Canister X – A.P. Fuchs: Zombie, Paranormal Romance and Superhero Novelist, Blogger, Artist, Publisher

This weekend I created the Blood of my World Boxed Set for Amazon Kindle, a collection of my paranormal romance series containing Discovery of Death, Memories of Death and Life of Death. It is Volume Two of the A.P. Fuchs Library, with Volume One being books from The Axiom-man Saga (coming this week). These boxed sets are a great way to grab a bunch of my titles and/or complete your collection for a great price. It is also on Smashwords, Drivethru Fiction, and should start showing up on the Nook and iPad shortly.

I wrote an introduction to the Blood of my World Boxed Set and want to share it here.

Hope you check the collected book sets out.

The intro:

Blood of my World Boxed Set Introduction
by
A.P. Fuchs

It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between love and horror, the both of which are two sides of the proverbial coin. They are extremes, where one is light and bliss, filled with goodness, hope, stability–physical, emotional, mental. The other is darkness, danger, pain and untold suffering. They also have a tendency to gel, namely in the arena of romantic relationships.
One can’t help but wonder how much different our world would be if these two elements–arguably one element–were not present. I suspect life would look more like a simulation than an actual experience, with folks walking around conducting business mechanically, without nuance–robotic.
Is it not true that human life as you and I know it are birthed and lived from either horror or love or a mix of both? Is not every other human emotion rooted in one of these?
Love is an especially dangerous thing. Beautiful, yes, but dangerous. While ascending to new heights with your lover, when during those early stages all is well in the world and inner peace is achieved–the fear of it all slipping away always lingers a little or a lot until, perhaps, that fateful day comes and your fear becomes reality. The darkness descends, hope is abandoned, and searing pain rips through your chest until you can barely stand. Once you collapse, you think it’s won and the hot coils of loss’s embrace will finally leave you, but instead, it continues to ravage you in waves, bringing you to the brink of apathy and beyond, into self-destruction and mental chaos. Life is looked at through fogged glass. All other emotions are felt through the jagged pieces of a broken heart. Cynicism sets in, walls go up and survival kicks in full gear and you do all you can to fill the void and repair the damage your loved one has done.
Love and horror. Life and death. It’s what defines us. It’s what’s defined my fiction since I wrote my first book twelve years ago. In fact, my entire career was born out of this bizarre relationship between love and horror, and if you’re a reader of my work, you would have noticed that everything I’ve written touches on this in some way, whether a little or a lot.
There’s my novel April, written under the pen name Peter Fox, which is a firm statement about how people get to you and you fall in love because they touch that secret part of you no one else has.
There’s A Red Dark Night, a tribute to B-horror summer camp movies in which the main villain is a creature comprised of blood and evil–the blood you shed when your heart is broken and knife is brought to skin. For some this is metaphorical, for others, it is not.
The Axiom-man Saga, my superhero opus about a man without self-esteem who, as one of the motives for donning a pair of tights, is simply to prove to himself and others that he is indeed something of value after a lifetime of always feeling rejected and second best.
My zombie fiction–books like Blood of the Dead and Zombie Fight Night–utter indulgences into the world of the walking dead. Is this not what we become after love has crushed us? Is not survival our primary concern? Do we not find folks who are fighting just like us, whether in our relationships or even through the music we listen to so we can feel better?
These are more, but let’s move on to what you hold in your hands.
This boxed set, Blood of my World. Three novellas. Three aspects of love and horror–Discovery, memory, life.
Vampires are the horror world’s romantic hero. They are the regular world’s romantic villain. They embody life and death, love and horror unlike any other creature in fiction.
I set out to tell a story about two romantics whose love for each other was thicker than blood and just as red with passion and devotion. The reader must know, I decided, that there are others out there who live in love’s stream, who have gotten burned yet who also have lived and are living because of it.
Who have grown.
The vampires in the novellas you’re about to read are ruthless. There is blood and pain and indifference to human life. They are monsters.
The people in these novellas are you and me, folks living in two worlds: the past and present; light and darkness; love and horror.
I want to thank you for reading these as you join Zach and Rose on their journey of love’s joy, love’s pain–
–love’s horror.

- A.P. Fuchs
Winnipeg, MB
February 25, 2012

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-926712-99-4 eBook ISBN: 978-1-927339-06-0 15 years ago . . . The world fell. Armies of the dead swept across the globe, toppling civilization and bringing humanity to its knees. Now, as the dead virus has ran its course and is fading away, those who survived face a new terror: the ever-growing numbers of the Sasquacth species. The Earth is an apocalyptic wasteland, survivors barely managing to make it day-by-day. Food is scarce, hope is hardly found. Yet all turns on a dime when a secret base is discovered underground and it is learned that it might hold the hope for victory in this deadly world. War breaks out, and this time man and machine combine as the struggle between humanity and the beasts wages anew to see who will hold the top spot on nature’s food chain.

Available as a paperback at: Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.co.uk Barnesandnoble.com Other On-line Retailers Available as an eBook at: Amazon Kindle DrivethruFiction.com Mobipocket.com Smashwords

Other Books in the Bigfoot War Series:

Other Coscom Entertainment Books by Eric S. Brown

The Last Coscom Entertainment Release: Flame of Surrender by Rhiannon Paille
For the Entire Coscom Entertainment Monster Fiction Catalog, please go to www.coscomentertainment.com

The first Bigfoot War book took the cryptozoological horror world by storm. Now Eric S. Brown unleashes his follow-up, Bigfoot War 2: Dead in the Woods, with faster, meaner, more terrifying bloodthirsty sasquatches unlike any you’ve seen before.

This ain’t no Harry and the Henderson’s remix. This isn’t even like Sasquatch Mountain. We’re talking hordes of lean, mean killing machines covered in hair, with razor-sharp teeth and claws that’ll have you running for the door before you even finish the book.

The story:

Mere hours after the Babble Creek massacre, the beasts strike again, rampaging across the American Southeast. A small group of survivors in Jackson County, North Carolina, fight to stay alive as things get worse. Bigfoot is everywhere, terrorizing the citizens of Jackson County, tearing them

limb from limb and feasting on their flesh. Even the powerful US military stands in awe as the enormous beasts take their stand against them, going toe-to-toe with some of man’s most lethal technology.

Just when the survivors thought it couldn’t get any worse, death kicks into high gear as the dead begin to rise, hungry for the flesh of the living.

The military, tasked with restoring order and destroying the beasts, now find themselves racing to contain a virus that could mean the end of the human race. Colonel Drake and the small unit of tanks under his command are trapped inside the quarantine zone as the war between man and beast is

joined by the undead.

The body count rises. Humanity is on the run. The night is filled with terror, the vicious growls of the Sasquatch and the haunting moans of the living dead.

Are you ready to join in the fight?

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Barnesandnoble.com
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle
Nook
Smashwords
Drivethruhorror.com
Mobipocket

The last Coscom Entertainment release: Blood of my World Vampire Series by A.P. Fuchs

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com

ALICE IN ZOMBIELAND by Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook Mass Market Edition Now Available!

Coscom Entertainment and Source Books are pleased to present Alice in Zombieland by Lewis Carroll and Nickolas Cook, now available at your favorite online retailer (see below) and bookstores nationwide.

Alice in Zombieland, complete with interior illustrations, is available at the following online retailers:

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
SourceBooks.com
Barnesandnoble.com
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle

Synopsis:

When little Alice follows the Black Rat down into the open grave, she falls and falls, and soon finds herself in an undead nightmare. Following the Rat, she ventures further into this land of monsters, encountering characters both creepy and madcap along the way. But there’s something else troubling poor Alice: her skin is rotting and her hair is falling out. Can Alice escape Zombieland before the Dead Red Queen catches up to her?

Have a seat at the table for the wildest tea party of your life and explore the unforgettable adventure that is Alice in Zombieland.

The last Coscom Entertainment release: The Black Cat and the Ghoul by Edgar Allan Poe and Keith Gouveia

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com

The Black Cat and the Ghoul by Edgar Allan Poe and Keith Gouveia, the second book in Coscom Entertainment’s Monster Novella Series, is now available at the following on-line retailers:

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Barnesandnoble.com
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle
Fictionwise.com
Drivethruhorror.com
Smashwords
Scribd.com

Synopsis:

On August 19, 1843, horror master Edgar Allan Poe released one of his darkest short stories, The Black Cat, his exploration of the psychology of guilt. Now, over a hundred and fifty years later, the tale of an unreliable narrator is continued by author Keith Gouveia.

After killing his wife, John Mohr is sentenced to die at the gallows. But when an unlikely visitor turns into a reluctant partner, John embraces the monster within and becomes the god of the underworld’s instrument of death. Doomed to walk the earth as an undead aberration with an insatiable hunger, John must send souls to Hell in his place or face its wrath.

Also included are two bonus poems, and two short stories: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, and Broken by Keith Gouveia.

This is the second book in Coscom Entertainment’s Monster Novella Series.

Other titles by Keith Gouveia: Bits of the Dead (editor), Revolt of the Dead, Animal Behavior and Other Tales of Lycanthropy

The last Coscom Entertainment release (and first book in the Monster Novella Series): The Weaponer by Eric S. Brown

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com

Copyright 2010 by A.P. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
34: On the Move Part Three

Telecom handheld transmission:

It was happening again, me caught in a world of death.
Selena shook and convulsed in my lap, a yellow milky foam dribbling out the corners of her lips.
The zombies banged on the door to the laundry room, the incessant thuds making it difficult to concentrate.
“Selena, please, you have to stop,” I said, but why I said it I didn’t know. Probably just voicing my thoughts.
She kept shaking, her body bouncing up and down in rollercoaster-like waves.
Heart racing, I asked her if there was anything I could do. She didn’t reply, and her eyes were rolled back in their sockets. For a brief moment I thought she was trying to look up at me, but I had lost her beautiful brown-eyed gaze as the whites of her eyes became all I saw.
The undead beyond the door continued drumming against it.
Selena stopped shaking. Her body kicked out a few more jolts then lay still.
Tears in my eyes, I gently brushed her hair off her face and leaned in, listening for breath. There was none. I put her head on the ground, got beside her and started CPR. Each press of my palms against her chest grew more and more intense; each time it seemed her nonresponsiveness intensified even though I know now it had only been my imagination.
Why was this happening? How many times could I lose her?
I didn’t know what was worse right then: losing Selena from my life, but knowing she was alive somewhere, possibly happy, or losing her and watching her die. After all, they both ended with the same result: her absence from me.
Seems selfish, I know, but unless you’ve walked this road, you can’t say anything. More specifically, unless you’ve walked this road several times like I have, you have no right to say anything.
The zombies kept beating their decaying fists against the heavy door.

* * *

Around an hour later I was alone in that room. No longer able to look at Selena’s deceased form, I carefully laid her down in the janitor’s supply closet in the room and closed its door. It was cruel because she deserved a proper burial, but at the same time, I needed space and given all that I’ve been through, I decided to cut myself some slack.
The zombies had stopped their beating on the door, but they hadn’t left. Their hollow moans still filled the hallway beyond, their deathly groans coming in through the gap between the door and floor.
I lay in a foetal position on the ground, balling my eyes out over my loss.
Over my life.
Over myself.
Yeah, it was a real pity party, but you’d have one too if you were in my shoes.
I don’t how much time passed, but a dull thump came from the janitor closet. Immediately, I leapt to my feet and cautiously approached it.
Another thump came from behind the door.
No, it couldn’t be. Not like this. She was dead. She was–
Not Selena. Please, God, don’t let her become one of them.
The thumping grew consistent, and I could imagine her behind the door, stepping up to it, bumping into it, stepping back, then coming at it again. Over and over.
My baby. Not you, too.
If I opened the door, I could be dead really soon. If I didn’t, then there was a good chance the bumping into the door would grow more aggressive and alert the others in the hallway outside the laundry room that there was still something for them to get at.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please be okay.”
I put my hand on the doorknob and slowly turned it. I took a large step back as I let the door swing all the way open.
Out of the shadows, Selena emerged, her head cocked slightly to one side. Her mouth hung slack; her eyes remained rolled back in their sockets. She stumbled toward me.
“Selena?” I said.
She stopped, turned her head more in my direction, then adjusted her footing, this time coming more directly at me. A few seconds later, she raised her left hand. I touched her fingers. They were ice cold. Her hand gripped mine and she started to pull herself closer. I yanked my hand away and darted for the far side of the room, and scanned it up and down for something to defend myself with. Nothing. Nothing lethal, anyway.
Selena slowly walked toward me.
I stepped to the side. When my foot came down, it landed on the ground harder than I wanted. Her head immediately craned in the direction of the sound and then she started heading that way.
My girl was gone.
It was a feeling, it was a thought. Its reality sunk in quicker than I expected and immediately I knew I had to get rid of her otherwise I’d be her lunch soon enough.
I let her get close to me before carefully moving out of her way in a semicircle. My goal was to get to the closet she had just come out of. There had to be something in there I could use to defend myself with.
Keeping one eye on her, the other on the closet, I inched my way there, each footstep I took as light as I could possibly make it.
Once at the closet, I peered in and scanned the shelves. Nothing but a bunch of cleaning supplies, a mope and bucket, a broom, some boxes and–the broom.
I pulled it out. It wasn’t too thick, but thick enough I couldn’t break it over my knee.
Slowly, I kept my circular pattern and went to the far corner of the room while Selena was at the other, her head weaving side-to-side as she tried to find me.
I had only one chance at this, and I had to make it quick. I held the broom handle with one hand, leaned it on an angle and put my foot down on its head. Quickly, and as hard as I could, I stomped down halfway between the top of the handle and the broom’s head. Crack! The wood splintered, but didn’t break.
Selena turned around and faced me. She raised her arms, her fingers rigid like claws.
I stomped down on the broom again. It snapped this time, but not cleanly. I had to–
She was real close, like six feet away.
I flipped the broom over and came at it from the other side. The wood broke. I let the straw end fall to the floor, and I got the handle end ready.
“Please, Selena,” I said. “If you can hear me, you need to stop. I don’t want to–”
But there was no response in that dead face. No sign she recognized my voice. Not the slightest hint of contemplation.
So be it, I said, and came at her with the broom handle.
The sharp end plunged directly in her middle. I kicked out against her chest and pulled on the handle at the same time. The handle came out, bringing with it blood and stringy flesh. I brought it across her face like a baseball bat. The force of the blow was enough to knock her off balance, and with another kick I sent her on her back to the ground.
“Forgive me,” I said, and plunged the sharp end of the stick into her eye. Her body twitched a couple time then lay still.
I stumbled back a few steps and couldn’t believe how fast I had taken her down. For some strange reason, my heartache was gone. So was the confusion. Instead, I felt . . . nothing.
Just . . . nothing.
Who was I? What had I become?
I had to get out of there.

< Last Chapter — Table of Contents — Next Chapter >

The Coscom Entertainment/Gallery Books reissue of The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H.G. Wells and Eric S. Brown is now available in bookstores nationwide, and at the following on-line retailers as part of Gallery’s Blood-Enriched Classics line:

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes and Noble
Simon and Schuster
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle
Simon and Schuster

“A clever spin on one of the greatest pieces of end-of-the-world fiction ever written, The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies actually manages to add another level to Wells’ classic tale of alien invasion. The living dead – an unexpected by-product of the arrival of the aliens – provides a constant threat to human and Martian alike. It’s hard to tell where Wells’ thoughtful prose stops and Brown’s twisted madness begins. The curse of ‘the Dead’ is so cleverly interwoven into the original story that you’ll be checking old copies, convinced the zombies were always there! A mash-up book that’s actually worth reading!” – David Moody, author of Hater and Dogblood

“Like the undead, Eric S. Brown is an unstoppable force in the genre. His fiction consistently delivers jolts to the heart and mind.” – David Dunwoody, author of Empire and Dark Entities

The story:

The invasion begins . . . and the dead start to rise.

There’s panic in the streets of London as invaders from Mars wreak havoc on the living, slaying the populace with Heat-Rays and poisonous clouds of black smoke. Humanity struggles to survive against technology far beyond its own, meeting fear and death at every turn.

But that’s not the only struggle mankind must face. The dead are rising from their graves with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Friends, neighbours and loved ones lost to the war of the worlds are now the enemy and the Earth is forever changed.

It’s kill or be killed, if you want to survive, otherwise you might become one of the walking dead yourself.

The last Coscom Entertainment release: Possession of the Dead by A.P. Fuchs

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com

Possession of the Dead, the sequel to Blood of the Dead, by A.P. Fuchs is now available at the following on-line retailers:

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle
Fictionwise.com
Drivethruhorror.com
Smashwords
Scribd.com

Synopsis:

Angels.

Demons.

Giant Zombies.

Things have changed.

Ever since returning through the Storm of Skulls to the present day, Joe, Billie and August have discovered the world they now inhabit, is not the world they left behind.
The zombie threat has evolved to gargantuan proportions. Now aided by giant undead—massive monsters with phenomenal strength and power, with deadly appetites just as vast—the zombie population moves to devour any and all life.

Separated from his friends, Joe learns that not all hope is lost for humanity when he meets, Tracy, a woman who exudes a strength to rival his own. Tracy brings him to the Hub, an underground sanctuary where life continues in a dead world, but his thoughts linger on his missing friends.

August and Billie have problems of their own, and soon learn the same plight that affected a past friend of theirs now affects many: zombies with shapeshifting capability. Now, anyone is suspect. Yet even with this newfound knowledge, more is heaped upon them when the agenda of the undead is revealed and humanity is the one caught in the crossfire.

A war is raging, one between angels and demons, monsters and man.

And it’s only escalating.

The last Coscom Entertainment release: Praise the Dead by Gina Ranalli

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com

Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead by A.P. Fuchs is now available at the following on-line retailers:

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Barnesandnoble.com
Horror Mall
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle
Drivethruhorror.com
Mobipocket.com
Smashwords

Synopsis:

In 2027 A.D., the Zombie Apocalypse took the world by storm and no one was prepared. Countless lives were lost as humanity battled to regain control of their planet. Eventually, they did, and out of the ashes of fallen civilization rose a new world, one bent on revenge against the hordes of the undead that took everything from them.

Enter Tony Sterpanko, entrepreneur extraordinaire who found a way to capitalize on humanity’s thirst for vengeance against the zombie. He created Zombie Fight Night, a worldwide craze where the undead men and women who remained from the apocalypse faced off against people and beings that once existed on Earth or were existing for the first time.

It is ten years later and at Blood Bay Arena, fortunes are won and lost. Men are made millionaires over night. Others are not so lucky and find themselves broken and destitute.

Mick Chelsey is one such man: gambling addict, lousy husband and Zombie Fight Night fanatic.

Except now, in order to still watch the fights and try to win back all he’s lost, he needs to bet fast and big otherwise death will come for him.

Let the battles begin.

Zombies fight Bigfoot, werewolves, vampires, Axiom-man, Bruce Lee, samurai, kickboxers, robots and more in this ode to blood-and-guts action from Blood of the Dead author, A.P. Fuchs.

You ready to get it on?

The last Coscom Entertainment release: Animal Behavior and Other Tales of Lycanthropy by Keith Gouveia

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com