What We Talk About When We Talk About Brains: The Red Rain Collection

by Peter M. Ball

Vicious storms of red rain sweep across Australia, raising the dead as zombies hungry for human flesh. Fortunately, we’ve all seen zombie movies and know what comes next, allowing the locals to band togetherand live small, desolate, ordinary livesdespite the ever-present danger.

Drawing inspiration from George Romeroand Raymond Carver in equal measure, Peter M. Ball presents six dirty realism tales of quiet desperation and spare, razor-sharp narration in a world overrun by the walking dead.

95 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 21, 2025

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to read short stories between longer novels but the writing style was so engrossing I read them all in on sitting! There are a few typos, nothing major that pulled me out of the story. Plus it means a human person wrote it.
These stories are very much character driven. I loved the mix of people who remember the world before the rains and younger generations born into the madness. Ball creates a believable sense of isolation and claustrophobic paranoia in which these unfortunate characters exist. You sit with their grief, their existential dread of knowing the undead are lurking just beyond the fences they built around themselves.
The only negative is this wasn't longer! Like the deader bashing in a door I hunger for more.