Read more posts by the author of Interview: Tim Marquitz, writer of ZILF!,

About the Author

If you aren’t reading the books of Tim Marquitz because you haven’t heard of Tim Marquitz, you should probably know that you no longer have that excuse. You’re looking at his face right now. Look at it. You saw his name up in that title. It’s right there in damned bold font. I made it bold myself. You’ve now heard of Tim Marquitz.

Tim Marquitz is the author of the long running Demon Squad series, the Blood War Trilogy, co-author of the Dead West series, as well as several standalone books, and numerous anthology appearances including Triumph Over Tragedy, Corrupts Absolutely?, That Hoodoo Voodoo that You Do, Widowmakers, At Hell’s Gates 1&3, Neverland’s Library, Blackguards, SNAFU Survival of the Fittest, Future Warfare, and Hunters (Cohesion Press), In the Shadow of the Towers (Night Shade), and Unbound (Grim Oak Press).

Tim also collaborated on Memoirs of a MACHINE, the story of MMA pioneer John Machine Lober.

Tim is co-owner and Editor in Chief of Ragnarok Publications.

He’s a damned magician is what he is. If you’ve been burned before by having to wait years for the next book in a series, he’s the balm for your burn–apply liberally.

We have been fortunate to secure an interview with Tim on the kick-off date to his Kickstarter campaign for the novel ZILF!.

Author’s Links

Ragnarok Publications

Webpage

Twitter

Facebook

About the Kickstarter

Join Ashford Dane as his post-apocalyptic existence is thrown into chaos by the sudden arrival of a ZILF!

Yeah, you know what I’m talkin’ about. If not, look it up. I’ll wait…

Comfortably situated at the end of the world Ash stumbles across a group of soldiers traveling through his neighborhood and meets Vix, the hottest pseudo-corpse since Lily Munster. Lonely, and mostly bored off his ass, Ash invites them to dinner only to have uninvited guests show up for a nibble. A cannibalistic nibble, that is, and these guys like their meat burnt.

Ash’s home and a lifetime of supplies go up in flames and he’s forced to flee with the soldiers. Nowhere else to go he joins their mission: To hunt down the only scientist capable of saving Vix from the horrible infection that threatens to turn her into a full blown zombie.

Things just go downhill from there, hordes of zombies standing between them and their goal. But hey, if they succeed maybe then Ash’ll stand a chance of escaping the dreaded friend zone.

Like the Demon Squad novels, ZILF! will be jam-packed with crazy action, adventure, and excitement, as well as chock full of witty one liners and topical humor (likely requiring some kind of cream) with all the zombie tropes turned on their decayed little heads in fun and interesting ways.

The plan is to have Carter Reid, that guy from the Zombie Nation and the cover artist for the Demon Squad novels since book three, whip up an awe-inspiring cover that, not only will I be proud to showcase, but that YOU’ll be super stoked to stare at endlessly, wishing you were standing right there with Ash and Vix. On top of that, Carter will craft five scenes from ZILF! to be included in the book in black and white. (I will post pictures of Carter’s ZILF! art as soon as I have something.)

Interview

Galleywampus (GW): How did your idea for a zombie comedy take shape? Tim Marquitz (TM): As I often do, I found myself scrounging for fun zombie entertainment, something in the vein of Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead. Sadly it’s rarer than you think. Anyway, while I was searching I started thinking about the standard zombie tropes and imagining what a fun zombie romp would include. Then it hit me that I could simply write my own and get exactly what I wanted. So I started brainstorming and came up with my protagonist, Ashford Dane (a nod to Evil Dead.) As soon as I envisioned him my brain immediately kicked into gear and I knew just who I needed to play as a foil against Ash’s nerdy, LARPing self: a hot zombie. GW: What can you tell us about your protagonist, Ashford Dane? TM: Ash is your stereotypical gamer/LARP nerd. He lives alone, no girlfriend, no prospects, but he’s fairly well versed in hitting things and knows all the zombie lore from years of role playing. As such he was ready when the end of the world came along. GW: What does ZILF mean? I mean, obviously, it couldn’t possible mean, uh… TM: That’s exactly what it means. Zombie I’d like to …. That said, ZILF isn’t erotica, it’s comedy, however juvenile. GW: Who would make the sexiest zombie? TM: I have to say Keira Knightley. She’s beautiful and she’s halfway to being a skeleton already yet she still looks amazing. Another step toward the undead wouldn’t hurt her a bit. GW: You’re about to take out some zombies. You put on your gigantic earphones and flip on your Walkman: who is playing? In other words, best music to play while killing zombies. TM: For fun I’d turned on Carcass and blast Reek of Putrefaction. I think “Maggot Colony” would be the perfect complement to zombie killing. GW: Zombies: Fast or slow? TM: I prefer the visual of the slow zombie but my preference would be to mix them up, give the good guys a bit of a challenge by never knowing which ones they’ll be facing down. GW: How has writing this novel differed from your other works, like Demon Squad or Clandestine Daze? TM: It’s actually much closer to my Demon Squad stuff than Clandestine Daze. The humor is lowbrow and it’s a little off the wall. That said, the idea was to play more into the idea of normal people battling against the apocalypse than the Demon Squad, the power levels way different. This is more a traditional zombie romp in scale but if you like the DS books you’ll find plenty to enjoy here, the pacing and action and visuals all there. GW: What is the best part of Kickstarting a novel? What’s the hard part? TM: You know, I’ve never Kickstarted a novel before. This is something new for me. Ultimately though, I think Kickstarting it provides me with a bunch of opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise. The ability to include fun interior art pieces and to create merchandise and actually include the readers in the book make this way more fun than me slapping down a bunch of words by myself. Also, from a marketing perspective, it seems like the idea could break down a few doors and get the book out to a wider audience. The hard part is all the preparation and fulfillment. I’m no longer just writing a novel that I publish right after. I now need to create all the rewards and write the extra bits and pieces if the stretch goals are reached. Then I need to organize everything and get books and rewards out to people quickly. There’s a whole lot more to the process than my normal way of doing things. GW: What are you working on next? TM: I have a couple projects I’m working on. The first is a comedic dark fantasy novel entitled War God Rising. Like ZILF it’s fun and action-packed and off the wall. Then there’s my Tales of a Prodigy novel, which stars my eunuch assassin from the Neverland’s Library, Blackguards, and Unbound anthologies. It’s way darker and more serious than ZILF or WGR but I’ve been wanting to write that one for a while now. After that I have a monster novel I’ve been invited to write. GW: Thank you, Tim.