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New Books Just in Time for Christmas

I’ve got a list for you and I’m checking it twice: New Books Just in Time for Christmas. Some are ebooks, some print, some will cost you, some are free. Your choice.

Let’s start with the BIG ONE: my latest release: Oops! Tales of the Zombie Turkey Apocalypse. The paperback came out November 27th. You can get the ebook NOW for preorder.

This is my first collection of short stories. It includes some of your favorites: A Phoenix Tale, In A Pickle, and A Hamster’s Tale. In it, you’ll find many others that’ll tickle your fancy.

Do you want to know more?

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.

From the back cover of Oops!
New Books
The full cover spread of Oops!

New Books – Free For You Follow This

But wait! You’ve got more coming to you! This Middle-Grade e-Book offer includes my own, Secret Supers.

New Books
Click to get your free copy!

In case you can’t read this blurb, here it is:

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.

From Secret Supers back cover

Is that all? Nope! Read on for more free stuff.

If you’re a newsletter subscriber, I give away two books every month. I’ll give you a free book in exchange for a review. Just contact me here.

And I’ll give anyone that asks a free audiobook until all my codes are gone. Check them out below.

Free Books
Your first Free audiobook sample
Your next Free audiobook sample
Paranormal Privateers audiobook
The last Free audiobook sample

Goodbye for now from Chambanacon in Bloomington Illinois!

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How Do You Keep Writing and Where Do You Get Ideas?

How Do You Keep Writing and Where Do You Get Ideas? I’m glad you asked because that’s what I’ll tell you.

The first rule is to desire to write. I love writing crazy ideas into books, surprising and entertaining people. I truly would do it for nothing. In fact, my net profits so far are nothing.

I loved writing Zombie Turkeys. That way I got to write ridiculous chapters with weddings and zombie turkeys.

How Do You Keep Writing
Zombie Turkey dressed for a wedding. Chapter icon

Then, I sought to top myself with My Undead Mother-in-law. I had to make a new villain, one so evil you would feel sorry for the zombies. I made a sociopath who used cyborg animals to commit crime, like capuchin monkeys, rats, and black mambas.

How Do You Keep Writing
Rat, capuchin monkey, and black mamba cyborgs chapter icon from My Undead Mother-in-law

Now, how would I top myself again for my third book? I hated repeating myself. I needed something related, but totally beyond a mere undead mother-in-law. How about if I put the zombie family on a luxury yacht, give them a letter of marque from the President, and send them around the world fighting American enemies, public and private? That’s a start!

My undead family would be zombie pirates. But that phrase is too common. Paranormal Privateers became the title of my third book.

How Do You Keep Writing
Paranormal Privateers Andy’s third book

Next, a disaster happened.

Ruh Roh! Writer’s Block

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEffUAATOY8

I got stuck writing this book. How could I keep topping myself? My paranormal privateers fought pirates, slavers, terrorists, and prevented a nuclear holocaust. What could come next?

I needed a change, a total surprise. But how do I get there? What did I want to write? I loved 1950s science fiction movies. So I wrote what I loved. That is how you break writer’s block. Return to your passion.

I can’t tell you what I did without spoiling the book, but I’ll give you some hints.

Your first hint:

Your first hint

Now, your second hint.

Your second hint.

That is your second rule to keep writing year after year: write what you love.

I finished Paranormal Privateers two months after NaNoWriMo, in January 2018. It appeared in ebook and print on Amazon and later Audible.

(By the way, you can get all my books at Audible. They’re free if you’re a member. Zombie Turkeys, My Undead Mother-in-law, and Paranormal Privateers. Or, if you want a free copy, just write me and I’ll send you one in exchange for an honest review.)

But what would I write next? I burned myself out on zombies. This leads to your third rule.

How Do You Keep Writing: Write Something New

Where could I go next? What else did I love writing? What did I love reading? Young adult science fiction. Everyone wants a superhero origin story. I wanted to do one of those for my fourth book.

But this had to be different, unusual. Superman got his power from birth on another planet. Batman got his power through intelligence and training. How about an ordinary hero? How about an unlikely hero? What was the least likely hero?

Now I get personal. My daughter’s been disabled with cerebral palsy since her birth. What if my hero had cerebral palsy–and his superpower didn’t take it away?

Then superheroes often come in teams. What if they were all disabled, each with a different disability and a different superpower?

I had my next book: Secret Supers.

Finally: Your Free Books

These offers are just good until October 31st.

First, you get Zombie Turkeys for free. Click here.

Free Zombie Turkeys
Free Zombie Turkeys ebook

Now you get your BIG GIFT: 31 Free books follow and end this blog post.

31 free books for you
Click for 31 free books. Only until October 31, 2019
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5 Weird Things I’ve Never Shared With You

5 Weird Things I’ve Never Shared With You in the whole three years I’ve been writing this blog. How can I be sure? I’ve just learned about them in the past month.

But first, let’s have this:

I wasn’t planning to count this as one weird thing since it’s satire, but I wanted to start with something funny.

Okay, this next item begins the weirdness:

This triggered so many things in my mind: first, the cloaking field from Star Trek.

The Enterprise decloaking

Next, Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility:

https://giphy.com/gifs/harry-potter-magic-J5lxA8X7kisRG
Harry Potter getting his invisibility on

But the oldest example is below:

The Invisible Man – “I’ll show you!”

On we go to the next weird thing.

Your Second Weird Thing of 5 Weird Things

How can I not have the phrase ‘intelligent slime mold’ in my blog post? You may ask, ‘How can a slime mold be intelligent?” They can efficiently solve the famous ‘Travelling Salesman’ problem. You haven’t heard of that? Check out the following article:

5 Weird Things
The Travelling Salesman Problem – click the image for more

Earlier in my life, I worked in operations research and this problem was difficult to solve by computer. How difficult? It belongs to a class of problems called ‘NP hard problems’. That means the difficulty goes up as a factorial (1*2*3 = 3 factorial) of the number of cities.

You can solve this by brute computing force, but the slime mold does it without brains! That’s weird.

Your Third Weird Thing

But first, a book break!

I am an author, so I love books. Tell me your favorite and I’ll send you a free short story.

On to our next weird thing! How about a robot that does gymnastics? It also weighs about four hundred pounds.

If this robot isn’t grist for a science fiction story, then I’ve never read SciFi before!

The Penultimate Weird Thing

I love vocabulary for its own sake, ever since I read the ‘Abecedarian Book’ when I was twelve. Penultimate is one of those weird words you read, but may not know the meaning. Look it up.

I read this book when I was 12.

Your new weird thing begins here.

Do you believe this?

You know it’s weird when you can’t believe it (I didn’t) and yet it’s true.

The Last Weird Thing of 5 Weird Things – And Free Stuff

Who doesn’t like dragons?

Finally, I bid you adieu!

5 Weird Things
Andy Zach at Archon in St. Louis

PS: I forgot to tell you where you can get free stuff.

First, you can get 31 free books here:

5 Weird Things
Click image to get 31 free books

Then, you can get my comic paranormal animal book, Zombie Turkeys here:

5 Weird Things
Click to get your free copy