Interview with Joseph Souza, author of Darpocalypse
The second wave of the plague has struck with a brutal vengeance and a full-on zombie apocalypse has spread throughout every corner of the world.
This is very exciting. The last time we talked to you was about the first book in this series, The Reawakening. How does the story continue? A few lucky people on Earth have developed a mysterious immunity from the plague. Known as ghosts, they are prized for their ability to walk among the dead and gather food and supplies without fear. The Boston camp harbors one such person, and President Roberts orders the Army’s finest soldier to bring their ghost to Washington, D.C. at any cost. As the world descends into apocalyptic madness, the horde grows increasingly aggressive, threatening the wellbeing of every survivor in Dar’s camp. Boston Common becomes ground zero for a dramatic showdown, and Dar realizes that she must make a decision that threatens not only her life, but the survival of every person she’s been entrusted to protect. Remind us what genre this is. There was some question with The Reawakening about if this series is zombie fiction or not. Are we any closer to an answer? In Darpocalypse, the living dead mutate into full-fledged human-shaped zombies, although they still go through a brief phase between death and the reawakening, whereby the go through a brief spiritual revelation (although that’s up for debate). The zombies in the third book go through another cataclysmic shift that will definitely challenge the reader’s expectation about the nature of zombies and what they should be. But in my books the zombies are merely a catalyst for describing the interactions between the various So what kind of readers will it appeal to? Remind us about Dar and your other major characters. Annabelle, who lives in her camp, is a ghost; one of the few people who can walk among the dead and not fear for her life. She provides for the camp by going out and bring back supplies, though everyone believes Dar is responsible for keeping them alive. Prior to the apocalypse, Annabelle was a famous rock star with a life threatening drug habit and low self-esteem. Think Courtney Love. But since the zombie outbreak she’s cleaned up her act and found these end-of-times to be the most meaningful in her life. Mike Brabas is a domestic terrorist in the vein of Timothy McVeigh. Sentenced to death for his brutal crimes, he learns during the zombie outbreak that he is a ghost and can walk among the dead. Escaping from prison during the outbreak, he heads straight for Washington D.C. with the hopes of taking over the country and running it the way he sees fit. Colonel Tiberius Gritz, a member of the Special Forces, returns from the Middle East wars to find himself thrust against the zombie horde that has taken over the United States. Soon he is enlisted to go up against Mike Brabas in order to save Dar’s camp from ultimate ruin. Felicia Roberts is the first black president of the United States. A conservative from the South, she is one of the only survivors to make it out of Washington after Brabas destroys the District. Somehow she makes it to Dar’s camp, where she finds that she is just like everyone else. Except she isn’t. Sounds like it’s going to blow readers’ minds. Complete this sentence for us: if you like _________________, you’ll love this book. Speaking of trilogies, tell us about the final book you’ve got planned for this trilogy. The third book, Darmageddon, takes off right roughly a month after Darpocalypse ends. It’s a surreal road trip of a novel that is broke up into three separate and distinct books. Without giving away the entire plot, let’s say that there’s an Army unit chasing after our gang, not to mention all the zombies trying to get at them as well. Throw in some militant Chinese troops trying to take over the zombie-infested nation and it makes the chase all that more frantic. Add in a surreal Amish compound where strange things are happening beneath the surface, a deranged, brilliant scientist with a God-like complex and a tribe of peaceful Lakota Indians living off the land on their reservation and being kept protected by a mysterious undertone. That’s Darmageddon in a nutshell. I’ll think readers will really love the 3rd book in the series. Tell us a bit about yourself. Do you have a website where we can keep up with your work? How can we follow you on Twitter and/or Facebook? What’s next? As well, I have new thriller series set in Maine. The first one is called The Liger Terror and involves an evil terrorist with a long vendetta who has unleashed a killer hybrid virus on Cooke’s Island, which is located just off the coast of Portland. The book is currently in the final editing phase and will be published hopefully by the fall. |
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