Book-a-book of the Month Club discussion

Discuss the Author: Joe Imhoff

Have you read anything else by him? Thoughts on writing style? Would you read more entries in his zombie series?

So . . . big reveal here! I waited to give as many people as possible a chance to read the book without the following bias . . . if you did not figure it out yet, the author of our October book is a member of our book club!

I thought it would be good to support him as an up and coming author - as well as fitting the Halloween theme. He is planning on a sequel, so if you have any additional feedback for him, please let him know!

Hey everyone. Yeah, Matthew and I thought it would be cool to give the members of the group to be able to talk the author of a book. Feel free to ask me any questions you want. Also feel free to bash me or my book just as you would have before.

I was afraid that we announced the book and my authorship of it all at once I wouldn't get honest feedback. I was really looking for criticism when it came down to it.

The second book is well underway. It's definitely the weak link in the chain of the 4 set series. I've had to re-write the ending numerous times. The first book was an idea that I had about seven years ago along with the last two. I sort of made up the second book as I went along. I hope that it's at least somewhat in the same arena.

The first book sort of flooded out. I have to say that having time to write the rebuild series has been a perfect storm of events: riding the train everyday for two plus hours, the Walking Dead coming out on TV and the financial security from my new job to only work 8 hours a day.

I've heard many times that my book is similar to The Walking Dead, but I assure that I had my ideas several years before I knew The Walking Dead existed or maybe even did exist. I do curse the show everytime the have an idea similar to one that I plan or have put in the book, but I think there's enough variance. And there definitely will be as the two progress. I think I'm taking a completely different route than them.

My book is in Seasons because when I first started writing them I felt an urgency to get my story out, stay ahead of The Walking Dead. So, I started writing a blog. My readership was pretty high at the start of it but every week fewer and fewer people were checking in. Apparently the weekly release format doesn't work very well in blog format for a story that is this complex. At least, that's what people were telling me.

(Sorry, I didn't response sooner. I usually read the GoodReads posts on the train and I don't know how many times my response to this post has cut out while I was sending it.)

Also, I can't go back and edit on mobile and I have a tiny hallf sentence window to type into. Kind of embarassing to read my last post. I'll have to fix it up laterz.

There is a little pressure knowing that we have the ear of the author!

Question for you - do you have any specific questions you would like answers for? i.e. How did you like . . .? What were you expecting . . .? Did this seem . . .?

I do like stories where there are shorter elements that are introduced that come back into play later. Because of that, this book had lots of cliffhangers. I did have to go back and reread some segments trying to remember which characters were which when they came back into play. (that is not necessarily a fault - I sometimes have to do that anyway when there are a lot of characters)

I noticed that some of the characters were not revisited in this book - specifically the cruise ship and the morgue battle (if that is a good way to describe them). If they were addressed later I did not notice it - my apologies if they were and I missed it. Can we expect to see those characters again in future "seasons", or were thise just little anecdotes to add to the story.

I may think of more - that is it for now!

I would also like to know about what happened to the cruis ship?

Oh and i would also like to know if Grant asking Tonya if she is pregnant is going to lead to her being pregnant or am i just going to have to wait and see? :p

I have to say that it's kind of weird having the first book out there. It's done, there's nothing I can do about it, really, other than not let things you didn't like happen again.

There are actually three sets of characters in the first novel that don't come back until the second season. There's Jeff in the lab, Colleen and Suzy on the cruise ship, and then Debby in the zoo. They're not one-off characters. I left them out of the last half because they have their own paths to follow.

Tonya's pregnancy....? I hate that this is the answer, but you're going to have to wait to see. Sorry.

There are definitely a lot of people in the book. A lot. I have a growing list of one off characters, side characters and main characters. One of the things I've learned about writing a novel of this length with this many characters is to make a detailed photo of each person, especially main characters. For instance, eye color. At one point I found myself tracking back through the novel seeing if I ever mentioned what color Tom's eyes were. It turned out that I was about to make Tom's eyes three different colors in three different spots. Might not seem like that big of a deal, but that's something I hadn't considered. It's definitely something that I should be keeping track of. So I went back and and made a list of how everyone looks. I have a very clear idea of how everyone behaves, but their looks were more impressions to me. Now I even have a really great picture of how Judith looks in my mind and on paper. It was there, just not great.

The first half of the first book is about the virus more than it is about the people. Rather than having a quick dialogue between two characters talking about the day-in-day-out of the "end" I wanted to take a detailed look at how panic spread. I wanted to give credibility to the spread of the virus and the idea that it could decimate the whole planet. I really wanted to attack all the plot holes that conventional zombie horror just overlooks and then go from there. I wanted a solid, realistic foundation to stem from. That's what the first half of the book is about.

The rest of the books are more like the last half: chronological, character driven and lots of intertwining side stories. I hope that you're looking forward to more of that. I guess that's more of a question.

Did you like the first half more than the last half?

Oh! I forgot about Debbie at the zoo! It will be interesting to catch up with all of those characters, too.

I can't say that I can answer your last question. Honestly, I liked both parts just the same.

Did you ever read The Stand by Stephen King? The first half of your book is like it in the way the characters were presented. Kind of made it feel like two different books, and that is pretty cool.

I am looking forward to the rest especially to see if Grant is dodgy or not haha i think both halfs had their moments but overall i preferred the second half as it was easier for me to follow because the majority of the characters were all together. I am glad you will be continuing with the other story lines too. I don't like being left wondering and never finding out hahaha

oh and I forgot to say I really like part where it was from the zombies point of view :)

I'm glad you liked that part. I've definitely had mixed reviews about that one part. One day I stopped by at my parents house and my brother was there, he'd just finished reading the book. He actually had it on him at the time and he pulled the book open to that section. The whole thing was stricken with yellow highlighter and he slowly began to describe why he hated that part. I got the impression that he was mostly just confused about why I'd chosen to do that. "Because I thought it would be entertaining and informative to certain things that come up later." That was not a good answer as far as he was concerned. He still kind of jabs at that part from time to time. I don't know why.

Also, I hate being left wondering as well. I've written in a cliff-note sort of manner all the things that happen to the people until they're back together. Some of the side stories I've thought might be good enough for little spin off novels. Or maybe an anthology of side/other characters. To be honest, though, I'm looking forward to writing something that's not zombie related.