Blogger Zombie Walk 2011

The blogger zombie walk 2011 organised by Ghost Hunting Theories is here. Pour your favourite brew, turn out the lights, lock your doors and settle in for some zombie mayhem. With over 60 blogs participating I hope you know how to survive. My offerings include my poem Cold Hearted and an entry from my dream journal.

Cold Hearted
by Katy Bennett

Cold, colder, colder.
Dead heart hungers
for a warm fire, flames
popping, spluttering, flickering
in the hearth. Dancing
and melding in the hearth.

Embraced in Death’s cold grip
she clawed her way out
of the ground, clawing and crawling
her way free of the ground, wriggling
and screaming her way free of the ground.

Lifeless eyes seeing the night
searching a warm fire, she stumbles
her way through the night, shivering
her way through the night.

The moon her silver guide leads
her to an old familiar place. Her icy
breath a white fog floating in the air.

Yearning for heat to melt the ice
from around her heart. A memory
of a man’s face flitters through
her decaying mind, fluttering
and twisting in her decaying mind.

Chestnuts roasting over flames, laughing
into the early hours of morning. Cheeks
glowing red from the heat.

The wind howls pushing
her onwards, faster. At the bottom
of an unlit lane she pushes open
a rusty gate. Squealing and shrieking
on its hinges. Crying and moaning
on its hinges.

Familiarity tugs her up to the flaking
wooden door. Disturbed cobwebs flap
on grimy window panes. She enters
the abandoned cottage. Once her home
now a strange and damp place.
A musty and dead place.

Into the living room she goes, ashes
fill the hearth. The fire died long ago.

XXXXXX
A Dream - The Kidnapper and the Zombies

One dream that I had a few years ago and that I still remember today is one in which I was in the back of a minicab. The minicab driver was taking me somewhere I didn't want to go, I was desperately trying to phone for help on my mobile phone and the damn thing refused to work.

Eventually we drove into an underground multi-storey car park, there were other cars and people here too. A woman was singing and somehow she cut herself, a single drop of blood fell from her lips. The ground split open and a huge serpent shot out of the crack, there was a flashing of brightly and multi-coloured lights and the serpent ate the woman. Next thing I know, I've thrown myself down on the floor between the backseat and driver's seat. Zombies began crawling out of the ground and munching on the other people, they attacked the cab driver who had kidnapped me. Then in typical fashion, I woke up.

xxxx

You can also follow me on twitter @darkbee13 and goodreads/darkbee13

Visit the other participating blogs to continue feeding your zombie frenzy:


Ghost Hunting Theories
Above the Norm: Bizarre Arizona
Zombies Everywhere
Holly's Horrorland
Little Gothic Horrors
Anything Horror
Bubba's Place
Horror Smorgasbord
Gnostalgia
Monkey Man
Words and Music
Red Shoes Chronicles
The Wolf's Eyes
My Day in a Sentence
Pixie's Horror Galore
Strange State
The Misadventures of HalloweeNut
Halloween Blues
Kweeny Todd
The California Blogging Massacre
Horror Shock Lolipop
Vanessa Morgan
Improbable Frontiers
No Really, You Can Eat It
Art By Living Dead Girl Nicole
Two Gory Chicks
A Dust Bunny in the Wind
A Ghoul's Best Friend
Zombies Are Magic
Cherry Neko Saves the World
Tall Tales
At the Mansion of Madness
The Haunted Rose
The Rotting Zombie
Halloween Overkill
Out of the Shadows
Creepy Glow Keyhole Gallery
Creepy Glowbugg
Bifocal Univision
Haiku-Koo-Koo
Sherry Soule
Anchors and Roses
Paranormal Researchers Group
Whispering Pines History
Lovely Miss Megs
Sean Thomas Fisher's Blogwash
Rise and Fight
Stump Town Horror
LoliClown's Little Blog of Horror
Zombies Can't Love
Books and Beyond
The Grave Bandits
Screaming Goregasms
Lazy Daisy Life
Icky Monster
Pretty in Fiction
Ivy's Closet
Justine's Halloween
Annie Walls
Just Johnny

Book Review - Gorelets Unpleasant Poems by Michael A Arnzen

Michael A Arnzen's Gorelets is a fast humorous read, perfectly bite sized horror poetry for your preferred ebook reader. 

Rating: 4/5

ISBN-10: 1-55404-086-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-55404-086-5
Genre: Dark Fantasy
eBook Length: 82 Pages
Published: September 2003

Available from Double Dragon Publishing or check out Michael's website

Other books you may be interested in:

The Rhysling Anthology 2011

Book Review - One Buck Horror Volume 1

Book Review - One Buck Horror Vol 1 edited by Christopher and Kris M. Hawkins

One Buck Horror is an affordable anthology priced at 99cents. There were 5 short stories in this anthology, all by authors I'd never read before. The two that stood out for me were:

A Lullaby for Caliban by Mark Onspaugh  - A touching story of some kids who try to steal a pickled foetus from a carnival.

The Cornfield by Mike Trier- a fast paced take on the werewolf.

Although the remaining 3 stories didn't work for me, I'll be checking out volume 2.

Rating 3/5

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 125 KB
• Publisher: Coronis Publishing (24 Jun 2011)
• Language English
• ASIN: B00584MMG8

Visit the publisher's website here

Other books you may be interested in:

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

RoW80 - Round 3 - The Final Check in

Woohoo, it's the final check in and I'm still standing.

So what did I do? I completed my initial good reads reading challenge of 12 books and increased it to 17 books for the year. I'm about half a book away from meeting that goal.

I think I wrote at least 10 new poems this round maybe more. Without digging through the jungle of files on my hard drive I won't know the exact figures.

Completed about 80% of the spreadsheet data for my novel in progress.

Started a semi regular deep breathing exercise which grew into a regular yoga routine.

I committed to studying for a BA in creative writing.

As always during ROW80 the support and motivation from the community has been fantastic, hopefully I'll put that motivation to better use next round. My goals for round 4 will be the same as for round 3 but with the added goal of catching up on poetry rewrites. I need to start getting this stuff subbed out.

Hope to see you all in October.

RoW80 - Round 3 - Check in 13

All goals apart from my exercise goal have stalled. I've kept to the yoga routine every day since last check in, added in a new move, increased the level on an existing one and modified another posture to an easier version so I'll see how that goes for the next week. I've noticed that some of the stiffness has gone from across my neck and shoulder's.

I'll get back on top of studying today and hopefully figure out a bit more of the novel's timeline.

It's the final few days of Round 3, thanks to everyone whose stopped by the blog throughout this round. I hope you've all found much success with your writing.

Book Review - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Book Review - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The narrator introduces us to Sleepy Hollow a village rife with superstitions and legend. The main character Ichabod is well liked within the community and has his heart set on the daughter of Van Tassel. After a night of telling ghost stories at the estate, he heads for home and experiences the local legend first hand. Overall it's an ok story, it had an old fashioned charm about it and was interesting to see the original story that inspired the film.

Rating 3/5



Other books you may be interested in:
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20
Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill

RoW80 - Round 3 - Check in 12

Ok, I have absolutely no idea where the week went between Sunday and today, so I'll just keep this brief:

Exercised every day apart from yesterday, I'm sure you need to give muscles a rest period so I took yesterday off as I'd done about 6 days straight. Already feel better mentally but the physical benefits will take awhile to materialise.

Wrote a new poem last night

Haven't read anything since Sunday

Have now filled in spreadsheet data for my novels timeline up to Chapter 5. Already seen a problem area where the time for 2 events may be too close together.

Managed to do 750 words but lost 200 due to net problems and had to redo. I wouldn't have minded so much but I lost the section where I was prodding my own brain.

Feeling a bit bombarded lately so need to sit down and write out a to do list, get back on top of things.

Hope everyone's well

I think that was everything

ROW80 - Round 3 - Check in 11

Going to restate my goals here as I've still been slacking since getting back from holiday. Internet's still being tempermental, went down on me while I was updating the learning blog for my course and it's pretty much thrown 750 words out the window.

1) Keep up with studies
2) Read fiction/ poetry most days of the week
3) 5 minutes of pranayama at least 5 times a week
4) Write, rewrite and analyse one new poem a week (scheduled for Wednesday nights.)
5) Read one fiction writing related article at least once a week.
6) Continue with prep work for the 2nd draft of a novel.


Goal 1 - I did get all my coursework together and read some more of Ruth Padel's 52 ways of looking at a poem. I 've decided to go for a full BA in Creative Writing now and my assessment won't be til July, with 2 assignments still to go and the way I fall off wagons I think aiming for the March assessment will be cutting it fine. 
Goal 2 - Did read a chunk of Scott Nicholson's creative Spirit on Saturday while I had the dog glued to my lap for a couple of hours. 


Goal 3 - Every day for 4 days and added in a couple of yoga postures. Will add on more yoga once I've got used to the current exercises.


Goals 4 and 5, nothing on those


Goal 6 - I haven't even looked at the novel. I've switched the desktop computer over to my weak strength 3G network so if I get caught up on internet stuff today, I'll try and plug out the novel's timeline this evening and maybe do 750 words assuming the 3G isn't tediously slow.


For anyone else interested in doing a creative writing BA in home study, I'm studying with the Open College of the Arts

See the rest of the crew here:

Book Review - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Book review - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson


The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of loyal friend and solicitor to Dr Jekyll, Mr Utterson which I was a bit disappointed in, as a reader I would have liked to have been up close and personal with Jekyll and Hyde. With so many film and drama adaptions based on this story it was interesting to see how the original work was done and it offers up an interesting idea of what would happen if we could separate those unsavoury drives of the human psyche from our good.

 Rating: 3/5

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Rev Ed edition (27 Feb 2003)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0141439734
• ISBN-13: 978-0141439730

Other Books you may be interested in:

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

ROW80 - Round 3 - Check in 10

Going to make this quick. I don't have much to report other than I'm increasing my deep breathing exercises to 6 minutes seeing as I've stopped fidgeting and hoping to move into some light yoga exercises by the weekend and possiblely move on to classes when my stamina's up. I haven't touched my novel's spreadsheet since I got back from hols and still need to crack on with course work.

Thanks to everyone swinging by on Sunday, I've decided to pursue a full BA in creative writing, I'm kind of terrified at the commitment and I've come full circle now because I started a degree once before way back and ended up walking away from it. But I'm doing home study and only concentrating on one module at a time rather than 3 or 4 different classes a week. Hopefully history won't repeat itself and anything that benefits writing is a must.

Hope you're all chugging along nicely

Website Updates and blog updates

The following pages have been updated on the website
Horror Poets
Issue 8 of Dark Metre is now available on the current issue page

Blog updates:
Review of The Ritual added
Writing Lost and Found added as the last Monday poetry feature

Reviews scheduled to go out over the next 4 Thursdays are:

08/09/11 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - Rating 3/5
15/09/11 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving - Rating 3/5
22/09/11 - One Buck Horror Vol 1 Edited by Christopher and Kris M. Hawkins- Rating 3/5
29/09/11 - Gorelets Unpleasant Poems by Michael A Arnzen - Rating 4/5

Alternatively you can follow me on goodreads and get the reviews before they hit the blog.

ROW80 - Round 3 - Check in 9

I'm back from the picturesque village of Valbonne in France. My reading goal went well, got through about 5 books, and have them all scheduled to go out on the blog.

I've been unproductive since I got back, was feeling ill on the Thursday and Friday and Saturday I found myself considering going for a full BA in writing. The question of having my work assessed has come up again, I'd already decided against it but that was over a year ago when I had no intentions of writing fiction again ever and now I'm writing a novel.

It's hit me how much of the craft of fiction I've forgotten since I stopped writing and would benefit from going back to basics. But it means doing 7 modules instead of 3 and at part time study that's roughly 6 years. Huge commitment in time and finances. Although I'm wondering if I'll be able to tie working on my novella into one of the modules. And i'm realising how important feedback is when someone actually explains it to you based on your work and not just giving you random bits of vague advice.

I also signed up for 750 words to keep my writing stamina up while I'm planning and working on course rewrites. Couldn't do it last night as my internet was dropping out every 5 minutes.

Today, I'll be getting back on track with my goals. looking forward to seeing how the other row80ers have been doing since I was away.

Book Review - The Ritual by Adam Nevill

The Ritual took me a while to get into but once I was in, there was no escape. For me, the real power came from the main character Luke's emotions and increasing despair and despite the 100 degree heat blazing outside I went cold, hell I even got tearful.

Rating: 4/5



Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Macmillan (6 May 2011)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0230754929
ISBN-13: 978-0230754928

Other reviews you may be interested in:
Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill
Banquet for the Damned by Adam Nevill



Or click here to visit the authors website.