August Memes and Reviews for You, curated by me, Andy Zach. Let’s start with some memes:
How would you like another? Here you go!
With my current work-in-process, Secret Supers in Space, I feel like I have that block on my desk every other day. I’ve been writing it in fits and starts. It’s the third book in my Secret Supers series, starting with:
Jeremy has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around. He is in a special education class with Dan, who is blind, Kayla, who was mute and used a walker, and Audrey, who lost her legs and uses crutches. One afternoon, when conducting experiments in his laboratory, Jeremy accidentally gives himself superpowers. Specifically, he gains the ability of telekinesis, which he can use to help himself walk, cause his wheelchair to travel at much higher speeds, and even fly. Not wanting to keep this discovery to himself, Jeremy tells his 3 friends about it and gives each of them superpowers as well. But now that they have superpowers, what should they do? Following the words of Uncle Ben of Spiderman, they decide they must use their powers for good, beginning by trying to solve a case of a stolen car, and keep their identities a secret, modeling their costumes on the Incredibles.
This book was a fun story that placed individuals with disabilities front and center in the story. While the superpowers allow them to do things they wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise, it is what they choose to do with their powers that makes all the difference. Also, even with their superpowers, their initial disabilities aren’t erased, which I think is important. I liked to development of the characters and how they interacted and supported each other; I only wish the book had been longer so I could have spent more time with them. I am glad that there’s a sequel already published, and I look forward to reading/listening to it.
As usual, Dave Freer’s book is a romp in madness. We start off with an improbable hero, Squigs, six foot ten, and ectomorphic. He’s a university student in alchemy who’s on the run from people who want him dead and who just blew off his hand. So naturally, he jumps into another universe, through a portal predicted by his laptop computer.
The new world is swamp and ocean where he’s saved from death by a huge man and his beautiful daughter, who hates him. She’s destined to marry a hero from a royal family, so she has no time for a clumsy, awkward suitor. They include him on a mission to save the rapidly poached dragons of their world.
Secret societies, demons, and body-selling vampires enter the story, as well as a blood-thirsty dwarf and a spectral parrot.
My 12 year old read this one too and really liked it a lot better then the first book. It could stand on it’s own but will flow better if you read the first one before this book. This story has a great flow and plot that will definitely keep you engaged. Turns out that the hamster did change with the electromagnetic exposure…. The tweens go to Coaster World for a much needed break from their superhero duties when it gets interrupted by a villain. The tweens must work together again and reach out for help. It’s a great read for the younger elementary to adult reader.
Author Harmon Cooper continues his series of Arik, the steadily improving War Priest. Having great control of healing magic (revivura) and developed some control of illusion magic (chimuchura), he is also learning warrior magic (thunderura) and the magic under them all, Yokaura.
It’s a good thing he’s learning because he wants to get revenge on the current dictator Nobunaga who killed his family and friends and has his sister hostage. Along the way, he has to complete dozens of side quests to help friends and achieve goals.
Highly entertaining. I think this was my favorite so far
Eric Flint has a delightful collection of his shorter fiction in this book. He has novella-sized works from the Bellisarius series, the 1632 series, the Philosophical Stranger series. and the Rats, Vats, and Bats series. Each one shows his writing chops and quirky sense of humor.
In this sequel to Secret Supers, Jeremy has been experimenting on his hamster. As a result, Dancer has learned how to read, and is reading everything he can to learn about the human world. When Jeremy discovers this, he gets Dancer one of his old cell phones so Dancer can text the group.
As for the superhero business, the group needs some downtime and goes on vacation to Coaster World. What they don’t realize is that the villain they defeated also loves roller coasters and wants revenge against the Secret Supers.
Will the Secret Supers be able to defeat the villain and enjoy their vacation, or are their crime-fighting days numbered?
This was a fun sequel to Secret Supers. Not only did we have Andy Zach as a character in the book, as though the events were true and actually happened, but I loved the inclusion of a Super-Hamster helping out Jeremy and his friends. In this battle against the villain, the Secret Supers struggle, as the villain seems to have figured out how to neutralize their powers, and they not only have to call in support but also reveal themselves to some non-Supers.
The action was well-paced throughout, and the mystery of the identity of the villain was well-done. While I had suspicions, I wasn’t sure before the reveal, which was nice. If you enjoyed Secret Supers, I feel confident that you will also enjoy Villain’s Vacation.
For this book, I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Michael Stafford. Stafford gave a wonderful performance, and I would certainly listen to this audiobook again. (less)
Author Peter Alesso does a good job in his opening novel of this series. He portrays the troubles of being a normal human being in a time of genetic advancement. Then he details the technical training of a midshipman in the United Planets federation.
But there is an alien force lurking in the solar system. So far they have been benign. Will that continue?
Author Peter Alesso keeps his military scifi series going with the first interstellar exploration of humanity. Protagonist Henry Gallant is now a lieutenant reporting to Captain Neumann–a perfectionist and nitpicker.
They arrive at Tau Ceti and are attacked by the Titans, the methane-breathing aliens they fought on Earth. They barely survive and must land to repair their ship. Then they discover a settlement on the Earthlike Elysium–a settlement of humans.
How’d they get there? Who are they? And what will happen next?
This series is the first I have read of Andy Zach’s and I am glad I picked it up! The series continues with lots of action, characters continue to be developed, humor, and the zombies are still not mindless shells ambling around awaiting an axe to the head. Still a refreshing take on zombies as a whole.
I look forward to what Andy writes next!
Audio Version: Phil Blechman and Raven Perez do a great job with their respective characters and the overall narration.
Andy Zach, Tori Smith and Olivia Smith continue to create a fun interesting world in the Life After Life Chronicles series. The characters are refreshing, the world continues to build, and the insanity increases. Hilarious and action packed. Audio Version: Michael Stafford does a great job with their respective characters and the overall narration.
Greetings fans and anonymous internet readers! I’m author Andy Zach. I’ve decided to create one blog post to link to all my free short stories I’ve ever published. If you like them, you can get my collection of short stories below.
Accidents happen. Especially around zombie turkeys. Then you add zombie humans, and problems proliferate. Mix in some ill-planned genetic engineering, and things get crazy.
The insanity continues, from the story where zombies are merged with cucumbers to the one where two basement-dwelling nerds gain access to all video content from the past two hundred years—from aliens.
Andy Zach pulls out all the stops on his imagination as he serves up this smorgasbord of silliness. Try it. Laughter is good for your soul.
I left the air-conditioned comfort of the taxi, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the old bazaar in Jeddah assailed me: a robe-clad man on camel plodded by, an adjacent fishmonger added his smell to the fresh dung in the street, and the hawkers yelled their wares.
I could only speak Arabic at a middle school level, but as I strolled through the bazaar, I heard “Fresh dates!”…”Highest quality rugs!”…”Finest gold jewelry!”… “Ancient books! The rarest in Saudi Arabia!”
My head snapped around. A bald, stumpy man in a white caftan saw me look and said, “Books? You want ancient books?”
“Yes.” I spoke carefully, knowing my poor accent. “Can you speak English?” I didn’t have much hope.
Now, what was he going to do? His boss just told him to double the productivity of Vegan Inc’s pickle strain they used for their Kilwowski Pickle brand. That was completely impossible. But keeping his job required it. He was the low man on the genetic engineering totem pole at Vegan Inc., the last one hired and the first one to be fired if another recession hit.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t face this. So he cruised the internet.
“The origin of Zombie turkeys? I didn’t know they’d found that. Hmm, a Midley Beacon exclusive, the foremost zombie news source,” he read to himself.
Zombie turkeys had ravaged Illinois and the US at Thanksgiving. Thankfully they hadn’t hit near Terre Haute where he lived. He skimmed the article rapidly. Corn All, one of their agribusiness rivals, had genetically modified their corn to fight off corn disease. The genetic modification would adapt to the disease at a cellular level, and neutralize it by copying the DNA from the disease organism, whether fungal or bacteria.
When wild turkeys ate the corn, it modified the E Coli in their gut, creating the zombie turkey bacteria, e coli gallopavo. That got into the turkeys’ bloodstream and made them zombies, able to regenerate any lost or damaged body part, even bringing turkeys back from the dead.
What caught his eye was the reproduction rate: zombie cells reproduced every twenty minutes. Could that work for pickles? Why not try?
This was one of my favorite short stories to write. It is set soon after my novels Zombie Turkeysand Zombie Detective. The story icon is from my book Oops!.
Get Your Free Short Stories – The Third is the Best Yet
He was dead. At least, his business was. And without his business, his wife would leave him and take their new baby. Then he might as well be dead.
His dad had run the Elysium Fields Mortuary for thirty years and had made a killing at it.
The first and only mortuary in their small town of Hillvale, everyone got buried there. He charged normal prices, he was friendly, and he helped their community. His dad said to him when he was a teen, “Irving, after you get your college degree, go to mortuary school, and when you come out, I’ll hire you and then turn the business over to you. You’ll be set for life.”
Irv had no other plans. He liked this cute blonde Shelley in high school, and she liked him. So he learned the business, got his degree in psychological counseling, and came back and married her. Just as he promised, his dad turned Elysium Fields over to him after a few years and retired to Florida with his mom.
The first years had been great. People were dying to be his customers. He and Shelley remodeled his parents’ old house, went on vacations around the world, had his and her luxury cars. Shelley had their son, Nathan. Then the bottom dropped out of his business.
Rather than dying normally, people were taking zombie blood. Lung cancer? Gone. Heart disease? Cleared up. Severe accidents? Limbs grew back. Most people then took the vaccine to remove the zombie disease, because who wants to be a zombie with glowing red eyes? But they were still alive and healthy.
“Whatcha doing, Brice?” my boss Wilma O’Reilly asked, after sneaking up behind me.
I jumped. As usual, I was cruising the internet, bored with my job. Wendy was my boss. How awkward.
We worked at Vegan Inc, an agricultural conglomerate. I was their lead geneticist in charge of enhancing the qualities of the corporation’s vegetable products through genetic modification. Thinking fast, I said, “Uh, researching. I’m reading about the ‘Butterfly Effect’. It shows how small changes lead to great changes far away. Like a butterfly’s wing causes a cyclone on the other side of the earth.” That should work since that was what I was reading.
“How is this related to your current assignment of increasing the yield of our zucchini varieties?”
“I’m trying to relate my past success with cucumbers to zucchinis.”
“I’d think you’d just do what you did last time when I promoted you.”
“Well, I did and it didn’t work for zucchinis. I tried zombie hummingbird DNA, zombie turkey DNA, and twenty other zombie animals as well. But nothing worked. So I’m stretching my mind to the farthest reaches of what might be possible.”
“That might work. Try this scenario for a possibility: if you don’t make progress in another month, you’ll lose your position. You got promoted for great success. You’ll get demoted for failure.” Then she smiled sunnily and said, “Have a nice day!” as she left me.
The Taser hit me in the back. I convulsed uncontrollably, shocked out of sleep.
“Okay, wakey, wakey. Time to go model for your mistress,” squeaked a high tenor.
The bearded hulk who guarded us held his Taser ready, in case Lulu and I weren’t fast enough. He was so hairy, I couldn’t tell where his beard ended and his chest began. We donned the haute couture apparel set before us. He nodded his approval and gestured toward the door. He always followed us with his Taser.
“We’ve been here weeks and we don’t know your name. What shall we call you?” I ventured. I had some vague hope of putting him at his ease so we could escape.
He laughed. “Call me Gronk.” He wheezed when he laughed.
So I got him to laugh. Maybe that was progress. Maybe not. He also laughed when he tortured us with the Taser.
“That’s your problem isn’t it? Try the local apartments. Look for rooms to rent on the internet.”
I could tell by his grim expression he was serious this time. He’d been nagging me for nearly a year to move out and ‘set up housekeeping’ on my own, ever since I’d graduated from the state university with my BA in Video Game art and my minor in computer science. I’d managed to wheedle him out of it and delay the date. Until now.
I’d been saving money from my Game Stop job to move out, but I kept dipping into it to add to my video game equipment. I had a sweet system, the fastest I could afford using the latest alien technology. Oh. I needed to find some place to keep all my equipment too. And I needed internet access–high speed. I had to have at least gigabit per second speed or I couldn’t keep competing.
This might affect my standing in the Fortnight league. My stomach clenched in worry. I texted my best friend Nick.
How fascinating! Dancer thought. This book says there are libraries where hundreds of books live. It also says the fiction books are in order by author name.
Dancer scurried off Your Sixth Year Reader to look at Jeremy Gentle’s bookshelf again. Jeremy was his owner and unknowing educator. Ever since he’d taught himself to read by studying the newspapers lining the bottom of his cage, he’d craved reading.
He hadn’t figured out why he started reading. One day he’d noticed patterns in the markings. He saw they repeated themselves in clumps. He saw the clumps formed patterns. He also listened to his owners differently. They also spoke in patterns. “Jeremy” was always called “Jeremy” or “Jeremy Gentle” by the his mother, and sometimes by his father.
Dancer had learned to understand Jeremy and his parents, and then he’d put the terms they spoke with the clumps on the paper. Each letter had a sound, and together they formed clumps his master called “words.”
The idea was brilliant. No wonder they were his owners and he was only a hamster
Jeremy Gentle fell flat on his face at therapy. That was normal since he had cerebral palsy. But his new superpower wasn’t normal.
Then things got weirder when his best friend, Dan Elanga, got a different superpower. But Dan was still blind.
Kayla Verdera and Aubrey Wilcosky, two girls in their middle-school special ed class, discovered they too had new superpowers. Kayla was mute and needed a walker. Aubrey lost two legs and used crutches. But they were as powerful as the boys.
What should the four friends do? Jeremy knew if the word got out, it’d be a media circus. Then they started fighting crime, as the Secret Supers. Who knew a disability could be a perfect disguise? No one would ever think of disabled kids as superheroes. Then they ran into problems they never expected.
Villain’s Vacation
Jeremy Gentle fell flat on his face at therapy. That was normal since he had cerebral palsy. But his new superpower wasn’t normal.
Then things got weirder when his best friend, Dan Elanga, got a different superpower. But Dan was still blind.
Kayla Verdera and Aubrey Wilcosky, two girls in their middle-school special ed class, discovered they too had new superpowers. Kayla was mute and needed a walker. Aubrey lost two legs and used crutches. But they were as powerful as the boys.
What should the four friends do? Jeremy knew if the word got out, it’d be a media circus. Then they started fighting crime, as the Secret Supers. Who knew a disability could be a perfect disguise? No one would ever think of disabled kids as superheroes. Then they ran into problems they never expected.
