Lincoln Crisler

Here it is. I hope you like it. Thanks to everyone who helped make this a success!

Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines mixes two concepts that are each worthy of a story on their own: heroes’ redemption and zombie apocalypse. The story weaves back and forth between present-day events, which revolve around an attack by a marauding horde of zombies guided by an intelligent mind, and a series of flashbacks revealing the backstories of the heroes involved as well as events leading up to the present. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the source of the zombie outbreak is revealed, and the story ends in a high-pitched battle with the fate of one of humanity’s last bastions at stake.

Like any superhero worth reading about, the book has a serious weakness: a distinct lack of supervillains. The zombies more or less fill the antagonist role, and do well, and the outbreak itself comes from an unexpected source that’s a little too close to home, but the only bad guys with powers are a zombied demon whose personality is only seen in his backstory chapter and an actual villain named Midknight who showed up near the end of the book  and was quickly dispatched. Of course, this could just be my taste for the darker side of things kicking in. At any rate, Ex-Heroes was well worth my time and an excellent addition to my small-but-growing collection of superhero prose work.

This is how behind I am: I’ve done two Blog Talk Radio shows this month and didn’t even post the damned widgets. Here are the April 2nd Funky Werepig and April 18th Francy & Friends appearances I made. These were lots of fun, and Greg Hall and Francy Weatherman are awesome hosts. I can’t wait to kick it with both of them again!

… to let everyone know I haven’t forgotten that I have a blog. The last two stops of my signing tour just happened to coincide with the very beginning and very end of a week in California with my wife’s family, and we’ve been busy catching up with old friends.

Next week will be my last seven days of freedom before returning to my job as a GI Joe Live-Action Roleplayer, and before I get my head back in the game, I plan on giving you two or three book reviews, a video documentary of my April signing tour, and my Sookie Stackhouse confession. Stay tuned!

The Riverside signing will, as indicated elsewhere, take place from 11AM-1PM this Saturday. I’ll stay an extra hour or two if things are really jumping, and sometime between 1-3PM I’ll follow the signing with a few beers at Kilarney’s @ Riverside Plaza, 3639 Riverside Plaza Dr. Ste 532 Riverside, CA 92506 951-682-2933. I’d love to see you there.

I can now officially confirm a date in Phoenix, Arizona. On 23 April, from 1-3PM, I’ll be signing copies of MAGICK & MISERY and DESPAIRS & DELIGHTS at the BORDERS BOOKS at 2402 E. Camelback Road, Suite 200. A couple of readers in Arizona asked me about an Arizona date, and since I won’t likely be in the Southwest for quite some time after this May, I didn’t want to disappoint. Special thanks to Brennan, Event Coordinator, who managed to help me pull off a last minute engagement!