Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067 and rising...from the grave...Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems...
But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead?
And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.
2. It's the first time I've used Google maps to virtually explore a real life setting, instead of just making places up. I wandered along Route 31, checking out the local shops and houses, the road surface, what the surrounding landscape looked like etc. I almost felt like a film director checking out a location for a shoot! I also looked at a lot of the local businesses—restaurants, shops, the church and graveyard, even the undertakers and a care home.
3. My research involved Catholicism, voodoo, zombies, Cajun food and language, the price of a burger and fries, Louisiana real estate, luxury US cars, local wildlife and plants, holidays and zombie walks. I think I clocked up the most hours of research on this story, probably reading more than what I ended up writing, but I'm not convinced it's a complete replacement for actually going to a place and experiencing it. I'll be interested to see if anyone local or more knowledgeable picks me up on any flaws.
4. Luke was named after my eldest's boyfriend at the time of writing. Not deliberately - I just heard the name a lot, and it stuck. That, and possibly having a childhood crush on a certain Luke Skywalker. I chose Annabelle for my heroine mostly because I had Luke saying a line about her being trés belle (it mean 'very beautiful' in French, and in Cajun).
5. Restless In Peaceville was written as part of NaNoWriMo in November 2013...and if I hadn't had a request for the full after entering five pages in a Breathless Press critique, I would have put it away in a virtual drawer never to see the light of day! I had the idea over the summer, and resisted writing it because I just didn't think I could do zombies. But I couldn't move on to anything else either while it was in my head. So I did NaNoWriMo as a way to clear it out of my mind, never expecting it to be published. Just goes to show what I know about publishing...
So what's the strangest place you've ever had to research, or what was the weirdest thing you've ever found out in the process?
Rachel's answer: I think the strangest thing I've ever researched was when I was writing my historical romance and needed to know how a mule-powered cotton gin worked. I spent days combing through Google Books looking for descriptions, and finally found a video of a steam-powered one that had been restored. Man that sucker is loud! I've researched tons of random stuff for various writing projects, but this one stands out as one of the more memorable.
You can also buy the book at the following places:
Lycaon Press
Bookstrand
Omnilit
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Add it to your Goodreads TBR here.
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Keep scrolling for the giveaway! It's a $5 gift card for Lycaon Press and a super cute heart shaped zombie brain necklace.
Author Bio: After spending twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force. Although happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.
Pippa Jay is a dedicated member of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade, blogging at Spacefreighters Lounge, Adventures in Scifi, and Romancing the Genres.
She’s also a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3rd place), and the GCC RWA Silken Sands Star Awards (2nd place). You can stalk her at her website http://pippajay.co.uk, or at her blog http://pippajay.blogspot.co.uk, but without doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.
Thanks for hosting me!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome!
DeleteA Zombie necklace sounds cool and I like the book cover.
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