An autistic boy and his family versus The Running Dead

When I worked in traditional publishing, author Anne Rice made vampires huge in popular culture. It seemed everyone was reading Interview with the Vampire (and then all her other books). Soon after, many agents and editors burned out on vampires. Vampires were done to death. The professionals were ready to put a stake through the heart of the phenomenon, so it must be so, right?

Foolish humans.

After the pros declared vampires were finished, the next wave came: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Twilight series, endless graphic novels, fan fic and True Blood.

If you live long enough, you begin to see patterns repeat. It happens in products and news cycles and franchises. Interesting things don’t go away. They get made anew.

The challenge in resurrecting any subject is to make it fresh: Cheerleader versus vampires in a world secretly packed with demons; vampires that sparkle in sunlight, more sex and whatever else it takes to make the old seem new.

Today I ran across an interesting blog entry. The author is tired of zombies. Good news! Zombies are still undead, too. Whether it’s new fans discovering old material in new forms (e.g. the World War Z movie), zombies as love interests, or my new serial (This Plague of Days), fresh takes abound for new fans and for those who think they’ve seen it all.

Innovation doesn’t stop with George Romero, or any other artist no matter how gifted.

If we’d stopped because the genre seemed to be running on fumes, we wouldn’t have 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead or The Walking Dead!

My zombie serial features a hero on the autism spectrum, eco-terrorists and more Latin phrases than Harry Potter has spells.  It starts with one terrible virus (as if that wasn’t bad enough) that mutates into something more deadly.

What interests me most about dangerous situations is how they bring out truth.

The bad brings out both the Evil and the Good to shed light on the human condition. In This Plague of Days, you’ll often find you have more to fear from the  uninfected than the zombies. Check out my take on zombies. If you like it, please don’t forget to review it. Thanks!

~ Robert Chazz Chute is an award winning writer and the author of nine books. 

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