Zomblog [Kindle Edition]

TW Brown (Author)

Book Description

Samuel Todd is a regular guy: ...Failed husband... ...Loving father... ...Dutiful worker... ...Aspiring rockstar. He had no idea if anyone would care, or take the time, to read his daily blog entries about his late night observations. But what started as an open monologue of his day-to-day life became a running journal of the firsthand account detailing the rising of the dead and the downfall and degradation of mankind...

The Zomblog series continues in Zomblog II; Zomblog: The Final Entry; and coming in October of 2012, Zomblog: Snoe.

Editorial Reviews

Review

• "T.W. Brown is becoming one of the best Zombie horror genre writers out there."
• "For anyone who says that they don't like horror stories, I encourage you to at least try TW Brown's books."

About the Author

Welcome to MY world...

A few minutes with author TW Brown.

Tucked away in the Pacific Northwest with my wife Denise, a Border Collie named Aoife, a guitar collection, and an increasing number of aquariums sporting a variety of fish (cichlids are my new favorites), I live for football season when I can cheer on the Oregon Ducks and be disappointed by my Seattle Seahawks once again. I am a fan of Cookie Monster, KISS, and Dr. Who (along with most things British).

His blog can be found at:
twbrown.blogspot.com/ 
You can contact him at:
[e-mail]
 
You can follow him on twitter @maydecpub and on Facebook under Todd Brown, Author TW Brown, and also under May December Publications.

TW Brown is the author of the Zomblog series, his horror comedy romp, That Ghoul Ava, and, of course...the DEAD series. Safely tucked away in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, he moves away from his desk only at the urging of his Border Collie, Aoife. (Pronounced Eye-fa)

He plays a little guitar on the side...just for fun...and makes up any excuse to either go trail hiking or strolling along his favorite place...Cannon Beach. He answers all his emails sent to [e-mail] and tries to thank everybody personally when they take the time to leave a review of one of his works.

Product Details

• File Size: 944 KB
• Print Length: 270 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1936730421
• Publisher: May December Publications LLC; 3 edition (January 11, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003BLPGJ0
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #208,473 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressed January 4, 2011

By R. Beaty

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

T.W. Brown is becoming one of the best Zombie horror genre writers out there. Zomblog is an excellent first effort. It surpasses most author's of the genres abilities. He has a way of captivating the reader in a very unorthodoxed method. He simply has to be a genius or a very disturbed individual. Which ever really doesn't matter. He writes some of the best books in this genre and is worth looking into if you are into dark twisted stories. I stopped into Amazon to purchase Zomblog II. Thought it only fitting to leave a few words on this one for those not familiar with the author.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Depth of Character May 2, 2011

By Chantal Boudreau

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

One of the commandments pushed by publishers and agents nowadays, that I hate as a reader, is the "thou must start thy book with an action scene". With a few exceptions, I think this is absurd. I like to get to know the characters a bit, and get a good view of the setting for the story before I get thrown into the middle of the action. That's not "gripping" to me, or a "hook", it's just meaningless chaos. That's why I liked the intro to this book. You get to know the protagonist, Samuel, as a human being, like he could be your co-worker or your neighbour, before you are launched into the fray and considering it's his tale, that's incredibly important. You get some insight as to how he relates to his family and his outlook on the world in general.

Another thing I liked about this book is the depth of character displayed by even lesser characters. In other zombie stories, you'll often see people lose what they are as the story progresses, giving in to their desperation and becoming too flawed to be likable. The characters in this book are also flawed, something necessary for realism, but still retain positive qualities and struggle to hold onto their humanity, despite their circumstances. Their shared troubles even prove to be a unifying experience for people who would have otherwise avoided one another. Some of the more tragic characters, like little Joey, will absolutely rip your heart out.
Not that there wasn't gore or tense moments in the book. There were plenty of those - I would think enough to satisfy any die-hard zombie fan, but the factor I look for the most is the human component, the elements that make me really connect to the story and make it real for me. The characters were engaging, the plot was moving and the description was vivid. Nothing about the book was forced either. The narrative flowed smoothly and the dialogue was believable.

Finally, while I won't offer any spoilers, there was a twist to the plot about two thirds of the way through the book that caught me way off guard. It's difficult to surprise me, and this was completely unexpected, so I have to award kudos for that as well.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Three February 27, 2012

By Christopher Raissi

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I want to give this book more than three stars, but I just cannot do it.

While the concept of the journal seemed interesting, and the reviews of this style enticed me into buying and reading the book, I found the style jarring and unsatisfying for two reasons. First of all, each day's entry is very short. Many are a page or less. Others are, at most, two or three pages long. This means that there is not really time to get engaged in the action. Sure, there are exceptions, and there are a few scenes where I really did feel engaged, but for the majority of the book I felt like I was just going from one short story to another. It simply made it hard for me to get engaged in the book in a meaningful way.

Secondly, and this may be a spoiler unless you have read some of the other reviews, our original protagonist Sam dies and his journal is continued by his former love interest. As much as I want to give Brown a pat on the back for being bold enough to kill off his protagonist after about 175 pages, just as I really started to get the feeling that the book was hitting its stride, I simply cannot do it.

This is what bothered me the most about the book. You want to respect an author for trying something like that. It takes stones to take such a step in an attempt to jar your audience. I get it. At that point in the story, Sam is starting to hit his stride. He is going from simply a survival mindset to one of reflection and introspection. He is evolving and getting interesting. Then, bam, he is dead. It is like Brown was saying to his audience: "Guess what? You saw all that death going on around Sam, particularly his family and the Thompson family, and you started to think Sam was immune, didn't you? Well he's not. Deal with it."

When I reached that part of the story, I made a note. I said I wanted to respect the author, and I was interested to see how he would handle shifting gears in the middle of his book from writing from the perspective of a 40-something man to a 30 year old woman. But you know what? After several pages, I just really did not care. This is where the short, disjointed blog format, I believe, really hurts the story. Things started happening to Meredith, thing involving the undead and the living, but, as the meme goes, not a single [expletive] was given that day. We liked Sam because we knew his story. We knew how he got from z-plague day zero to z-plague day whenever-he-died, and that is what made us interested. Meredith simply took over, and we knew nothing about her other than the rape story. It simply is not the same as following Sam through from day zero.

That brings us to the ending, which I found completely unsatisfying. Although I dislike stories with a happy ending, especially when they are told in some wishy-washy epilogue, I really hate stories that simply end abruptly and with zero explanation. I do not need to be hit in the head with a bat by an author, but I also do not want he/she to leave me with the blue balls, either.

Now that I have aired my grievances with the book, I will go ahead and shift to something else. In spite of my complaints, Brown can write really well. I have read some stories in this genre where the action was fast paced and some of the characters were compelling, but the author really did not have a huge talent for painting a picture with his words. That is not a problem for Brown. Although each scene is brief, due to the blog/journal style of narrative he chose to write, the action sequences are very well described and particularly gruesome. He also took the time to create a well rounded zombie apocalypse universe, in spite of the fact that the narrative format he chose limited the scope that he could cover, taking the time to touch on some of the themes with which we are all familiar.

That is why I wish I could give this book more than three stars: I know TW Brown can write really well. Unfortunately the things that I have written about in my review have forced me to remove two stars. Hopefully the next TW Brown zombie book that I read will force me to give all five?

More About the Author

My name is Todd Brown. I write. Ever since a sixth grade project where the teacher put a single sentence on the board and said, "write a one page story using this sentence," and I wrote seven pages (typed with my left and right index finger), I knew that writing was my dream job.

My life has been anything but boring. I've been a submarine sonar man, a club DJ, a sports talk radio host, a prison inmate, a GED tutor, and a music teacher. I have four marriages and three divorces and I only really regret one of the marriages. I've played football at the North Pole, seen the Pyramids of Giza and the ruins of Rome.

Now that I'm in my forties, I've calmed down and really learned to appreciate all I've had, seen, and done. People who know me are a bit overwhelmed and it took those constant reactions to realize that my life has been full.

My Border Collie, Aoife (pronounced EYE-fa) keeps me from spending every waking moment at my keyboard. Border Collies are NOT lap dogs. They need trips to the beach, mountains, or any of the wonderful hiking trails here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest

I enjoy playing guitar in my spare time, and have been in a few bands There is something unexplainable about stepping up to the mike and singing or looking into an audience-be it forty or four hundred-after nailing a guitar solo. But that's what I do for fun.

As I said earlier, I write. Really, a lot of credit goes to ex-wife number three (Kathy). She learned of my dream after finding one of my old notebooks. She told me I had to write. "If you don't, you'll always wonder." So I wrote "DAKOTA". She never wavered in her support...just her tolerance for my selfishness and spirit crushing ways.

After a lot of cognitive workshop attendance, I learned that I was quite a jerk. Fortunately, wife #4 (Denise) picked me up, dusted me off, handed me a pen and said, "Chase your dream. I believe in you." So I re-wrote and re-wrote (etc, etc,) "DAKOTA". I also took up guitar and started college.

Fast forward to Ms. Bose, my college writing teacher. How many of us writers have that one teacher who really gets you. Pushes you. And finds your strengths. After discovering my (unhealthy) love for all things zombie..."Dead" was conceived. My goal is to try and break away from the steady stream of clichéd character types and story lines. I want this to be a series and for the characters to grow and gain depth.

I write for a few reasons. First, I love a good story. That is what drives me. However, I'd be a big fat liar if I did not admit to wanting the possible fame and fortune. There is a definite ego gratification in knowing that by putting words on paper I made somebody laugh, cry, or cringe. People can say "I do it for the artistic expression..." blah, blah, blah. I write because I want people to be a fan of my writing. I want you to lose yourself in my story for a few minutes or an hour. And when you're done...I want you to want more. That's t he honest truth.

So, what writers do that for me? Jasper Fforde, Kim Harrison, RA Salvatore, and Laurel K Hamilton. Books that I consider "must read" that aren't from the aforementioned writers? The Stand (best story ever!), The Time Traveler's Wife, Post-Birthday World, and the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R R Martin. That is just my opinion.

My favorite quote is from Gene Simmons of KISS: "Car crashes are neat, but you cant tap your feet to 'em." With that I should say that my favorite band is KISS. I also really enjoy Sarah McLachlin, Manhattan Transfer, Matchbox 20, Fallout Boy, Nickelback and original line up Van Halen.

When I write I listen to Mozart, Holst, or Future Sound of London. The last is perfect for zombie writin' music.