A Journal of the Crazy Year

by Forrest Carr

"Impressive." A "thrilling narrative."
-Fantascize.com

Without warning, a jetliner falls from the clear blue sky ahead of a startled motorist, who manages to catch the last few seconds of the doomed flight on his cell phone. As frightening as the video is, none of the horrified viewers watching it play out on newscasts across the globe that evening understand its true significance. The last sane day on planet Earth is already behind them. And it will only get worse.

The day before, John Cruz had awakened to find himself in unfamiliar surroundings. He learns that he's been in a mental hospital for nearly three years – confined there for a crime he does not remember, a crime the hospital staff refuses to discuss with him. But soon he discovers something even more bizarre. While he and other mental patients like him are mysteriously recovering, the rest of the world is beginning a descent into madness, thanks to a mysterious disease that causes many of its victims to go violently insane. Meanwhile, overhead, a spectacular apparition splits the skies, as the largest comet in recorded history makes a close approach to planet Earth. Some scientists believe that not only is the comet somehow connected to the spreading madness, but that this has happened at least once before in human history, with apocalyptic consequences. As events close in, John will have only one task, and one question: will his mind slip away again before he can save the love of his life from the growing chaos?

"Five thousand years ago – the last time this comet appeared in the skies of the Earth – our ancestors looked up. They marveled. They trembled. Perhaps they prayed. And then their civilization, for reasons unknown, ended."
-- Dr. Arlin Cartwight, astrophysicist, Committee of Concerned Scientists, from televised news conference

"In 1665, Londoners gaped in wonder and amazement at a spectacular comet -– one not unlike the one we see in our skies now. Within months, one hundred thousand of those spectators were dead. The fact is, we don't know what's in this or any other comet. Maybe it's dangerous. Maybe it's not. But there's never a bad time to get right with God."
– Lilly Powell, blogger, "Hammer of Heaven."

"The word 'zombie' is simply not appropriate in the discussion of this pandemic. The CDC vehemently rejects that term, and would strongly condemn any news reporter or any news organization using it in reference to victims of this crisis."
– CDC Principal Deputy Director Carmilla Sanchez, from televised news conference

"We don't know everything about the comet. But we know enough to be sure there's nothing to worry about. My advice to you: sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. When you look up at the sky in awe, you'll be doing what your ancestors did, and sharing in a recorded human experience that dates back at least 3,500 years."
– Dr. Eugene Samuelson, Astrophysicist, University of New Mexico, via interview on Channel 9 News, Albuquerque

"This is an Emergency Alert System message from the New Mexico State Police. The governor has declared a state of public health emergency. Stay in your homes. Do not go outdoors or travel except in cases of extreme emergency. A strict dusk to dawn curfew is in effect until further notice. Violators will be shot on sight without exception."
-- From Emergency Alert System message

Selected Internet-posted reader reviews:

"5 stars. The twists and turns make it hard to put down (thanks for no sleep that night when I found myself finishing it up at 4 am on a work night!) and the ending was just so unexpectedly PERFECT."

"5 stars. This was magnificent. I know this will stay with me for a while, it was certainly a page turner, so hard to put down."

"5 stars. My family almost didn't have mashed potatoes or cranberries on Thanksgiving, and it's thanks to this book! Could NOT put it down. Absolutely loved it."

"4.5 stars. I don’t usually like a lot of the Sci-Fi horror zombie type books that come across my desk.... This one surprised me. I loved it.... Will look forward to more from this author."

"4 stars. This was a great book, newly published... and I am happy to have discovered it. It deserves some attention. It is good enough to be considered to be published in hard copy.... I would like to buy a sequel."

"5 stars. This book was both thought provoking and freaked me out at the same time. Not what you expect from the genre but in a good way."

"5 stars. A different twist to an apocalyptic novel. Well written and the technical and medical details were explained in layman's terms and were done with the right balance. Flesh eating zombies, human trees, the mad are sane and the sane are mad, and with humour thrown in to create a very readable and believable book.... Look forward to more novels from this author."

"5 stars. Completely refreshing read. Journal of the Crazy Year takes a well known concept and spins it...

Genres: Zombies, Horror

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2013

About the author

Named as a 2015 Kirkus Reviews "Author to Watch," Forrest Carr is novelist, blogger, former radio talk show host, and former TV news director. He is the author of the novels The Dark, Messages and A Journal of the Crazy Year, and co-author of the college journalism textbook, Broadcast News Handbook. After graduating from the University of Memphis with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications, Carr spent 33 years in the television news industry, and was a news director in the Tampa, Fort Myers, Albuquerque, and Tucson television markets. Carr has received or shared credit in more than 90 journalism awards, including a Suncoast Regional Emmy for investigative reporting and two regional Edward R. Murrow awards for investigative reporting. His latest scifi/horror novel, The Dark, centers on astronauts making the most ambitious voyage of discovery in human history who begin to wonder whether they've flown so far out into space that they’ve arrived at a point where God does not exist--with horrific consequences. A Journal of the Crazy Year is a zombie-genre post-apocalyptic novel inspired by an actual disease that has struck twice before and could strike again; Publisher's Weekly awarded it a coveted starred review in which it called the novel a "fascinating read" from top to bottom, and many of the events it predicted already have happened. His book Messages is a "buddy journalist" crime novel set in a 1980's newsroom that one critic called a "masterful exposé of TV News." Carr is a long-time fan of old school science fiction, particularly the works of Robert Heinlein. He resides with his wife Deborah and their two cats Ellis and Mina, a.k.a. Butthead 1 and Butthead Also, in Tucson, Arizona. He invites readers to reach him through his author page on Facebook or by way of his website, www.forrestcarr.com.

Reviews

[Amity · Rating 1 out of 5]

A vanity novel if I ever read one.

First of all, we're supposed to believe that our hero is a 26 year old man waking up from a coma (-ish state) after 3 years. He should believably have the mentality of a 23 year old man, not to mention a 23 year old man who never went to college and barely scraped by in high school by reading the Cliff's Notes. Instead our hero is highly intelligent with the mentality of a 45-50 year old with at the very least a bachelor's if not a master's, with an informed opinion on a wealth of subjects and a razor sharp memory to boot. Not to mention that this 23 year old in a 26 year old's body and his wife interact like a couple married for 50 years. But I digress. I respect the fact that in any fictional story you have to allow a certain degree of suspension of disbelief and reality, and if that was all I had to cope with while reading this book, then I probably would have thoroughly enjoyed it.

But like I said, IF. There were so many things wrong that I barely know where to begin. For being an "award winning journalist", this book was painfully riddled with typos and errors that could not be identified by simply running spell check. The whole book was peppered with the wrong words used(as if auto corrected), the wrong names used in scenes, and an agonizing overuse of certain words. I swear, the author must've had no access to a thesaurus. Most of the women he described were "attractive", while several of the men were "well dressed". He used the words "lasciviously" and "lascivious" no fewer than 5 times, and I noticed that he used nearly the exact same PARAGRAPH twice!!! (if you're curious to know which PARAGRAPH, the first appears in Chapter Seven, location 5075 on Kindle, and the second is in Chapter 8, location 5910) Did this guy have an editor?!

In addition, there was so much monotonous, droning of information that I felt like I was reading Wikipedia, which led me to believe that this guy HAD Wikipedia open the whole time he was writing. There were pages upon pages of useless information being exchanged about psychology, astronomy, conspiracy and religion, a lot of it actually long monologues by delivered by "experts" over the television. On top of that, I was left feeling like this guy just wanted to shove every clever thought and interesting idea, every provocative opinion he ever had into this book, no matter how relevant to the story it was. His conversations about gay rights and gun control added nothing to the story. Don't even get me started on the conversation about diarrhea, hemorrhoid cream and tampon commercials. Sure, it was funny, but so out of place in the book, and seemingly out of character for John, who up to that point had been more of an intellectual than a comic.

However, the biggest issue I have with this book, the issue that solidifies my opinion that this is nothing more than a vanity novel, is the fact that there are honestly only three voices in the entire book. The first voice is the hero's: John Cruz, a devastatingly handsome, highly intelligent, well informed supposedly young man. I can only imagine that this voice is the author's own, detailing his fantasy of being all of that and more. Nearly every character has his voice and agrees completely with him or express thoughts that support his opinions. He had begun to call a symptom of the sickness "human trees", and came across a radio announcer that called them "living trees". Even the doctors and reporters and scientists, who were doing the press conferences on TV, just sounded all alike. Identical inflections, identical vocabularies, identical voices. The second voice is pretty much the female version of John's voice, with slight variation. Employed by both women that John is in close quarters with, she, used collectively, adores him, agrees with him completely, and yet has sway over him and is used to give him little moral lessons. Cliche!! The third and final voice is the obligatory antagonist, a reformed mental patient but permanent maniac. He is utilized merely to provide a solitary character that disagrees and despises John, as if a world full of flesh eating zombies wasn't enough of an adversary. The character was far fetched and felt forced.

This review may seem harsh, especially since I'm no writer. But I'm a reader, and I appreciate the ART of writing. I admire the effort it takes to make a well written piece. The attention to technical detail gets taken for granted and only noticed when it's missing, and it was sorely missing in this novel. The ideas behind this book were interesting and fresh, but executed so poorly that I couldn't even appreciate or enjoy them. I think he could have done better, if he really wanted to. And if he got a better editor.

[Tim Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, despite the title this is not a book set in 2016! That would be such a great title for a novel about that year. What this book is about though is a zombie apocalypse of sorts, with “zombies” being in quotation marks (not actual undead but a minor distinction at best to those who have to contend with them).

The book has a brief prologue, relating how a massive pandemic near the turn of the century seemed to be associated with the arrival of a comet. Many people afflicted basically became comatose, falling into a sleep they could not wake from, though others were decidedly quite awake though not themselves and were a danger to themselves and others. Dubbed variously encephalitis lethargica or its victims la nona or the living dead, no definitive cause or any type of cure was ever found and the existence of the disease faded from the popular consciousness.

Fast forward to 2014, about a hundred years later. We meet our main character, John Cruz, who abruptly and to the surprise of those around them awakens from a type of walking coma. Semi-incarcerated in a mental hospital for several years (John had committed a violent act and then entered his coma-like state in 2011), John finds that the hospital is nearly deserted, with only two other patients, a man who had suffered brain damage who goes by the name Scooter and a not very nice man by the name of Lanny (full name Landon Caine). Apparently around the world people who were in comas or had suffered from several mental illnesses (including debilitating ones) were suddenly and inexplicably cured. Most had been released; Lanny was due to be released and pending some tests John is released as well.

Scooter however is not released, as he becomes violently aggressive and practically mindless and has to be restrained. In fact, just as the world’s mental patients were going into some sort of spontaneous remission, new patients were appearing, their number growing every day. Some go into comas and cannot be woken up, some freeze into what John later calls “human trees,” basically becoming statues with their backs, arms, and necks seemingly permanently bent at uncomfortable poses, and the rest…become crazies, deranged people who lose all sense of self preservation and who try to kill and eat anyone they see.

Set against the backdrop of a general worldwide rise in violence (deliberate plane crashes, terrorism, and the threat of nuclear war overseas) and the appearance of a massive comet, John has only one thought; get his wife Maria and make it to a cabin owned by his relatives far out in the New Mexico countryside and await the coming crisis as civilization starts to fall. Along the way they deal with crazies, other people immune to the epidemic (this time around dubbed sudden onset psychosis syndrome or SOPS), and just finding food, weapons, ammunition, working vehicles, and shelter.

One other point, the name of the novel comes from a journal kept by John, a suggestion by John’s mental health caregiver, Dr Madesh Patel. It goes from being a mental health exercise to a chronicle of the calamity to a testament to those who survive the apocalypse.

That all sounds pretty good right? Maybe a fairly standard zombie (or “zombie”) novel, though the comet and the rise in worldwide violence are nice touches and original. At times, the book wasn’t bad, with fairly well done action scenes and parts of the buildup to the actual apocalypse were riveting and the opening chapters were quite good, but the book had so much wrong with it.

The single biggest problem the book had was pacing. Again and again scenes just dragged and dragged. What was an interesting concept or interaction just seemed to go on two, three, four times longer than it should and my attention just lagged and I found myself skimming. A conversation between John and Dr. Patel about the tests they run on him goes for pages and pages with too much unnecessary detail. Several times John goes on at length about gun rights or the virtue of various guns again and again. Flirting and romance between John and his wife Maria, once they are reunited at home following his release, just seems to go nowhere for a page after page and just kills the momentum of the book. Maria and John watch press conferences and news reports, not a bad way to do an info dump I suppose, but the events are described in a very lengthy chapter that could have had a much brisker pace with the main characters basically just passively watching TV. Too many times the book veers from decent action and build up for the apocalypse into massively overly long exposition or informational sections that just could have been cut at least in half.

Another problem was missed opportunities or at least misunderstood actions. Dr. Patel is built up as a fairly major character in the hospital, is shown again as an expert while John and Maria watch TV (!) but then…nothing. He doesn’t figure into the book again (sorry if that is a spoiler). We meet Otis, a delightful very intelligent cat owned by John and Maria, a cat who Maria remarks seems to get more and more intelligent as time pasts, a cat who seems to understand English to an astonishing degree and almost sort of talks sometimes. Does this mean the comet is doing something to animals? I don’t have any answers, because the Otis element is basically limited to Otis with very little development other than his presence as an interesting sidekick. The briefly mentioned nuclear conflict does produce late in the book a bit of a predicament, one that should have seriously changed the rest of the novel…but it is hand waved away in a matter of paragraphs. It almost felt as if an ever better book was in there but this was the first draft I am reading, that some interesting plot threads just never really fully got explored, the concept proposed and then just never fully developed.

A third problem was too many coincidences. Sorry if I enter spoiler territory, but the novel doesn’t have a lot of named individuals but after the world appears to end John still encounters them in the middle of nowhere. I sort of understand why they are out and active, but the odds of John encountering not one but two individuals from earlier in the book? That strained credulity with me.

The character Lanny wasn’t interesting, as important as he turned out to be. He is just a jerk to be a jerk, no real motivation. He simply appears to have decided he hates John and that is the end of things. Definitely not a fully explored bad guy.

I wanted to like the book. I definitely have a soft spot for a well written zombie thriller. I certainly understand writing is hard (been working at for years and years myself). This book just didn’t deliver. I never hated it enough to put it down and at times it was good but it just had so much unrealized potential.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

weird.

[Forrest Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I am the author.
This book brings some new twists to the "zombie apocalypse" genre. For one, strictly speaking the victims of the disease are not zombies. One of the things I wanted to do in writing this is to drag the zombie-type story into the realm of science fiction. Traditonal zombie stories require you to believe in "the undead." But science fiction requires the events to be plausible. The "zombies" in this book are inspired by actual events.

At the heart of the novel is a love story - one man's commitment to save the love of his life, no matter what.

As of this writing, the book has been out less than a week, but already there is one user review posted on its Amazon page. Here is what "RandiTS" (whom I do not know) had to say:

"This is a unique take on a "zombie" type of book which made it fun and interesting!

A large comet is coming toward Earth - no, it isn't going to crash into us but lots of strange side effects may (or may not depending on who you believe!) of it coming into our orbit.

The man character is a man who is extremely intelligent, highly amusing, and apparently crazy. Or, at least he used to be....

John Cruz wakes up in a mental hospital. A basically deserted mental hospital with no idea how he got there or why he is there. Imagine his surprise when he finds out that he has actually BEEN there for three years! The reason it is deserted? Because all of the "insane" are now becoming "sane" and no one knows why. John is actually one of the last "holdouts" to the miraculous cure of people all over the world.

Unfortunately, for the rest of the world, others are now falling ill to a strange ailment. They either a. fall asleep and don't wake up b. fall asleep, eventually wake up and are okay or c. turn extremely violent and behave "like zombies" in that they attack and "eat" the people that they subdue in their violent fits.

The story follows John as he is released from the institution and then tries to start his life again with his wife, Maria, who has patiently stood by all these years waiting for him to "wake" from his catatonic state.

This is a story of survival from "the crazies" and figuring out what is going on. The twists and turns make it hard to put down (thanks for no sleep that night when I found myself finishing it up at 4 am on a work night!) and the ending was just so unexpectedly PERFECT.

It is not your "traditional" zombie book but it is full of moral dilemmas, things that make you think deeply (Dante's Circles of Hell for example) and an overall great read.

You will get some gore but mainly, you will get a story of the love a man has for his wife and how he will do anything to make sure that she survives.

Enjoy!"

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think my rating would be higher, were there not so many spelling errors. This is not to say there were a lot of them, but in the second half of the book, there are occasional errors, as well as misplaced character names, i.e., he says one character, but means another. I think that if this book had gone through a really thorough edit, it would have been better.

That said, the premise was interesting and the characters were compelling. I did not have to fight to suspend my disbelief, I was able to play along quite easily. I cared about the characters and what would become of them. It is an end-of-world/apocalypse novel, yes, but I generally enjoy those. Mr. Carr did an adequate job, though he did allow his biases to show occasionally (obviously a gun advocate, as am I, but I try not to let my biases be so apparent). He got the details right, which is important to me. And he wove an interesting tale that drew me in enough to drop the other book I was reading until I'd completed this one.

All told, enjoyable diversion. Just get a better editor, Mr. Carr, and you've got yourself a fan.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Review: I don’t usually like a lot of the Sci-Fi horror zombie type books that come across my desk. They usually are just too far out there and never make me feel what you should. I don’t care for the movies either. King is about the only one I have been able to like and maybe Koontz. This one surprised me. I loved it. I found the mental haves and have nots a great concept. Loved the link of the comet. Yea I am a fan of the old movie Night Of The Comet. The ending is not what I wanted don’t get me wrong it is good I just didn’t want it to end that way. I would have like to see it move on a little longer too so I could see what the world looked like now. It should be interesting to see it populated mostly by insane people. Will look forward to more from this author. I give this a 4.5 star with just a little off for some rough editing here and there.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

It had potential, I'll give it that. A very interesting premise. But so many things irked me from the start. It seems the author was too busy forcing his political views down our throats to make his main character believable. Or to freakin spell check, or check out a thesaurus for synonyms.

However, it gets two stars from me because it really had some funny parts in it, and writing a book is friggin hard, people! You try it! Shit sounds great in your head and while you're typing it up, then you go back and re-read it and say, oh damn, I'm an idiot. Not that I'm talking about ME, or most of the people on fan fiction sites. Just a general observation. This author is no idiot. He's got a great imagination, there's a great story arc in my opinion, but the end result is just something that irritates me too much to like it.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the back and forth between what was happening and the main character writing in his journal. The pacing was very well done and I never felt myself waiting for something to happen. I think the ending was a good sleeper ending even though I about started to cry. Unfortunately, I feel it's a book, that once read, doesn't need to be read again.

[Diana Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it kind of confusing at the beginning, but then I kept reading it and discovered a very interesting story. The world was going crazy. A rare disease was spreading across the US and all over the world and nobody could make sense of it. It was terrifying and funny at the same time. But it was about love, too. I am glad I read it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I enjoyed this, there were some bizarrely sexist scenes, ("one of is has to be in charge, and since I'm the one with the muscles, I think it should be me"?!?!?!) and the female characters were fairly helpless and cookie cutter.