Dana's YA Bookpile: Pippa Jay

Monday, April 20, 2015

Zombie Girl: Dead Awakened

Imagine waking up to find the world has ended, but unfortunately you're not alone...

For Connor Innis, awakening from a year-long coma with no memories, no ability to move, and unable to speak was bad enough. Then he learns that a bioweapon set off a zombie apocalypse—for real—while he was sleeping, and the world he can't even remember no longer exists.

Rehabilitation might be torture, but far worse awaits him outside. All too soon, the hospital Mentor declares him fit to leave but with nothing to go home to except a city full of mindless, flesh-eating monsters. That is, until he forms a strange relationship with the one he nicknames Zombie Girl.

http://www.lycaonpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_free_shipping_info&cPath=7&products_id=59&zenid=d178c0540f8045a322e34d6dc546ca9a

Excerpt:

There was a zombie outside the window, staring in. Every last fragment of hope that he'd had curled up and died. Not a person. Just a zombie at the door, setting off the buzzer probably by pure chance. He might as well have thrown himself off the balcony.

Heart pounding hard enough to make his chest ache, Connor stood very still. He stared into the misted grey orbs of her eyes. She stared right back. Not at him, but through him, as though something infinitely more desirable lay far beyond anything she could see. He read a kind of dull desperation in her blank face. A longing. Even if that longing was just to tear him apart and devour him. Or maybe that was his imagination.

"Hello?" His voice came out as a dry croak and he wet his lips. He had to try something. He couldn't spend the rest of his life in silence and alone. Even this poor shell of a human was better than that. And maybe—just maybe—he could reach her. Maybe even help her find a fragment of her lost humanity. "Can you hear me?"

No sound or movement. No response at all.

Despair squeezed his throat. The hospital Monitor said the victims didn't suffer brain damage. The virus just stopped all the normal responses, isolating higher functions from their basic animal instincts. Even animals could react to a voice.

"Hey!" He banged on the glass, but even that didn't break her hungry stare. Perhaps she couldn't hear him, let alone understand or respond. Losing those higher functions must have included any communication ability.

Connor sighed, then placed his palm flat on the glass. "I wish you understood me. I wish you hadn't all got sick when I didn't." He rested his forehead on the glass and closed his eyes. "I really wish I could help you."

A moment later a dull thud and a vibration in the glass drew his attention. He raised his head.

She hadn't moved from staring. But her hand pressed against his, separated only by the glass.

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. Her works include YA and adult stories crossing a multitude of subgenres from scifi to the paranormal and often with romance, and she’s one of eight authors included in a science fiction romance anthology—Tales from the SFR Brigade. She’s also a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3^rd place), the EPIC eBook awards, and the GCC RWA Silken Sands Star Awards (2^nd place).

You can stalk her at her website, or at her blog, but without doubt her favorite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.

Website – http://www.pippajay.co.uk

Blogs –

Adventures in Scifi - http://www.pippajay.blogspot.co.uk

Spacefreighters Lounge - http://www.spacefreighters.blogspot.com

Romancing the Genres - http://www.romancingthegenres.blogspot.co.uk/

SFR Brigade - http://www.sfrcontests.blogspot.co.uk/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/pippajaygreen

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5054558.Pippa_Jay

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Pippa-Jay-Adventures-in-Scifi/114058821953752

Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/pippajaygreen/

Google+ - https://plus.google.com/u/0/101080630877126516448/posts

Wattpad - http://www.wattpad.com/user/PippaJay

Amazon page - http://author.to/PippaJay

Monday, September 1, 2014

Restless in Peaceville

Interview:

1. I write because… not writing is simply not an option. Really. I had about a decade of not writing, and it drove me crazy!

2. If I were your favorite cookie, what would I be? Double choc chip. With extra chocolate please.

3. Plotter or pantster? Pantser. And a non-linear pantser at that.

4. What is your favorite type of character to write about and why? I love tortured souls, mostly so I can torture them some more. It means there's as much, if not more, internal conflict as external, and without conflict you don't have much of a story. Also I feel they deserve their happily ever after that much more.

5. Hamburgers or sushi? Hamburgers. Especially homemade barbecued burgers as done by my husband.

6. Name three things on your desk. Laptop, notebooks and pens. Pretty boring but essential.

7. What books have influenced your writing style? I read a really diverse range of genres growing up, from nautical war novels by Alexander Kent, James Bond books, murder mysteries by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, to animal adventures by James Herriott and Gerald Durrall. But I mostly read heavy SciFi and fantasy, then moved onto Anne McCaffrey in my late teens. Her books probably had the biggest influence on my writing.

8. Tell us a little about your book. Restless In Peaceville is essentially Warm Bodies meets Supernatural in a Louisiana that never was. It's my first zombie story, and my first paranormal, but not with your usual Hollywood-style zombies.

9. What advice do you have for new and aspiring authors? Never give up - never surrender! Write lots. Research lots. Get feedback but bear in mind twenty different people may give you twenty totally different opinions. You need to figure out which to listen to. And write with your heart.

10. What is next on your writerly horizon? I have a paranormal short coming out in October, a superhero romance novella in November, and a fallen angel UF short in December. Plus I have a trilogy of YA zombie shorts in progress.

Top 5 favorite movies:

Warm Bodies, Star Wars IV: The Empire Strikes Back, A Knight's Tale, How To Train Your Dragon, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Blurb:

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.

Buy Link

http://www.lycaonpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_free_sh ipping_info&cPath=1&products_id=41

Excerpt:

You gotta be kidding me...Waking up inside a small dark space is a pretty bad experience. Although I didn't wake as such because I wasn't asleep. I just became...aware maybe? The darkness kind of faded away until I can see I'm inside this metal box. Well, as far as I can tell. I tap the wall with one knuckle to check, and the hollow metallic knock proves at least part of my assumption right. So, what is this? I died and got kicked out of the afterlife. As far as I know, coffins ain't made of metal. So at a guess, I'm in the mortuary, and since I'm not laid out on a slab I must have been put away in storage. I've never been stuck in a drawer before, but somehow this fits with how I imagine it would be.

I suppose I should count myself lucky they hadn't started carving me up, and that I'd gone for an overdose rather than throwing myself in front of a truck or out of a window. I'm in damn good condition...for a corpse. Still in one piece as far as I can ascertain, and that ain't easy to determine, let me tell you. You know how an arm or a leg goes after you've sat on it for a while, cutting off the circulation? But before the blood flow starts again and you get pins and needles? That numb heaviness? My whole body is like that. Like every part of me is full of lead.

Also, the not breathing is weird. I take a couple of breaths out of habit, for the familiar feeling of air moving in and out of my chest. After that I don't bother. It takes too much concentration and there are other things I need to focus on. Like, what do I do next, for instance?

So, what, I'm just gonna lie here?

About the author:

Pippa Jay is a dedicated member of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade. Her works include a YA science fiction novel—Gethyon—published through BURST (Champagne Books), a scifi romance novella—Tethered—published by Breathless Press, three self-published short stories (Terms & Conditions Apply, The Bones of the Sea, and Reboot), and she’s one of eight authors included in a science fiction romance anthology—Tales from the SFR Brigade. She’s also a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist in the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3^rd place), and the GCC RWA Silken Sands Star Awards (2^nd 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.