Zombie Heroes Hired by the President – What is Paranormal Privateers All About?It’s one of my favorite books. It’s my most complex and surprising. So what is it about and why do I like it? I give you a free sample below. It’s in a unique humorous zombie hero genre.
Diane Newby, in her natural environment.
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.
By the end of the book, they’re Zombie Heroes!
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.
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.
What Is Paranormal Privateers All About? – 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.
Zombie Heroes vs 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!
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!
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.
Oops! My Best Book You’ve Never Read Is On Sale! But just for seven days, so quickly click here to get Oops! Tales of the Zombie Turkey Apocalypse!By ‘seven days’ I mean today, Sunday, May 19th to May 26th.
Oops cover
I’m author Andy Zach and I’ve got a free short story for you from the book.
But first, let me tell you about my short stories before you try one.
Accidents happen. Especially around zombie turkeys. Then you add zombie humans, and problems proliferate. Mix in some ill-planned genetic engineering, and things get crazy.The insanity continues, from the story where zombies are merged with cucumbers to the one where two basement-dwelling nerds gain access to all video content from the past two hundred years—from aliens.Andy Zach pulls out all the stops on his imagination as he serves up this smorgasbord of silliness. Try it. Laughter is good for your soul
One queen saw the problem more clearly than anyone else. Her king and prince had both drowned only a short distance from the shore because no one saw them signing for help. The queen sat vigil all night long, and in the morning she sent heralds with large signs in every language to all the humans, elves, dwarves, fairies, leprechauns, and even a dragon. She pled with all to find something that would let creatures communicate without signs or gestures when they couldn’t see each other. She promised she would give whatever was in her power to whoever could accomplish this.
I left the air-conditioned comfort of the taxi, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the old bazaar in Jeddah assailed me: a robe-clad man on camel plodded by, an adjacent fishmonger added his smell to the fresh dung in the street, and the hawkers yelled their wares.
I could only speak Arabic at a middle school level, but as I strolled through the bazaar, I heard “Fresh dates!”…”Highest quality rugs!”…”Finest gold jewelry!”… “Ancient books! The rarest in Saudi Arabia!”
My head snapped around. A bald, stumpy man in a white caftan saw me look and said, “Books? You want ancient books?”
“Yes.” I spoke carefully, knowing my poor accent. “Can you speak English?” I didn’t have much hope.
The scene was chaos! I knew immediately I was in a different country, judging by the languages I couldn’t understand. I had also determined this was no modern city—I seemed to be on the outskirts of town amid a swarming crowd. Men were shouting and women were crying; meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how I had gotten there and where exactly I was. Several seconds later, however, that question was answered.
Now, what was he going to do? Brice Butterworth’s boss just told him to double the productivity of Vegan Inc.’s pickle strain they used for their Kilwowski Pickle brand. That was completely impossible.
But keeping his job required it. Brice was the low man on the genetic engineering totem pole at Vegan Inc., the last one hired and the first one to be fired if another recession hit.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t face this. So he cruised the internet. “The origin of zombie turkeys? I didn’t know they’d found that. Hmm, a Midley Beacon exclusive, the foremost zombie news source,” he read out loud.
He woke up staring out his windshield at the green grass of the highway median. Dully, Anthony listened to the sound of his car’s engine cooling, ticking like a clock. He didn’t know why he was here or how he got here.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” came a voice from outside the car.
Turning his head toward the sound, he realized he was upside down, supported by his seat belt and his legs, which were strangely numb.
I need to tell you about my own zombie story. It’s about how my parents became zombies.
As soon as the zombie turkeys appeared in Illinois, I started cultures of their zombie turkey bacteria in petri dishes. When other animals, squirrels, rabbits, and cows began turning zombie, I added cultures of their bacteria. I sought the ultimate source of animal revivification. It was my PhD thesis and my life’s work.
I’ve always wanted to revive animals from the dead. It seemed the secret was through the special bacteria for each species. Naturally, when humans became zombies, I cultivated their bacteria too.
He was dead. At least, his business was. And without his business, his wife would leave him and take their new baby. Then he might as well be dead.
His dad had run the Elysium Fields Mortuary for thirty years and had made a killing at it. The first and only mortuary in their small town of Hillvale, everyone got buried there. He charged normal prices, he was friendly, and he helped their community. His dad said to him when he was a teen, “Irving, after you get your college degree, go to mortuary school, and when you come out, I’ll hire you and then turn the business over to you. You’ll be set for life.”
The Taser hit me in the back. I convulsed uncontrollably, shocked out of sleep.
“Okay, wakey, wakey. Time to go model for your mistress,” squeaked a high tenor.
The bearded hulk who guarded us held his Taser ready, in case Lulu and I weren’t fast enough. He was so hairy, I couldn’t tell where his beard ended and his chest began. We donned the haute couture apparel set before us. He nodded his approval and gestured toward the door. He always followed us with his Taser.
“We’ve been here weeks and we don’t know your name. What shall we call you?” I ventured. I had some vague hope of putting him at his ease so we could escape.
He laughed. “Call me Gronk.” He wheezed when he laughed.
So I got him to laugh. Maybe that was progress. Maybe not. He also laughed when he tortured us with the Taser.
“Let me check you, Sharon,” Lulu whispered. She examined my back, where the Taser had hit my sleeping form. My muscles still ached. “No marks.”
Breeding zombie corgis wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Heather Mallorn sighed as she reviewed accounts for Her Majesty’s Corgis in Hanna City, Illinois. Certainly, she made plenty on each zombie corgi she sold. Normally, corgi puppies went for $1,200. She earned double that for zombies. The zombie corgies were invincible guard dogs, and cute too, with bright-red eyes. They were no harder to train than regular corgis, just slightly more aggressive. Well, a lot more aggressive.
Kayla Verdera, disabled 7th-grade student and superhero
“Oh no! Did you hear what I just heard?” Aubrey said as soon as she and I rushed up to Jeremy and Dan coming off their bus in the morning at Maryville Middle School.
“No!” Jeremy said, rolling off the bus in his electric wheelchair. Jeremy Gentle was a spindly kid with cerebral palsy. I’d never looked twice at him when I was the most popular and smartest girl in the school. Then I lost my speech and balance to spinal meningitis last year, and I was put in the special-needs class. After we were together awhile, I learned he was as smart as me.
“Of course I heard,” said Dan, who walked behind Jeremy’s wheelchair while holding the back of it and carrying his white cane. “Do you think I’m deaf as well as blind?”
Enough talking! I sent the thought to them all, using my telepathic power. This is too slow!Our math teacher’s car was stolen last night. Mr. Williamson went to play basketball downtown, and when he came out, his car was gone.
I like my friends, but I wish they’d get to the point. We all attended a special disabled class at Maryville Middle School. Disabled kids used to creep me out. Now I, Kayla Verdera, was one of them.
How fascinating! Dancer thought. This book says there are libraries where hundreds of books live. It also says the fiction books are in order by author name.
Dancer scurried off Your Sixth Year Reader to look at Jeremy Gentle’s bookshelf again. Jeremy was Dancer’s owner and unknowing educator. Ever since he’d taught himself to read by studying the newspapers lining the bottom of his cage, Dancer had craved reading.
He hadn’t figured out why he’d started reading. One day he’d noticed patterns in the markings. He saw they repeated themselves in clumps. Then the clumps formed more patterns. He also listened to his owners differently. They also spoke in patterns. “Jeremy” was always called “Jeremy” or “Jeremy Gentle” by his mother, and sometimes by his father.
Diane Newby, George Newby, Lulu Gutierrez, and Sharon Wyndham, privateers
“Arrrgh! Me hearies, eat hearty!” said a short, stocky pirate with an eye patch and a captain’s hat seemingly copied from Cap’n Crunch. The pirate gestured, with a hook instead of a right hand, toward an enormous banquet table laden with food. The one visible eye gleamed red.
“Arrrgh! Where’s the skilly and duff?” said a refrigerator-sized bald pirate with an enormous mustache. His eyes also shone crimson.
“Arrrgh! That be the tacos and enchiladas,” said a small, beautiful pirate with dark hair bound by a red bandanna and smiling blood-red eyes. She pointed with her cutlass toward the Mexican section of the smorgasbord.
“Arrrgh! You be a Mexican pirate?” said a blond pirate with broad shoulders and a Cockney accent. She wore her hair in a long queue emerging from a bloody headband around her forehead. She also had glowing ruby eyes.
“That’s your problem, isn’t it? Try the local apartments. Look for rooms to rent on the internet. It’s not that hard to find a place in Ohio.”
I could tell by his grim expression he was serious this time. He’d been nagging me for nearly a year to move out and “set up housekeeping” ever since I’d graduated from the state university with my BA in video game art and my minor in computer science. I’d managed to wheedle him out of it and delay the date. Until now.
Oops! My Best Book You’ve Never Read
Your Free Short Story is: In A Pickle
Now you’re ready for your free short story that follows below.
What’s it about? What if you’re a genetic engineer and you decide to use zombie turkey DNA to make pickles grow? That’s the set up. Enjoy! Click here to read it.
It opens like this:
In a Pickle – from Oops! My Best Book You’ve Never Read
by Andy Zach
Now, what was he going to do? Brice Butterworth’s boss just told him to double the productivity of Vegan Inc.’s pickle strain they used for their Kilwowski Pickle brand. That was completely impossible.
But keeping his job required it. He was the low man on the genetic engineering totem pole at Vegan Inc., the last one hired and the first one to be fired if another recession hit.
He couldn’t think. And he couldn’t face this. So he cruised the internet. “The origin of zombie turkeys? I didn’t know they’d found that. Hmm, a Midley Beacon exclusive, the foremost zombie news source,” he read out loud.
Is Oops! My Best Book? Let me know what you think by clicking here or emailing me at [email protected]. As always, everyone who responds with a comment or email will get a free book from me.
Get a Free Short Story – about my Newsletter! You’ll be reading it for the first time. But it’s not fictional–it’s a real life adventure of how I started and built my newsletter.
My first event, the Zombie Turkeysbook launch in the Peoria North Library.
I captured people’s email addresses there, at these events. At every event, I had a yellow notebook pad with a signup list for people’s names and emails.
Nov 4, 2016 First Friday
Nov 5, 2016 Author Fair at Peoria Main Library
Nov 25-27th, 2016 Chambanacon
I sent emails to about 48 subscribers using my Yahoo email account.
I continued to gather emails and send them out monthly or bi-monthly since then.
I subscribed to Booksweeps to start building my mail lists in 2017. Booklists offers your books on various mailing lists. When people click on your book, you get a new subscriber.
That, plus more book conventions grew my mailing list to 1000 subscribers by 2018. It became too unwieldy for Yahoo and I got a free Mailchimp membership, good to 2000 subscribers.
My second disabled superhero book also published in 2020, Villain’s Vacation.
But what about my newsletter? What should I do?
Get Your Free Short Story – My Newsletter in 2021
To continue to promote my books and my list, I tried the following in 2021, based upon advice from Travis Bach, author and husband of Rachel Aaron, an author we like. He suggested we try these promotions:
Bookbub
FreeDiscountedBooks
Awesome Gang
Books Butterfly
FKBT
Booksends
Book Butterfly
E-Reader News Today (Regular)
Bknights (through Fiverr)
Alignable newspaper ad
I didn’t find these brought in sales equal to the expenses.
Here is the growth in the newsletter to this point:
I also publishedZombie Detective,a book set between Zombie Turkeys and My Undead Mother-in-law.
The Gospel Medley cover. Click to get
Then in 2022 I published my first non-fiction book,The Gospel Medley under a different name, for a different genre. Here’s the blurb:
Are you curious about Jesus Christ? Do you struggle to understand the Bible? The Gospel Medley includes the four Gospels in a single narrative, faithfully pulling the text from the World English Bible. You are now able to read all the gospel as a single, easy-to-read story.
Each Gospel describes Jesus’s life from a different point of view with different details and insights. The Gospel Medley combines every word into a single perspective with all details and events arranged chronologically.
Unlike other harmonies, The Gospel Medley doesn’t put the four gospels in columns or rows. Instead, the text is integrated word by word into a smoothly flowing narrative. Further, each paragraph references the four gospels so you can read the original citations. You also get footnotes of all the quotes from the Old Testament, giving you the context of Jesus’s words.
For a unique perspective of the four gospels, read ‘The Gospel Medley’ today.
The Book of Revelation is mysterious to many, but if you use this daily devotional, you can understand it like never before.
Each day you’ll have one small verse to read and reflect upon. You will see connections and meanings you’ve never seen before.
Author Jeffry Smith asks provocative questions to help you think about each portion of scripture. He also supplies useful cross-references which give further insight to the scripture.
Begin your journey of inspiration now, with the Revelation Devotional.
Tell Me What you Think of my Newsletter Short Story!
Let me know what you think by clicking here or emailing me at [email protected]. As always, everyone who responds with a comment or email will get a free book from me.
