Check out my interview with Remy Porter. The author of The Aussie Dead. (TDWS is short for The Dead War Series)
REMY PORTER: I think a lot of people are attracted to the idea of writing a novel. I’d always liked reading horror fiction from my teenaged days, authors like James Herbert and Stephen King. Back in 2008 and 2009 I’d recently discovered a number of indie zombie novels for the first time, such as Iain McKinnon’s, Domain of the Dead. I was a rural British police officer at the time and I had a slightly inspired idea to use the idea of a country policeman finding himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. This idea eventually became my first novel, Dead Beat.
TDWS: Why write in the zombie genre?REMY PORTER: I think there is a great deal of inherent drama just from the premise. Usually it’s going to involve the end of society as you know it. Law and order breaking down. A lack of supplies. I think the zombie genre is fun to write in because you can create a world where both the characters and the world in general become very unpredictable. Obviously there are a lot of zombie stories out there now, so half the fun is trying to put a fresh spin on your own story.
TDWS: Lets's get to your book. What's it about? Is it a series?REMY PORTER: The Aussie Dead is a 17,000 word novella set in Australia. It takes the premise of a British family flying into Australia for a holiday of a lifetime and getting rather more than they bargained for. Potentially it is the first of a series of zombie novellas set in Australia. I choose Australia in mainly because I lived there between 2010 and 2015, and have only just returned the UK. There is surprisingly little zombie fiction set there and I thought it was high time that changed.
TDWS: As I'm sure you know there are thousands of zombie books out there right now. What makes yours stand out?REMY PORTER: There are a great deal of zombie books out there, certainly mountains more than when I started reading them back in 2008 and 2009. I would hope my stories stand out through unusual settings and a decent streak of British black humour.
TDWS: Are your zombies the fast or slow moving type?REMY PORTER: Certainly in Dead Beat there appeared to be a mixture of both. I’m aware this is now something of a contentious issue. I probably lean towards the slow these days, but it’s not set in stone.
TDWS: Are you trying to make any greater point with your books or just write a good zombie story?REMY PORTER: I do really just try to write good stories. My stories don’t necessarily have a huge amount of subtext, but I do try to write balanced and realistic characters. To my mind it more interesting to not have the lead character as some kind of Bruce Willis type, but more an average person adapting to exceptional events.
TDWS: Do you have an online presence? If so where? Blogs, web sites, Twitter, Facebook, etc.REMY PORTER: I am active on Facebook under the name Remy Porter. There is also an older website, remyporter.com.
