Zombie fatigue: an author's response

A couple of days after my last post in which I had a go at the world for inundating all of our favourite media with zombies in the hopes that a sprinkling of the undead would bring old ideas back to life, I got an e-mail from the author of one of the books I mentioned.

I was surprised! I mean, it's usually only friends or family who e-mail me after I write something, or post a quick comment when the post shows-up on my Facebook wall; I've never had anybody who I didn't know directly e-mail or comment on my stuff, let alone the author of a book I mentioned, who lives on the other side of the freaking world!

I was very surprised! And very excited! :D

Contrary to the belief of my friends who, upon learning about this piece of news through my tweet, suspected that I was being sued for some sort of illegality (if I got an e-mail from the publisher then maybe I'd be worried rather than excited. I'd still be surprised though), the e-mail was a very friendly one in which the author, Paul Freeman, was differentiating his work, Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers - A Canterbury Tale, from the myriad of zombie/monster fiction out there.

Here's what he wrote:

Hi Emanuel

I'm the author of 'Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers - A Canterbury Tale by Paul A. Freeman', and although your blog entry 'Too Many Zombies' may hold some truth, I'd like to be able to put my own book into context.

First and foremost, my novella is a Canterbury Tale, 'The Monk's Second Tale' to be exact, and is part of a much wider 'Canterbury Tales' project. So far I've written eight 'new' Canterbury Tales, all in different genres.

When Coscom Entertainment (a publisher of zombie fiction) asked me to write a narrative poem novella for them on the strength of a contemporary piece of narrative zombie poetry they published, I jumped at the chance. Chaucer never wrote about Robin Hood, so I decided to add this hero to my medieval-based zombie Tale.

Furthermore, unlike many of the monster mash-up novels, mine is not based on an already published book. The story of Robin Hood comes from a series of legend fragments, some of which I've incorporated into my narrative poem.

Anyhow, if any of your blog readers are interested, below is the link to my rather rudimentary website which explains my Canterbury Tales project, and a link to my book on my publisher's website - the Amazon and DrivethroughHorror links have a search inside facility of 4 and 6 pages respectively.

"I bid you now adieu and hope you'll speed
To Amazon and give my book a read."

Paul A. Freeman

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Paul's website, 'Chaucerian inspirations':
http://paulfreeman.weebly.com/

Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers - A Canterbury Tale:
Coscom (includes links to eBook versions), Amazon, Barnes & Noble

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I'll admit: I had to Google 'chaucer' (which then led me to the original Canterbury Tales) to find-out who and what Paul was talking about. Once I found Chaucer's impressive resume though, I was surprised that I was never taught about him at school.

Taking a look at the book on Amazon, it's been received pretty favourably: 4 5-star reviews, and 1 1-star review (there's always one). Then again, the 1-star review talked about how it wasn't like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Given my opinion of Pride (I'm almost at the end of it now, and my indifference still holds), that review actually works in the book's favour.