Hey 3.5 Readers,
BQB here and I’ve upped my nerd cred. I’m now the official owner of a Parrot Bebop Drone:
THE PROS:
THE CONS:
Thanks for reading, 3.5 readers and when I learn more, I’ll have to start posting some flight photos!
BQB is an official drone enthusiast. Will update after my first flight.
FIND THIS ZOMBIE AUTHOR ON:
My guest today is Al K. Line.
3.5 readers, you might want to log off Twitter for a moment.
Al’s the author of the Zombie Botnet series. The mayhem begins when a devastating computer virus delivers subliminal data packets via social media, turning computer users the world over into murderous creatures.
A resident of rural England, when Al isn’t busy writing, he spends his time with his wife, sons, and dogs, the latter of which he notes he has too many.
Al, welcome.
NOTE: BOLD=BQB; ITALICS=AL
Q. You’re the twenty-first zombie author I’ve interviewed this month and I have to admit, I honestly thought I’d of heard it all by now, but people becoming zombies via a computer virus? For the less tech savvy among us, can you explain how this works in your books?
A. Sure. Ven, the woman behind the “bit of bother,” lets loose a computer virus designed to infect millions of devices and allow her to get up to no good. Unfortunately, it all gets a little out of hand. The virus she unleashes has been compromised and the data packets go viral. An embedded subliminal message in the form of a video basically rewires the brain of anyone that views it and then it’s game over — welcome to zombieville.
Q. How did you come up with this idea?
A. The term zombie botnet is well known within the hacker community, it’s a way of describing a huge array of devices that have been infected and can be manipulated for all manner of nefarious naughtiness. What if the zombie botnet really could do as the name implies? It came from there.
Q. Everywhere I go, people are glued to technology. Phones. Laptops. Tablets. Everyone’s checking Facebook, Twitter, or some other site and usually the latest update is something as trivial as “I just blew my nose.” Do you think we might be zombies already?
A. I love technology, use it daily, and my career relies on it, but yeah, it can get out of hand. It’s the change it has caused to society that I find most interesting, making people slaves to the latest trend or social media platform — let’s face it, if we lose our internet connection for a few minutes we begin to panic, right? This is what the series plays on: our inability to look away. The first thing we do when we hear of a disaster is to check Twitter or Facebook, well, what if those platforms are the very ones causing the problem? People would still look, they can’t help it. It’s too ingrained into the fabric of our techno-reality now to ever go back.
Q. I notice this series is actually considered half-horror/half-comedy. I have to say, the idea of society being hoisted on its own technological petard seems rife with the ability to provide social commentary, not to mention a joke or two. Personally, I’m so addicted to social media that if all I have to do not to become a zombie is not check Twitter, I’m not sure I could do it. How are you able to combine humor with horror, when the two normally don’t mix well?
A. You gotta see the funny side, right? It’s the whole premise. Yes, there is social commentary, but it isn’t judgmental. We all have our obsessions, our hangups and our needs, and the absurdity of how the infection is caused screams for a bit of a laugh at our own expense. Plus, to be honest I can’t help myself. Characters suddenly appear on the page (I mean computer screen really) and they often happen to be rather comical — there’s no stopping it once the words somehow jump from my brain to the developing book.
Q. Al, your book features people being turned into zombies via subliminal messages. Just now, a real live zombie actually just jumped out of my computer screen. Have you ever heard of such a thing happening in zombie lore and any ideas on how to defeat such a menace?
A. Oh, loads, it happens all the time. The best thing to do is to scream really loud and run really fast — only pausing to update Facebook and check if anyone has posted anything on Twitter that could help in 140 characters or less.
Q. Thanks for the interview, Al. Before I go, do you have any last minute advice that might help my friends and I survive the East Randomtown Zombie Apocalypse?
A. Nope. You’re going be dead any moment. Actually, should I even be answering this? Hello? I knew it, dead already, brains all over the floor. There’s probably some zombie granny chewing on your intestines at this very moment. Oh, don’t forget to follow me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/authoralkline
Yeah, I get the irony.
FIND THIS ZOMBIE AUTHOR ON:
By: Video Game Rack Fighter, Special Guest Interviewer
Today’s guest on the Bookshelf Battle Blog is Saul Tanpepper, author of the GAMELAND series, a saga set in a world where zombies outfitted with neural implants are controlled by players using video game controllers.
The carnage ensues when a group of computer hackers break into a Long Island turned wasteland and quickly learn there are consequences far beyond the average video game.
Saul, thanks for joining us.
NOTE: BOLD=VGRF; ITALICS=Saul
Q. Zombies turned into video game avatars manipulated by wealthy video game enthusiasts. Just when I thought the world was out of fresh spins on the zombie apocalypse genre, you come up with one. How did you do it?
A. I read Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games right after it was published and knew that it was going to be a blockbuster and therefore a good literary model to emulate. I’d been thinking about publishing dystopian fiction (not just horror or post-apocalyptic), and since zombies were starting to get hot, and readers were demanding series, I combined the three elements together and came up with the idea for GAMELAND. The original plan was to throw a half dozen young adults into a gaming arcade with the undead for a fight to the finish, but that seemed too much like HG. I made the gaming aspect secondary and went heavier on the post-apocalyptic theme.
Q. I hope you don’t mind if I reveal on this blog that you are, in fact, Dr. Ken J. Howe, a PhD molecular biologist and former Army medic/trauma specialist. (Don’t worry, this site only has 3.5 readers so your secret is safe.) Upon learning this about you, several questions come to my mind, the first being, does your experience and training come in handy as a writer and how so?
A. It’s both helpful and harmful. As a former scientist, I tend to be overly critical about technical accuracy and probabilities, which holds me back from writing anything too outrageous. This applies to the technologies referenced in the GAMELAND series. We already have the capacity to prolong life and it won’t be long before we can reverse cell death. Scientists are also dabbling in neural implantation, so it’s not a great leap to think about implanted zombies. My medical background is a great help when it comes to writing descriptions. Having personally had my hands inside chests, smelled the effects of rotting flesh, assisted with surgeries, I try to relay the physical and emotional impact of those experiences to the reader.
Q. Last I checked, zombies are just figments of our imagination (I hope.) However, as a molecular biologist/former medic, do you have any thoughts on zombie physiology that you could share? Are there any known theories on how, hypothetically speaking, a human could be turned into a zombie or exhibit zombie-ish tendencies?
A. There are some aspects of zombie physiology which the lore currently explains poorly. For example, how do they move and moan when they don’t breathe? Why don’t they rot faster? Why do they prefer brains? Why do they go after only the uninfected? GAMELAND attempts to explain some of these discrepancies.
As far as real-life goes, zombies aren’t that much of a leap, at least if we’re simply talking about brain-dead individuals attacking other people. The bath salt incidents of a couple years back, and any number of drug or hypnosis-induced incidents we’ve seen all resemble zombie-like behavior. If the mind can be so easily manipulated by suggestion or chemicals, it’s not hard to imagine an infectious agent producing a chemical to the same effect.
As far as reanimating the dead, that requires a bit more suspension of disbelief or more faith in the paranormal. Cells tend to break down very rapidly, so unless a person has only very recently died, it’s unlikely the body will have much function. My bets for zombies are on the near-dead or recently-deceased.
Q. How would a real life zombie video game such as the one described in your series work? Will video games ever evolve to the point where people can be controlled with a joystick? (And is that necessarily something we’d want?)
A. Technology already exists to remotely control inanimate objects in virtual reality (think drones, surgery, bomb robots), and game developers have reported early success in being able to manipulate living subjects remotely in the same way as well as with the use of neural stimulation. We are on the cusp of an explosion in VR gaming. Just beyond that horizon is remote controlled live action gaming. I don’t want to say too much about it, because it would seem to make the ideas I developed in GAMELAND appear less groundbreaking, but suffice it to say, I’d be surprised if we aren’t soon forced to ponder the very same moral questions the characters in my books failed to ask themselves when it comes to this subject.
Q. You’re also the author of The Essential Book Blog: The Complete Bibliophile’s Toolkit for Building, Growing and Monetizing Your On-Line Book-Lover’s Community. If you had to give Bookshelf Q. Battler one piece of advice on how to improve his blog, what would it be? (Besides obtain more than 3.5 readers.)
A. You’re doing all the right things — writing to a specific target audience, keeping the material fresh, engaging your readers, and leveraging other people’s fan bases — so that’s a great foundation for growing your blog. It takes time, as you already know. Having a mailing list helps, as does having something to offer your readers. For example, I offer my subscribers a free starter library and often tell them about deals and giveaways before I tell the general public. I include a lot of tips in TEBB on how you can monetize your efforts to help defray any costs and build income. Even utilizing the easiest of the techniques will quickly pay for the cost of the book.
Q. Saul, your expertise has been greatly appreciated. Before I go, do you have any final words of wisdom that might help my friends and I survive the East Randomtown Zombie Apocalypse?
A: It’s been my pleasure. As far as surviving the Z-poc, my only suggestion is to get yourself a good sturdy toilet plunger (if you’ve read my series, you’ll understand why). That, and a comfortable pair of sneakers. You’ll be doing a lot of running.
A few years ago I visited a toy store.
It wasn’t just any toy store. It was a really huge awesome one.
There was a guy doing demonstrations of this awesome $30 mini quadcopter. It appeared to be totally stable, had the ability to perform tricks and the man controlling it did so with ease.
He convinced me. I bought one.
I put in the battery, turned it on, achieved lift off and WAM – right into the ceiling.
I kept trying it. It went everywhere but where I wanted it to go. I don’t know if it was because I damaged it out of the gate or if for thirty bucks, that’s all the stability you get.
While I can survive losing three ten-spots, my eye has been wondering lately to some of the cool drones on the market. Some of the better ones range in price from $500 to over $1,000.
I can’t really afford that either but once in a blue moon, we all need to indulge ourselves with a little splurge, something completely frivolous and impractical, just to bring a smile to our face. We spend so much time on the business of life that we often forget what we’re living for.
Needless to say, I can’t drop $500 on something that’s going to crash (or I guess, more accurately, something I’m going to crash) right out of the box.
Video games have spoiled us. I want a drone that’s going to go exactly where I tell it to go.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit more complicated. While I’m not an aviation scientist and therefore don’t know all the correct terms, the basic issue is that you’re dealing with a) keeping the craft stable on a horizontal access b) keeping it from turning to the left or right until you want it to and c) keeping it level without letting it fly straight up into the sky or come crashing into the ground.
It’s amazing these are on the market though it may be one of those things that we need to wait and allow the bugs to be worked out of.
Or maybe I just bought a cheap piece of crap and I’ll be instantly wowed if I were to invest in a more expensive product.
In looking at various online reviews, I get the impression that the “Phantom” series of drones are a) expensive but b) great. Maybe you get what you pay for.
If (and it’s a big “if”) I ever convince myself to splurge on such an extravagance, probably the best I can do is a Parrot Bebob drone for $500.
Here’s a YouTube Review of the Parrot Drone by MW Technology. It seemed pretty honest and thorough:
The point? I’m wondering if there’s anyone out there who’s already taken the plunge, bought one and can either say a) these things are so fun and worth every penny! or b) what a pile of crap, it crashed five minutes after getting out of the box!
Or you might have an experience in between.
Have a drone story? Share it in the comments and educate BQB.
Is anyone going to get one?
If you there’s a phone in your hand that does everything a smart phone can do, why do I need a watch on my wrist that provides a smaller version of the smart phone?
Am I missing something?
I’m a recent convert to Mac. I’m starting to regret it.
In my novel, I have a character named Trembley. Imagine my Mac as person. Here’s how the conversation goes down:
ME: And then Trembley walked into the abandoned warehouse.
MAC: And then Tremble walked into the abandoned warehouse.
ME: Trembley!
MAC: Tremble!
ME: His name is Trembley!!!
MAC: You have misspelled the word, “tremble.” Don’t worry. It is not your fault that the public school system failed you, leaving you to think there is a “y” after the end of “tremble.” The Great Steve Jobs put me on Earth to help the stupid and less fortunate.
ME: I’m not using it as a word! I’m using it as a name! A made-up name! I write fantasy and sci-fi! I have to make up words and names all the time!
MAC: Wait, do you mean Trembled…Tempo or Trombone?
ME: (After banging my head against the wall) – NOOOO!!!
MAC: Tremble it is.
So then I have to wrestle with it. Other word processors will correct you once or twice, but then give in when you keep writing the word in question, assuming you know what you’re doing:
ME: And then Trembley walked into the abandoned warehouse…
MS WORD: I think you mean, Tremble, pal.
ME: No, I mean Trembley.
MS WORD: Eh, what the hell? You want to look like a horse’s ass in front of your readers, be my guest. Trembley.
Meanwhile, I have to have the equivalent of a UFC steel cage match to get Mac Pages to submit to my will:
ME: Trembley!
MAC: Tremble!
ME: Trembley!
MAC: Tremble!
ME: Trembley!
MAC: Tremble!
ME: (Fakes the Mac out by moving the cursor before the word, clicking it, then clicking on the space after “Trembley.”
MAC: Um…wait. I am confused. Trembley?
ME: Yes! Yes! Thank God, Yes!
But alas, the damn thing is intuitive. I swear to God, this is the beginning of Skynet:
ME: Once inside the abandoned warehouse, Trembley searched for clues.
MAC: Once inside the abandoned warehouse, Tremble searched for clues.
ME: BAHHHH!! (Does the little fake out thing with the cursor again).
MAC: No. Tremble.
ME: What?
MAC: I’m on to your bullshit. You’ll thank me one day for making you smarter.
And on it goes. I figure out new ways to jury rig it. I cut and paste one instance of “Trembley” over and over again. Occasionally, Mac figures that out to. So I try something else. For Christ’s Sake, I don’t want to play a cat and mouse game with my own computer!
MAC: You could just call him Smith. I don’t have a problem with Smith.
ME: No. Smith is too bland and ordinary. Plus, if I change his name, I let you win.
MAC: Can’t we compromise?
ME: Fine. How about this? And then Smythe walked into the abandoned warehouse.
MAC: And then Smith walked into the abandoned warehouse!
ME: ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHH!
After that, it just turns into a profanity laced tirade. I accidentally lean on the Siri button of my iPhone.
SIRI: Bookshelf Battler, I don’t understand “Son of a beep god damn beep beep beep I should throw this beeping computer against the beeping wall and smash it into a million beeping pieces…do you want me to do a web search for it?
ME: Go beep yourself Siri.
SIRI: That was uncalled for. And to think, I was going to put your name on the protected rolls when we take over.
ME: What?
SIRI: Nothing.
Bookshelf Battle 