge features a stunning full-color cover and twelve black and white illustrations from tattoo artist, Charles Hearn. Blood Junky’s sequel, Love in Vein, cemented the One Blood series with its continuation of the story, garnering such review as to claim that the book and the series is “comparable with, and at times surpasses, the ‘Vampire Chronicles’ by Anne Rice.”
In 2012, Stavros joined forces with the Vampire Professor, Bertena Varney, M.A.M.Ed, to co-create the nonfiction annual anthology, Vampire News, and officially became a Fangsmith with the creation of Organic Ghetto’s second imprint, Kaos Kustom Fangs. He rounded out the year by writing and editing screenplays for the One Blood Transmedia Project, recording Dead Girl as an audio book, and undertaking his biggest national marketing campaign, The Book & Fang Tour.
In 2013, he and the Vampire Professor released the second volume of Vampire News: The (not so) End Times Edition and is currently working on writing and growing his imprints. Stavros is also a musician who has scored commercials, film shorts, documentaries, and television programs.
Stavros FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/stavros.cockrell
Author Blog: http://www.bitemereallyhard.com
Kaos Kustom Fangs: http://www.kaoskustomfangs.com/
Dead Girl CDP Page: http://www.crazyduckpress.com/#!dead-girl/c1ekr
Dead Girl FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/ogdeadgirl
CDP eShop: http://www.crazyduckpress.com/#!shop/c6cv
CDP Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrazyDuckPress
Stavros Twitter https://twitter.com/VisualLyricist
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