To my absolute delight, Rock Zombie is a finalist in the BEST HORROR NOVEL category for 2024’s Aurealis Awards!
I am completely over the moon and so grateful to the wonderful judges at Aurealis and to everyone who has read and supported Rock Zombie since its publication on Halloween last year. In fact, I’m grateful to everyone who supported it BEFORE publication (and during… and after!)
Rock Zombie had a long, meandering, and often shuffling journey into existence before I decided to go down the self-publishing route. There were offers, deals, contracts, lots of rejections, plenty of ghosting (ha!), and, honestly, quite a lot of disappointment. This writing lark can be a difficult gig at times. You put heart and soul into a book and you have to believe in it, otherwise what’s the point? This kind of affirmation and support is utterly magic, so, thank you!
Rock Zombie is a silly story. I know it is. But it’s a love letter to the town I grew up in and a period of time that shaped who I am. All that music, all those pop culture references, all those nods to classic horror, novels, and films – they all come together in Rock Zombie in a way I’m quite proud of. But perhaps more importantly, once I decided to take full control myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. The stress vanished and it was all about the love of the story and embracing the silly, pulp, grunge aesthetic of the whole thing. I loved creating cryptic social media posts, random TikTok videos, Spotify playlists, art work, organising a book launch and generally just making a tit of myself. And people got onboard! Having Aurealis place Rock Zombie as a finalist – alongside such stellar company – is really the icing on the cake.
So, thank you! Thank you to Aurealis, thank you to every reader, thank you to every reviewer, and thank you to everyone who still supported me despite the very real concerns of “Oh dear, what is he going to write next?”
Best wishes to J S Breukelaar, David-Jack Fletcher, Josh Kemp, Ben Pienaar and Deborah Sheldon. What an honour it is to sit alongside you.
Thanks for reading folks!
For more info about Rock Zombie, click this tag.
To buy Rock Zombie, follow this link
Cheers!