THE DEAD SILENCER Digital Remasters: Ultimate Editions in Production!

If you’re a movie buff, you’re aware of the Criterion Collection. You’ve likely seen the trailers on their discs, in which they show identical frames of film side by side. One side is fuzzy pre-Criterion restoration, and the other is pristine and clear. 

I had a cute idea to do something like that with my current “remastering” of Bleeding Kansas, but why bother reminding people that stuff still gets by me after so many readings? It’s painful enough for me without subjecting innocent people to this.

Bitter Dark:
Available only in paperback.

It took me a solid Sunday-through-Sunday week, but I finished my second full rewrite of Bleeding Kansas based on the original “Bitter Dark” first edition. I saved myself a lot of time and grief by abandoning my idea of making it a hybrid of the second “Plain Dark” edition. Ignoring the second edition fit better with my primary objective, which is to ensure that the tone and feel of the narrative is on a par with the writer of The Wrong Kind of Dead. The L. Roy Aiken of 2015 is several orders of magnitude removed from the early 2013 model who wrote that Bitter Dark first edition of Bleeding Kansas. Why not give my first published novel the benefit of that experience?

Although the Plain Dark second edition of Thanksgiving Week 2013 is smoother, I—and most readers, it seems—preferred Bitter Dark’s edge. My third book does a lot of reaching back to Bleeding Kansas, and The Wrong Kind of Dead is very Bitter Dark all by itself. As it should be. The zombie apocalypse is not a pretty place. It is not fair. It is not nice. It brings out the worst in people. It’s a Crapsack World crying out for a hero, but sometimes the best you can do is a survivor you’ve known for longer than most, and therefore more or less trust.

Poor bastards don’t stand a snowball’s chance.

From here, I’ll move on to the remaster of Grace Among the Dead, which I’ve always felt could have benefited from one more reading before it was published. This will be the last time for it, though. Which means The Wrong Kind of Dead needs to be done right the first time. As much as I love Derek Grace and his extended family, 2015 is the year my SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER series is put to bed, once and for all. My take on the zombie apocalypse will belong to the ages. It will be time to move on to the Next Thing, whatever they hell that may be (and I have a few ideas). 

That’s what I’ve been doing in lieu of Facebook and Twitter and blog posts. I’ll be mining old Facebook posts to use here, as I need something to entertain my new audience with. The summer is coming on fast. I’ve got to be there for it, with the very best I’ve got.