Comparisons to “The Zombie Survival Guide” are only inevitable. Max Brooks’ “The Zombie Survival Guide” is perhaps the most detailed examination of what to do and how to act during the conventional zombie apocalypse. Not just that, it poses as a good hand book for tips on what to do during a natural disaster. Such as filling containers with water until help arrives, and guarding your own domicile until help arrives. If it ever arrives. Mostly though it’s about how to survive during the zombie apocalypse of the Romero variety. “The Zombie Combat Manual” completely sets itself apart by being primarily about zombie combat and nothing more. Anything about where to hide, how to hide, where to retreat and how to store food is left for the Brooks novel.
“The Zombie Combat Manual” is strictly for the violence buff who wants to know how to battle the walking dead and look like a bad ass doing so. There are explorations in to various weapons, how they hold up in combat, and how to implement them. The newest treat for the book that the Brooks hand guide didn’t address pretty much in detail is the stench of the walking dead. In “The Zombie Combat Manual,” writer Roger Ma addresses that one of the best weapons in a zombie’s defense is the smell. Often times people can forget how badly they smell and become disoriented, allowing the zombies to gain the upper hand. It’s a new Easter egg in the zombie battle tactics that I enjoyed reading about.
Dame Darcy is a renowned underground entertainer, artist and practicing witch, and for all of her potential readers, she’s released “Handbook for Hot Witches” for the 12 and older age bracket. Released through “Henry Holt and Company,” author and illustrator Dame Darcy provides her young female readers with an illustrated guide to almost everything they could want to know about witchcraft, wicca, and mysticism.
It was pretty obvious judging by the context of “The Zombie Survival Guide” that author Max Brooks’ smash novel “World War Z,” a sequel to “The Zombie Survival Guide,” would come to the hands of readers eventually. “The Zombie Survival Guide” basically establishes within its texts that it’s meant as a tool for the individual living in a world with the potential to be infested by the walking dead with plenty of experiences dealing with outbreaks and invasions of the walking dead before. So of course it was only a matter of time before author Brooks dropped the formalities and let us get a large exploration in to the world that inspired “The Zombie Survival Guide.”
Pilar Alessandra is thinking about the busy writer, the writer who doesn’t have time to sit down every day and write their novels or screenplays. Some of us actually have a day job to pull, but also have the aspirations to write a screenplay. Too often have I’ve heard someone who aspired to create their own screenplay but just didn’t have the time or drive. Alessandra takes that aspiration and fuels it with the ability to write a screenplay in ten minutes at a time. Not only that, but she also teaches you to micro-manage your tasks and create small windows of opportunities to write your scripts within the ten minutes that can guarantee you a perfect script you always envisioned from the get go.