“CEMETERY EARTH The Age of Man is coming to an end. After a long and steady decline into shadows the world has fallen into darkness and the last days of Mankind have come. It is the Dead Age. The Dead have returned to reclaim the world. Driven by an unseen master the dead rise from their graves to feast upon the living and to send the human race into extinction. As the twilight begins though there rises a resistance and with it the dimmest glimmer of hope. Hope. Fight. Live. Die. Survive. This is the Dead Age. This is Cemetery Earth.”
“Cemetery Earth” began as a short story. The story, “The Delicate Sound of Rain” imagined a zombie attack during a trench war during a torrential downpour. The story really stuck with me after writing it, and I decided to use it as part of the infrastructure for something larger. Bit, by bit, I began writing zombie stories that happened in the same universe, and as I did, I realized I wanted to do something more with it.
The first release of “Cemetery Earth” was as a chapbook, collecting the first few stories (I think I even have a couple copies somewhere). I took the chapbook to conventions and art shows with my first book, to give me something else to sell. As I slowly wrote more stories, I realized I wanted to collect it all together in a book. I had never put a novel together, and technically, this isn’t one, except it sort of is. It’s a novel of short stories. There is a through character – Hunter – who makes his way through the book, and around him are other stories about this dead world. As I was putting the book together I realized that eventually, the zombie fad that was so prevalent in the early ’00s was going to end, and I didn’t want to be the last person at the party.
I shelved the book.
As the years passed, though, zombies hung on, and I realized that I needed to get over my trepidation and just finish the darned book.
I took to writing the last stories to finish Hunter’s story, and to complete the world, and put the book together. After it was completed, I staged the cover photo, and my then-girlfriend and I brought it to life. With the help of an artist, who put his own filtered and modified touch on the art, the book was complete.
If you are a fan of zombies, and apocalyptic books, this is for you. Being a collection, you can dip in and out of the book easily, but there is a through line with Hunter, and a wider story being told. Dark, brutal, and scary, “Cemetery Earth” is a trip through Hell you will want to take.
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 