Blackest Friday

As some of you consider braving the crowds for a 75% off Blu-ray player, or perhaps the most ticklish Elmo ever designed by man, let this excerpt from INFECTED serve to remind you of the depths of depravity that awaits you. Comparable to looting at the start of the zombie apocalypse….

Time to fight the crowds for Blackest Friday, the biggest looting day of the year. Guns, batteries, powdered water; you’ll take it all!

On a Spree

Have you ever seen the YouTube videos about Black Friday sales? It looks like a zombie invasion—and that’s just for videogame consoles and designer kitchenware. Today, people are looting for their lives, and the chaos in the streets makes post-hurricane Katrina scavenging look like a sleepy Borders bookstore on a Wednesday afternoon. You know, the ones that closed due to lack of business.

Cars are crashing into anything and everything in an effort to get whatever as fast as possible. People are smashing windows just because the world’s ending. This is going to be bad.

You head straight for the sporting goods megastore in search of a gun. You’re not sure if there’s a waiting period, but you’re thinking it’ll be waived today. Besides, you’ve only got a hammer and a steak knife; not ideal for home defense.

From the looks of the parking lot, the insanity has already begun to make its way here: people pay no mind to parking spaces or any other laws designed to keep order. It’s total Lord of the Flies madness.

Inside, the crowds seem to be cooperating. The employees are still taking payments, and people are happy to charge it, knowing the credit card bill collectors will have a hell of a time in the upcoming months. Some sprint down the aisles with their arms loaded to capacity; others use shopping carts as battering rams. Polite society hasn’t crumbled yet, but it’s certainly strained.

It looks like the rifle racks were the first to go. Disappointed, and about to turn and look for other supplies, you see a handgun on the ground resting under one of the shelves, just barely in view. You pick it up. There’s a lock on the trigger—to keep people from using it in the store—and evidently it was abandoned by a frustrated shopper. Time to see if you can find the keys.

“Give me that piece,” a voice from behind commands. You turn to see who is speaking. The man in question looks polite enough in his business suit, but the baseball bat he’s carrying (and the manner in which he holds it) tells another story. “I’m not asking.”

  • “Go fuck yourself.” Go to page 124

  • Give it to him. You can get some other supplies, then hole up back home. As long as you properly barricade yourself, you shouldn’t need a gun. Go to page 138

Behind the Scenes: SUPERPOWERED Cover

This week I cracked the 100k word milestone on the third Click Your Poison book, SUPERPOWERED. It’s happening, and soon, but every book needs a cover first.

I’m happy to announce a partnership with Brian Silveira. He’s an extremely talented comic artist, and he’s gracious enough to take a break from working on an original graphic novel to jump in and work for me. I’m crazy excited. Care to see why?

Check out our current development

Welcome to Mercury City, the metropolis where you live and work. Your home.

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Here you’ll get 1 of 3 superpowers when you’re in an experiment gone awry. The other two test-subjects — will they be your allies or your sworn enemies?

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Brian and I decided to give the cover a comic-book feel, even though it’s an illustration-free interactive novel.

How about some character detail?

Diamond — One of the other test subjects, Catherine Woodall, once she receives miraculous super-strength and near-indestructible levels of damage resistance.

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She wears a tight, midriff-exposing black t-shirt emblazoned with a playing-card-suit red diamond logo, fingerless gloves, and black yoga pants tucked into crimson-red boots. Her face is concealed behind a red domino mask, but as she smashes through the security doors and rushes into the bank, there can be little doubt in your mind as to who this superpowered woman truly is.”

Dorian White — Subject Nick Dorian, imbued with techno-genius, Nick makes his own mechanized armor.

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Computer, boot up White Ranger sequence. Prepare for Stark battle-mode.” “Dorian White voice recognition accepted. Beginning Techno-zord protocol,” a disembodied voice with a filtered, British accent replies. A panel behind one of the walls opens to reveal an enormous, ten-foot tall mechanized suit. It’s glittering white, with the sheen of a brand new sports car. Nick climbs inside and the armored computer closes around him, booting up. The limbs move as part of a systems check, and two more arms swing out over the shoulders—though these prove to be more cannons and less appendages. “All systems online,” a flitered, robo-Nick says. “Let’s go kick some ass.”

DinoSkin Mark IV — next generation bodyarmor. When you’re the flying-telekinetic, you can find this suit.

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“Too expensive to be put into combat on a mass scale, but nothing else comes close. Lightweight, breathable, and incredibly durable. The scaling provides multilayer protection against gunshots or knife attack. Go ahead, touch it.” The material stretches when you tug at it, but it’s coarse to the touch. Droakam raps his knuckles against the mannequin’s torso. “A reinforced plate on the chest and spine provide added shock protection against explosives. But the best part? You should still be able to fly around in this thing because it’s so lightweight.” “Maybe your superhero name could be Terror-dactyl,” Nick snarks.

 What’s next?

 

There are dozens of variations on costumed characters/personas in the book, so this is just a sampling for the cover. And, as you can see, the cover art is still a work in progress. I’ll definitely post more updates as Brian continues to work, so don’t forget to subscribe! (little box over there on the left, where you’ll never find any spam).

What do YOU think? Are you getting excited? Ready to save the world? Or perhaps enslave it…? Let me know in the comments at the bottom!

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New Author Bio, And It’s a Weird One

Now that I’m prepping for my third book, I thought it time to update my bio. The old one was a little outdated anyway; it still had me living in California and talked about achievements prior to 2011. But I also wanted to shake it up. Write something a little…different…from your standard Amazon author page.

Here’s what I came up with:

One February day, when Hephaestus was hitting on The Muses, they began a playful argument: Is it possible for a mortal man to be *too* creative? What would happen to his primitive brain if it were to suddenly overflow with ideas? Zeus, never one to leave an argument to the fate of mere words, sent a lightning bolt to earth where it struck upon a hapless young man–your author, James Schannep.

Thus Click Your Poison books were created as a repository to store the overabundant brain fruit. Each of Schannep’s books split into three unique storylines and contain over 50 possible endings. But the fate of each book; nay, of mankind, rests with YOU, dear reader. For it is your choices that will shape the story in these books.

So dive in and find out:

Will You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (INFECTED)
Could You Solve a Murder? (MURDERED)
What if You Had Superpowers? (SUPERPOWERED – Coming soon!)”

How’d I do? Is it sufficiently odd enough to attract your attention without adding the fervent desire sit far away if we were on the subway together? Let me know in the comments below.

And as long as we’re talking about bios, there’s a rumor going around that Amazon’s promotion algorithms take into account how many “likes” an author page has. I’m sure some of you didn’t even know you could “like” an author on Amazon, but if you fee like hopping over to my author page and clicking LIKE, I’d be much obliged.