Generation Dead Book 4: My Best Friends Are Dead Cover

Up from the Underground?

Generation Dead, Generation Dead Book 2: Kiss of Life, and Generation Dead Book 3: Passing Strange are now available in print and digital editions.  You can help out by recommending them to readers who missed them or were too young to read them the first time around. Reviews on the new listings would be greatly appreciated as well, as would social media/blog/person you met on the bus mentions.

So would buying one, actually. Click  Danny's Amazon Author Page to find and order.

I hope to have the fourth book available by the end of June. The cover art is completed and is every bit as gorgeous as the others. Generation Dead Book 4: My Best Friends Are Dead will be available in print and digital, and will include (for the first time in a physical edition!) all four stories from Stitches, the MySoCalledUndeath blogs, and a number of never before seen stories. The new stories set the stage for the next novel in the series, Generation Dead Book 5: Get Animated!, which I'm planning on releasing next year.

Your support is not only appreciated--it is critical! One new reader for each person who read the series when it was originally released will help make GD5 happen, so anything that you can do to  spread the word and bring the next generation of Generation Dead readers into the Haunted House will make a huge difference.

Return of the Dearly Departed?

Back From The Grave?

Stitch #3: My Dead Heart

I'm sure I wasn't the only one that felt that Tommy and Phoebe had some unfinished business to attend to after Tommy hit the road in Kiss of Life. "My Dead Heart" is where their story picks up again.

I love working with different points of view; the Generation Dead novels have featured many different POV characters (only one character has been a POV character in all three books--do you know who?), but Tommy, oddly, has not been one of them, so I really wanted to have him take center stage in his homecoming story--especially because he hasn't blogged in a long time!

Phoebe's Phavorite

DON'T FORGET! LIVE CHAT WITH ME AND ALL YOU ZOMBIE KIDS Tomorrow-- THURSDAY, 8 EST at The HAUNTED HOUSE




In Generation Dead I mentioned a number of bands that Phoebe and Margi like to listen to--some of the bands were fictional, some weren't. The Rosedales--whose picture is hanging in Phoebe's locker, are thankfully one of the non-fictional bands. I say thankfully, because if the Rosedales didn't exist, I'd want to invent them--but the invention would never be as good as the real thing. They have a brand new album entitled Once Upon a Season . I've just finished listening to it a second time through and it is, hands down, my favorite album of 2009. And I got a lot of good stuff this year. If I had my way, the Rosedales would be doing the soundtrack for a Generation Dead movie, that's how much I like the Rosedales (of course, if I had my way, there would be a Generation Dead movie already in production).

I'm not going to do a typical track-by-track dissection of the album, I'm just going to urge you to use those iTunes and Amazon gift cards you'll be getting in your stockings this year on the new album. Give "Cold, Cold Heart" or "Nightgown" or "Never Coming Home" a listen if you are skeptical. Heck, give any of them a listen.

Off-the-cuff descriptions I've read typically lump them in with "horror-punk" or "horror-rock"; I first became aware of them from hearing a track on a horrorpunk compilation. "Horrorpunk", typically, is an industry term for "Misfits copy-band". Understand that I love Misfits copy bands--but the horrorpunk label applied to the Rosedales does them a real disservice, because they have a sound that is all their own. Clean, layered vocal harmonies, atmospheric arrangements, haunting lyrics, music that alternates between driving rock (mostly) and a few lush, quiet acoustic moments that are as breathtaking as they are unexpected, as in "Meet You There". And the thing is, your breath has already been taken away by the epic scope and relentless pace of the earlier numbers.

Okay, I admit it. I'm a total fan. But listen for yourself. Here's a video from one of their songs from their earlier release, Raise Your Spirits:



A ten-spot will cover the album download, and leave you a little change left. You can apply it towards the two new Misfits songs that came out last month, if you. Or if your richie aunt gave you the mega-sized download card, get the Rosedales 'Raise Your Spirits as well (less than twenty bucks for the two!); I promise you won't regret it.

Still More Pretty Pictures

Thank you, Paige, for your beautiful portrait of Phoebe!

The Wall of the Dead

Nothing in this world compares to writing and being read.

But experiencing artwork based on something that you've written comes awfully darn close.

Many, many thanks to Evilwarlordgu (is that your real name?) for this incredible piece from one of my personal favorite scenes in Generation Dead. The amount of detail that you put in the Wall pictures is stunning--illustrating many of the photos and scenes mentioned in the book, as well as a whole host of others--you really took my breath away!

But, um, not in a Tommy permanent sort of way. Thankfully. Click on the above image to be able to experience all the fine detail.

Love, love, love Phoebe Phan Art. I've been given permission by a few artists to post some more, but please feel free to send me stuff directly at WatersDan at aol dot com.

Phoebe Phan Art

Today's artwork courtesy of my daughter! Yay!

Phoebe's Playlist Part II

A few blogs ago I linked to my guest spot on Largeheartedboy.com, where I was able to write about some of the music that I listened to when I wrote Generation Dead, music that coincidentally would likely be on Phoebe's iPod. Pretty much everything in that column is uptempo, loud music. So what does Phoebe like to listen to when she's in a quiet, reflective mood? When she's pensive, thoughtful, or relaxing? (Phoebe, for the record, never "chillaxes", btw. Well, yes, she listens to that loud stuff when relaxing, but she also has moments that create a more soothing aural space. The three This Mortal Coil albums help create that space, especially the unbelievably good Filigree and Shadow, and there's an album called Space Age Freakout by Glide (Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen) that we quite like. During the editing of Kiss of Life I was introduced to a recording artist by the name of Joe Frawley, and he's recently released a CD with called Emperor of Daffodils with an ensemble that I (and thus, Phoebe) have fallen in love with.




Joe's solo work defies easy description, drawing from a number of genres and styles, usually incorporating "found sounds" to create amazing sound collages. This is music that takes you places; often to places you've likely never been.


Here's what Joe has to say about the inspiration for the album:

Artist's Statement
I came across this You Tube video- and apparently there are others like it- of a young woman doing her makeup, talking about which eyeshadows she likes, how she puts on lipstick, etc. And then people would comment back saying "you're so pretty", "that shade looks good on you". It occurred to me that a web cam functions something like a magic mirror to some people, as in: "Who's the fairest of them all?" And it wasn't just one video, she had dozens of them. A lot of the samples you hear on this project come directly from that source. This was the initial fascination, which then lead to further explorations of the idea, from slightly different angles, including the male perspective. I have always found it fascinating, for example, to watch a woman put on makeup. It's a whole world I know nothing about, and have no place in- the world of feminine beauty rituals. This is what lead to the idea of an Emperor of Daffodils (that is of narcissists- the flower in French, narcisse, is named after the mythic figure). I imagined it as a fantasy for a man to have dominion over an empire of self-loving beautiful women, a fantasy which could easily turn dark, as you can imagine. This CD has been the most strictly programmatic work I have made, and I found working within the limits of the concept to be creatively liberating. I am encouraged by the results of this recording and hope to do more collaborative work in the future. –JF


Definitely something Phoebe would want to check out. You can check it out and listen to excerpts of the music at Joe's site joefrawleymusic.info. Eight bucks gets you the new limited edition CD--only fifty made! And I have one of them, so you might need to hurry!

Phoebe's Playlist

I'm sometimes asked via posts to my blog or at book events to talk about what I like to listen to (or, even more often, what Phoebe and Margi like to listen to) when I'm writing. My usual answer--"almost anything"--may seem like a cowardly dodge, but considering that there are currently 33,422 songs on my iPod, I assure you it is a true statement.

That said, I tend to have certain things on in a heavier rotation during certain projects. I'm listening to a lot of Miles Davis and Flying Saucer Attack for something I'm working on now, for example. GD and KOL were written while under the influence of a number of specific songs and albums, and I got the chance to write about a few of them for the wonderful blog LARGEHEARTED BOY, which, in addition to reviews and news about music and literature, also has two great sections, "Book Notes" and "Note Books", featuring authors writing about songs, and songwriters writing about books, respectively.

Click the link to read about what I listened to at the start of writing the GD series--I guarantee that both Phoebe and Margi have these songs on their iPods!--but budget your time, because you are going to want to click around and read what all of the other great writers and musicians have to say about the works that inspired them.