Survival Fiction Blog Coming Soon!

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Survfic Writer

Howdy and thanks for dropping by my new blog! Though I run several web sites, this is my first blog and I am still learning my way around. The theme is survival fiction, including stories about disasters, post-apocalyptic, wilderness survival, zombies, economic collapse, and more. See the What Is Survival Fiction page for more info. I am super busy working on my second novel, TALON. Thus I have little time for blogging. Once my schedule loosens up a little I will post more regularly, add an RSS feed, and other goodies. And will post chapters from my book to tease you. You can read a bit about it here. Feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a book or movie for me to review. More later…

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My First Writer’s Conference

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Survfic Writer

I have been working on my novel TALON for almost two years now, and have been with my local writer’s guild almost as long, but I had never attended a writer’s conference before. Until now. Bwah-ha-ha! The event happened this past weekend in Bellevue, and was organized by another writer’s guild I belong to, the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association. After attending two workshops on how to pitch a novel, I began merrily cornering anyone who would listen to tell them about my amazing story. At first I spoke mostly with strangers roaming about the lovely Bellevue Hyatt hotel, wandering over and asking, “Hey, what are you working on?” Pretty quickly I met lots of people eager to talk about their work, and happy to listen to mine. After getting lots of feedback from other unknown writers, I refined my pitch to five sentences. “Gosh Paul, I’m dying to hear what your book is about,” you say? Since you asked, here is the final version of the pitch that I delivered to several agents and publishers: Survival expert Alexander Ford never has an accident and wins at poker so much he has to lose on purpose to avoid suspicion. But a … Continue reading →

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What’s the Deal with Zombies?

Posted on July 23, 2011 by Survfic Writer

Wow, there sure are a lot of zombie stories these days. From The Walking Dead on AMC to the upcoming World War Z movie and the Remains made-for-TV flick on the Chiller channel, the undead seem to be shambling quite actively these days. There is the Resident Evil series, the various Night of the Living Dead remakes (remember, I am speaking only of recent releases), the nazi zombie film Dead Snow, and 28 Days Later. Okay, that last one isn’t a true zombie movie the vibe is pretty much the same. Books include World War Z by Max Brooks (son of director Mel Brooks), Day By Day Armageddon by J L Bourne, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Steve Hockensmith. Also popular are zombie comedies (zom coms) such as Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and Zombie Strippers. I personally don’t care for these but they represent the majority of offerings, it seems. There are zombie comic books like The Last Zombie, and Zombie, an Illustrated History of the Undead by Jovanka Vuckovic. Of course The Walking Dead was a comic long before it was a hit TV show.  The other appeal of zombies stories is that it allows us to fantasize about … Continue reading →

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Review: World Made by Hand, by James Kunstler

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Survfic Writer

A convincing look at life a few years after the failure of the electric grid and the end of modern life. Though very episodic in nature and shown through the eyes of a rather meek and unsympathetic protagonist, the disturbing believability make this a story worth reading. James Howard Kunstler is well know in TEOTWAWKI circles as the author of The Long Emergency, which takes a hard look at American society in a post-peak-oil world. He is an established non-fiction writer, having written several books on the topics of modern city design, suburban sprawl, and sustainability, as well as a few children’s books, a couple of farces, and a few others. His architecture books are standard reading in architecture courses. He argues that no more skyscrapers will be built in the US, that we must wean ourselves off our car culture, and that we will transition to a more agrarian society. In World Made by Hand, Kunstler takes this a step further, creating a fictional world where his predictions have come true. Oil is non-existent and the electrical grid has failed. Big cities have fallen into chaos but the rural areas have been able to form some semblance of an organized … Continue reading →

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Is Red Dawn Still Relevant Today?

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Survfic Writer

In 1982 I saw a film called Red Dawn. I was totally blown away! Here was a movie dealing with the stuff I’d been talking about for years. In past conversations, many of my friends and family had said “It can’t happen here,” or words to that effect. These arguments largely fell into two camps: the military people and the more conservative bunch felt there was no way the USSR could defeat the US and would certainly never invade, while the more liberal bunch felt diplomacy would prevent such a thing or simply didn’t want to face the possibility, it was just too scary. But there was a third group who felt that not only was it possible but the Soviets had a fair chance of winning, or at least drawing us into a stalemate. I was in this group. Yeah, yeah, not very patriotic, but the numbers, to me, told a story that neither flag-waving nor a head-in-the-sand posture could completely overcome. The Soviets had always shown a willingness to use force to expand their sphere of influence, and they certainly had more men, tanks, subs, planes, and missiles than we did. Sure, ours were better but they held … Continue reading →

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Welcome to my new blog!

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Survfic Writer

Hello! Thanks for visiting my new blog, survivalfictionblog.com. This blog is devoted to my favorite genre of fiction, adventure stories with a survival theme. I will have book and film reviews as well as posts dealing with all manner of survival stories. I have been an avid reader of survival fiction (survfic) for over 30 years and have quite a collection of books and films in this unique genre. Although this category is recognized in the TEOTWAWKI community, the mainstream bookstores do not have a designated shelf space for it. Heck, they don’t even have an “action-adventure” section. Amazon.com does acknowledge survival fiction as a category since you can use this as a search term and come up with a handful of books. So what exactly is survival fiction anyway? To me it’s a story involving a catastrophic upheaval in a characters life or society as a whole, requiring the protagonist to resort to extreme and unusual methods to stay alive and deal with the problems at hand. There is a lot of overlap between survfic and action-adventure since both are heavy on the combat and chase scenes. Books by Clive Cussler, Alistair Mclean, and James Rollins fall into the … Continue reading →

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