Who Are the Paranormal PrivateersHeroes? It’s one of my favorite books. It’s my most complex and surprising. So who are the heroes? I give you a free sample below. It’s in a unique humorous zombie hero genre. I also give you the non-zombie villains.
But let’s start at the beginning: My Undead Mother-in-law,introduces the Newbys, a zombie family. The son, Don Newby, shows up in Zombie Turkeys. The family, led by the matriarchal undead mother-in-law Diane Newby, fights for zombie rights and any criminals that cross their paths. It helps that my zombies regenerate from injuries and get stronger each time.
This leads to Paranormal Privateers where the President has given them a letter of marquis to fight as privateers on behalf of the United States. They’re given assignments that are too dangerous or sensitive for the US to intervene directly. Like Somalian pirates.
There are a ton of villains in the book (at least five). I have a whole post about them here: Meet My Villains from Paranormal Privateers. Plus, my book’s is on sale. My book is .99 from October 20th until October 24th. Then it’s $1.99 from October 24th to October 27th.
The Paranormal Privateers Heroes – The Good Guys and Gals
A heavy tread down the stairs announced George Newby. His eyes shone red too, but while Diane was built like a middle-aged woman, George was a classic wide-body. His shoulders filled the stairway. You’d think he was a truck driver or a lineman rather than an accountant.
“Hi, Karen. Hi, Ron,” he rumbled. He hugged his daughter, as if he held a baby bird, and shook my hand without hurting me in his bratwurst fingers. His bright red eyes looked squarely into mine.
“Sharon Windham – tall blonde bodyguard from England. “Her eyes shone bright red under a broad brow, with blonde eyelashes and a square chin. She could be a marble idol from a Greek temple. A zombie goddess”–from Paranormal Privateers
She was a former crime lord bodyguard who switched alliegiance to Diane Newby. Former Crossfit athlete, model, and competitive swimmer.. She deamt of becoming a UN translator. She speaks 11 languages: English, French, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Russian. Trained in katana, nunchuks, and naginata.
Darkly beautiful bodyguard from Acapulco Mexico. 5′ 4″ Former cliff diver and rock climber. Former crime lord bodyguard, now protecting Diane Newby. Former MMA fighter and bodybuilder. Trained in katana, nunchuks, and naginata.
I examined my cell methodically. A drainpipe, two inches in diameter. A toilet. A hard bed. A steel door with hinges on the outside. I’d probably need to escape from somewhere other than this cell. Once they established a routine with my interrogation, I’d look for escape routes.
I chuckled to myself. Synthia Smith was my true name, in the sense it matched my birth certificate and other current identification. Before Synthia Smith, I was Rachel Rathbone, and before that Quinella Quincy, and so on, through the alphabet. My earliest memory was a toddler named Betty Botter. I had to be cute and pick pockets. Who knew what my original name was? Changing identities was a standard procedure for me with each new assignment.
This had been my most challenging operation, and I’d almost pulled it off. Those damn zombies! Had I blown up Harrods, the demands for billions in exchange for each national landmark’s safety would have been credible.
They had no idea of the bigger picture—and they wouldn’t get it. My terrorist cover story was completely true, but neither the terrorists nor Scotland Yard knew they were merely a means to an end. It was the truth: total subjugation of the United Kingdom was a reasonable goal for one like me, a child of the world’s greatest criminal.
I knew more about Papa Smith, my ostensible grandfather, than any of my siblings. I think I actually touched his feelings as a loving granddaughter, and I think he shared more with me than with any of his other crime-lord grandchildren. Of course, he might be manipulating me, just as I tried to manipulate him. That was the most reasonable assumption, especially if we were actually related.
Not One of Paranormal Privateers Heroes – Synthia Smith, Part 2
Regardless, I felt fond of him. When I overthrew him and took over his crime empire, I thought I’d keep him alive. I enjoyed our talks via our secured video line. When he’d shared Sid Boffin’s failure with me, I clapped in delight as he praised me for staying in touch with him. I think that was genuine emotion and not an act. It was hard to tell sometimes.
A motion on the floor caught my eye as I sat on the bed. A cockroach crawled up the drain and onto the floor. Surprising. Usually, Britain kept their prisons pest free. Then another. Then a dozen more. And then, hundreds.
This was not normal cockroach behavior. They did not come into the light in hordes. I sat cross-legged on the bed and watched the swarm with fascination. They climbed the door, walked its steel perimeter, and went back down the drain as others came up.
Curious, I nabbed one using my lightning reflexes. Examining it, I saw a metal dot under its thorax and a narrow tube attached to its abdomen. A pungent, acidic smell came from the tube. I looked back to the door. The acid ate a narrow trench in the door’s perimeter, right where the cockroaches still marched. Near the ceiling light, I saw mist curl away from the door.
Not One of Paranormal Privateers Heroes – Synthia Smith, Part 3
Modified and controlled cockroaches—like Sid Boffin’s cyborg-controlled animals. I’d read his Ph.D. paper as well as the Midley Beacon‘s declassified reports on his battles with the zombies. Since Sid was dead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, this could only be one of my siblings or Papa Smith trying to rescue me.
Using my perfect memory of the twists and turns when they’d led me here hooded, counting my steps, and remembering the doors, I was confident I could retrace the route.
The last of the cockroaches marched around the door, leaving its trail of acid. They etched the door perhaps a centimeter deep. Couldn’t be much left.
I knocked on the door. Yes, it felt like a centimeter thick, and it echoed like it was almost cut through. Then someone knocked back, much harder.
“I’m here!” I called. I assumed this was my rescuer.
“Step back,” grated a curious, tinny voice, like it was coming through a small radio.
I stepped away.
CLUMP! CLUMP! Two metallic thunks hit the other side of the door. Then, SKREERK! The door tore off like the lid of a tin of meat.
I didn’t expect what I saw. A male silverback gorilla filled the doorway and the whole hallway beyond. Thick armor covered his body. Casually, he placed the door scrap against the hall.
This series was too easy to binge, I could not stop listening to the audible audiobooks once I started! This author is brilliant, the narrator(s) in all of the Life After Life chronicles books are wonderful, and the storyline was hilarious. At times I shook my head in disbelief and just cracked up at the ridiculousness surrounding this zombie story. My son is 12 and he listened with me at times and enjoyed the humor and different zombie stories as well!
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The cover of my third novel Paranormal Privateers. Click to get yours.
Any newsletter subscriber gets free audiobook codes–as long as they last. Click here to get yours.Don’t wait until they’re gone!
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Meet My Favorite Book I’ve written. Which one is it? It’s my novel My Undead Mother-in-law. She’s Diane Newby. I’ll let her son-in-law Ron Yardly introduce her. Read the excerpt below. My book is .99 from October 6th until October 13th.Get your copy by clicking here.
Your Free Excerpt Is Here
My Undead Mother-in-law Chapter 1 Icon
As we pulled up in Karen’s parents’ drive, I was reassured by the sheer normality of their three-bedroom suburban home: green yard partially covered with snow, evergreen bushes, two-car garage. There was no sign zombies lived there. Of course, what sign could I expect? A skull and crossbones and Beware of Zombies? Perhaps a biohazard sign?
Diane greeted us at the door. “Hello, my love!” She hugged Karen.
Karen barely flinched as she looked into her mother’s bright-red eyes. But she grunted “Ugh!” at the force of her embrace.
“Ease up, Mom.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Hello, Mom,” I said as I hugged her as hard I as could.
She hugged me back twice as hard.
“Ugh,” I grunted too.
Diane still had blond-highlighted brown hair, as she did when I first met her. She’d gained a pound or two though. She smelled of the body talc White Linen. I recognized it because Karen and I bought it for her birthday last year, pre-zombie. And she still wore her cat-eye reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
Diane seated us on the living room sofa. “Supper’s on. I have a nice pot roast for us tonight. Donnie and Maggie should be here soon. George!” she called. “The kids are here!”
A heavy tread down the stairs announced George Newby. His eyes shone red too, but while Diane was built like a middle-aged woman, George was a classic wide-body. His shoulders filled the stairway. You’d think he was a truck driver or a lineman rather than an accountant.
“Hi, Karen. Hi, Ron,” he rumbled. He hugged his daughter, as if he held a baby bird, and shook my hand without hurting me in his bratwurst fingers. His bright-red eyes looked squarely into mine.
“I’m so glad you made the trip. You can help us put to rest the ugly rumors that people with zombiism aren’t human. It’s just a disease. It’s not even harmful,” Diane enthused as she sat across from us. George sat next to her in a brown leather recliner.
“Mom, we love you. You don’t have to convince us,” I said.
“Of course not. I know that. It’s just that we’ve had people talking behind our backs at church and the public health officials trying to pressure us to get the treatment to eliminate the disease.”
“Don’t you want to get rid of it? I think the antibiotics for it are safe and effective.”
“You’d think so, but we actually have never felt better in our lives! I have more energy than ever, and so does George—right, George?”
“Yup.”
“My arthritic aches and pains have completely disappeared, and George’s old football knee injury is all better too.”
Meet My Favorite Book and the Villain, Vik Staskas
Vik Staskas absently stroked his long glossy-black hair as he skimmed through the day’s news on his wall-mounted monitor from his five-hundred-foot superyacht. He noted the surge in zombie cures and sought to tap into the money. He hired operatives to infiltrate the Midley Beacon and SPEwZ Inc., the business arm of the famous charitable zombie organization. The possibility of failure didn’t occur to him. He succeeded in everything he tried: a street thief as an orphan in Belgrade; a college student in Paris, where he got his PhD in robotics; and taking over European organized crime without the nominal bosses knowing he existed. He was ready to take over the US.
He developed remote-controlled cyborg animals and insects. He used them to spy, to infiltrate, to conquer, to steal, to kill. They were unstoppable. He planned his first hijacking of a zombie blood air shipment from Gary, Indiana. He could think of several practical uses for cyborg-controlled zombies in his crime empire. As they were, zombies had too much free will for his taste. He chuckled. Even zombies didn’t stand a chance against him.
My Undead Mother-in-law was a hilarious and surprisingly heartwarming twist on the zombie genre. The idea of a zombified mother-in-law with anger management issues is pure comedic gold, and Zach delivers plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.
While the premise is absurd, the story also explores deeper themes of family, acceptance, and finding humor in the most unexpected situations. The characters are quirky and endearing, and their interactions with the undead Diane are both hilarious and touching.
Overall, My Undead Mother-in-law is a fun and lighthearted read that offers a refreshing take on the zombie apocalypse. If you’re looking for a laugh and don’t mind a bit of absurdity, this book is worth checking out.
Fun zombie read! I love paranormal and supernatural books so I was intrigued to read this series. I’ve listened to it on audible and the narrators are really fun and easy to listen to, I feel like they’re talking to actual people rather than reading a story. The storyline is funny and it has just gotten better with each book in the series.
Meet My Favorite Book – Click Below to Get Your Copy!
My Undead Mother-in-law cover. Click to get yours.
Any newsletter subscriber gets free audiobook codes–as long as they last. Click here to get yours.Don’t wait until they’re gone!
Do you want an autographed book? I’ll mail it directly to you with free shipping and I pay the taxes! Click here to get yours. My shipping may not be the same day, but at least it’s free–for you.
But that’s not all! Once you join the newsletter, your email is placed in a monthly drawing for your pick of any of my products: Zombie Turkeys, My Undead Mother-in-law, Zombie Turkeys audio book, and Zombie Turkeys Graphic Novel.
The mother-in-law has landed! That is, her book, My Undead Mother-in-law (M.U.M.) has arrived at Jule Inc. Those who’ve won free books (four) and who’ve picked M.U.M. will get one. Those who haven’t picked a prize yet, contact me, Andy Zach.
Indeedy do! The third book in the Life After Life Chronicles, my humorous zombie books set in our modern society has the working title Paranormal Privateers.
Research topics I covered for the next book were Somali piracy and letters of marque. Did you know the last letter of marque was issued in 1815 for the ship the Grand Turk, to be used against the Barbary pirates? It was never used since the second Barbary pirate war ended.
Color picture of US 16th President Lincoln. He almost issued a letter of marque.
Then later on President Lincoln thought of using them against the Confederacy but didn’t. The Confederacy, however, issued letters of marque against the Union.
Finally, Ron Paul introduced bills for letters of marque against Al-Qaida in 2001 and 2007. In 2010, a Navy lawyer researched the plausibility of letters of marque against modern pirates and concluded it was a good idea.
Andy’s autographed picture
What do you think? Respond in the comments or by email to [email protected].
