Dead Lock’s Final Straight

It feels wonderful to be able to write this post. I promised myself I would get it complete this year (some two years after I said I would get it done) and looked to miss another self-imposed deadline. But now I can say with total confidence that I am getting there.

What is Dead Lock?

About two and a half years ago, I released a horror comedy Dead Heat (see the buy Dead Heat now page) about a group of friends on a zombie run which takes place during an actual zombie outbreak. Hilarity ensues as the friends fail to realise that the zombies during this corporate team building event are not actually actors, but real undead.

While completing Dead Heat, a little earworm got into my head. This earworm kept asking me questions:

• What if they were prisoners, not workmates?
• What if they were strangers, not acquaintances?
• What if the characters were the same, but very different?
• What if they knew they’d face zombies?
• What if the aim is still to escape a zombie-infested island?
• What if they believed there was a murderer within their ranks?

And so, Dead Lock was born as a mirror story, not a sequel. Consider it a parallel universe where some events are similar but other things are different. For those who have read Dead Heat, it will feel familiar but new at the same time. The idea is/was that both stories could be read in isolation but would also enrich each other when reading both.

It is more of a conventional horror with some funny bits. On the first couple of edits of Dead Heat, I went back and dropped in some clues for Dead Lock – I will most likely drop in some clues to Dead Heat within Dead Lock too. That way, it is not necessary to read them in order of publication. I admit this is an unusual experiment, but I’m enjoying it and I hope readers enjoy reading it just as much.

Dead Lock, scheduled for release October 2017