Children of the Grave

by Joe McKinney, Armand Rosamilia, Tonia Brown, Alex Laybourne, Aurelio Rico Lopez III

Synopsis

Six talented zombie authors take on the After-life in an interactive shared-world zombie anthology.

Welcome to Purgatory, an arid plain of existence where zombies are the least of your problems. It's a post-mortem Hunger Games, and Blaze, a newcomer to Purgatory, needs your help to learn the rules of this world and choose the best course of action.

Purgatory is escapable, so aid Blaze to win the favor of the ruling Gatherers by earning this right. But what's waiting outside Purgatory, is beyond what the human mind can fathom.

His fate. Your choices.

Your six different choices have been penned by Joe McKinney, Armand Rosamilia, Tonia Brown, Joe Mynhardt, Aurelio Lopez III, and Alex Laybourne.

Allow the opening scenario to engulf you into the shared-world, after which each author not only chooses the fate of Blaze, but also brings in their own take of this world, and Blaze's backstory, since each backstory affects the choices our ‘hero' makes. Each author also brings in a few surprises ranging between earthly creatures to beasts from the pits of hell itself. And what waits at the end of Purgatory? Some say if you fight hard enough you'll get a free pass back to life on earth. Perhaps even Heaven. Then again, Hell might be closer than they think.

Welcome to a world of death, pain, hunger, regret, and thirst, accompanied by the uncertainty of what waits after. What waits ahead is a world beyond this one where it's every man and woman for him or herself.

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Interview with the authors:

So, what makes the Children of the Grave anthology so special?
Armand Rosamilia: The concept was special as well as the authors involved. Starting out at the same point but having a lot of freedom to tell your own story was fulfilling.

Alex Laybourne: Children of the Grave offers readers a chance to play their own part in the story they are reading. It gives them a certain degree of control that other, regular books do not. That alone sets the collection apart from others on the shelves today.

Which direction did you take with your story?
Armand Rosamilia: I decided to make my story as different as possible without losing what the created world was about and using some of the settings to better my story. I hope I succeeded. 

Joe Mynhardt: My version of Blaze's journey takes him to a large community where he needs to prove his worth, but eventually needs to decide if he wants to stay or escape.

Alex Laybourne: I wanted Blaze to be haunted, to kill his friends believing it was the right thing to do, because he wasn't like them. I had him meet up with a woman, and slowly, his real story was introduced. His time in purgatory was a test. He had one last chance to make the right decision. Did he make it? Well, people will just have to read my version of the story.

Why should readers give this zombie collection a try?
Alex Laybourne: The story is a beautiful package. From the cover, to the different elements that are drawn from Joe Mynhardt's compelling opening. One single introduction giving birth to so many different possible outcomes. It is giving readers six different experiences in one book. While it is a zombie tale, it is so much more than that. It has regret and sorrow, a tenderness and a wild unashamed evil nature to it. It is a dark fantasy tale. Something for all tastes.

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Children of the Grave eBook categories:

• Short stories and anthologies
• Horror
• Zombie Apocalypse
• Horror Outbreak
• Shared-World Horror
• Zombies
• Post-apocalyptic
• Short stories
• Horror Anthology

Release date: September 4, 2015

Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing

Print pages: 199