Interview with little ol' me

Check out my interview on zombie blog Bricks of the Dead.

Short excerpt:

"ZombieMutts: Even major publishers seem to have somewhat of a bastardized idea of what horror content is. Inside a bookstore looking on the shelves you see a lot of cookie cutter horror books sharing space with the sci-fi books. Yet what’s being produced in the E-Book market by self-published authors to indie publishers is very different.


Rod Redux: That’s why I’m making a living and they’re closing shop. Seriously, though… when I develop a story idea into a book, I continually ask myself: Is this original? Has it been done before? How can I make it MORE unique? I get on the internet and search for names, try to double check myself for originality, because it’s easy to accidentally copy someone else nowadays, there’s so many people writing books and making movies and comics. The mainstream publishers do the opposite. They say, “Harry Potter was such a huge success. How can we repeat this?” The problem is, Harry Potter was a success because it was original. There was nothing else like it. You lose that when you try to manufacture the NEXT Harry Potter or the NEXT Twilight. The best advice I could give to an aspiring writer would be to concentrate on originality, not on copying what’s considered “hot” at the moment, because it’s the originality, not the subject matter, that makes them hot.


ZombieMutts: Mort is a huge fan favorite character that would have fit perfectly in any number of situations. What made you drop him into the zombie apocalypse?


Rod Redux: From the outset, he was a zombie book character. His genesis as a protagonist was the question: what was the worst thing to be if there was a zombie apocalypse? The answer was, “a fat guy”. He’s the guy who is supposed to die first. The nerdy, fat, smart guy. He can’t run. He’s not fast or graceful or particularly brave, but he’s very pragmatic, and I believe, if there was a zombie apocalypse, that it would be the practical people who had the best chance of surviving. Plus, he genuinely cares for the people who become his friends during the course of the tale, and that gives him the strength to persevere, even after he’s been shot in the head with a cattlegun and infected with the Z virus and all the other horrible stuff that happens to him. If you don’t love something or someone, why fight? You’re going to die eventually anyway, so just let the zombies eat you and save yourself the bother. Plus, Mort is French for “death”, so even his name is sort of zombie-related."

Click here for the full interview!

Book Review of Mort, posted on bricksofthedead.com

Book Review: Mort

By zombiemutts on September 8th, 2011
Posted In: Reviews

Mort. That’s the name of the hero in this book, also called Mort. Not a very impressive sounding name, is it? Well neither is the guy himself. Out of breath after a light jog due to years of sitting on a stool in his comic book shop, Mort isn’t the type of main character who normally graces the pages of a zombiepocolypse book. Instead you’d expect a hero who dons a tactical vest while slapping clips into a carbine, but only while in-between tossing grenades at the tidal wave of zombie hordes that are coming his way. Mort isn’t like that.

This is a story about a normal guy who is trying to survive one day to the next after the apocalypse. A note about that apocalypse: he missed the beginning of it since he is such a hard sleeper, and didn’t even realized it had happened until he saw an employee being chased. Mort is, without a doubt, the most memorable main character – not to mention all around unique zombie book - that I have ever read. Mort is flavored with laugh out loud moments while still maintaining its horror base and tension. It takes skillful writing to accomplish that, and Mort somehow never stops being serious while dispensing well-placed humor.

Nothing about Mort is formulaic; it thrives in its cleverness.

Identifiable characters can elevate trash to passable entertainment, and make a good story great. In Mort‘s case, the character development is done both organically and believably. By the end we end up seeing a little bit of Mort in all of us, and I think we all know someone a like his brash sidekick, Pete. I don’t know if it was just the love for an everyman hero, but I was cheering for Mort throughout the story.

And if zombies aren’t enough for you, there is another supernatural group, who has been hidden in the shadows of humanity for centuries and add a significant twist to the story. Chances are you will figure out what they are, as hints are subtly laid out, but the ending was nonetheless a complete shock and unique enough to where an entire books series could be written based on the idea – and I hope that’s exactly what happens.

The book is also incredibly graphic at times, and I will gladly admit there were several parts of the book that literally made me cringe in disgust. But it wasn’t vileness for the sake of vileness, or cheap gore to keep up the horror novel aesthetic. Those cringing moments fit, and they fit perfectly to either advance the story or give it additional depth. As a pretty big fan of Rod’s collective work, I recognize such moments as an indelible part of his style and appreciate that he never simply jams something into a story for shock value. He is simply too good of a writer for such cheap genre crutches.

I bring this up because some of the more ghastly scenes, as well as Pete’s harsh language, have received criticism from reviewers, which is quite honestly bizarre when considering Mort and the rest of Rod’s work is clearly in the horror genre. Let’s face fact: sometimes people do and say things to each other that are far worse than anything a monster is capable of. I love the fact that Mort, along with the rest of Rod’s work, will leave me thinking about that even after I am done with a book. It’s horror that sticks with you long after the book is back on the shelf.

My one issue with Mort was I felt it was a bit too short. I was left wanting more. But then again I don’t feel like it was missing anything so maybe it was just right.

At this time this is Rod Redux’s only foray into the zombiepocolypse but he does have plans for a Mort prequel.

Grade A-

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Latest Book Review: Indian Summer, by reviewer badlucksunshine

Five Stars out of Five *****

"Any reader(s) familiar with Redux's prior novels will be taken aback by Indian Summer. Instead of his brilliant approach in reinventing classic "monsters", this piece is a fictional memoir of the human experience in all of its tragedy and beauty with its own monsters. It is not devoid of horrors and atrocities, but these are true-to-life experiences rather than supernatural. Eddie, the 9 yr old boy who is the focal point, endures through his innocence being stolen from him via a series of events that are NOT for the squeamish. But again, the emotions, reactions, and circumstances are all very real. Redux captures the viewpoint of a child with eerie precision and actually returns the reader to that state of mind. There is a spectrum in Indian Summer of both pain and redemption that has not been successfully brought about by most authors. As a fan of Redux's other works, I didn't expect such a blunt and direct story lacking in his signature dark humor, which is another aspect that makes this that much more unique. I'll make no comparisons to other writers or books, but whatever elements you may be familiar with have been reinterpreted. If you can handle a dark depiction of reality, you have no excuse to not read Indian Summer."

You can buy Indian Summer below, for the Kindle ereader or in paperback format.

Indian Summer for Kindle or Paperback