THREE QUESTIONS: Joanne Anderton

You do not want to miss Joanne Anderton’s contribution to Zombies: More Recent Dead. An eerie tale of love, loss, and redemption, “Trail of Dead” follows two individuals caught up in the aftermath of a terrible curse: a neuromancer hunter trying to protect the innocent and stop the madness, and the woman in whose footsteps the dead follow. When all is said and done, what cost would you pay to get back what you need? And are you ready for the unexpected consequences? Complete with dead lizards and emu and kangaroos in the red dust of the Australian desert, “Trail of Dead” will leave your skin crawling and your palms sweaty for the grip of a Hunter’s sword.

Prepare yourself for the coming apocalypse and save yourself a copy of Zombies: More Recent Dead before it’s released in September! You can pre-order a copy from Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Books, IndieBound, or Amazon.

1. The Writing Question: What is your ideal writing space/environment?

There’s no such thing! I work full time as well as write, and if I was worried about an ideal writing space I’d never get anything done. Mostly I tend to write on my desktop at home, but I’ve written on a crappy old laptop at a kitchen table with half a dozen other writers, or scribbled in a notebook on the bus, or tapped away on my phone while sitting on the beach at lunch. I also have a bad back, and there was a time when I simply couldn’t sit down for any extended period of time, so I rigged up a standing desk using the ancient laptop and a lot of empty cardboard boxes. My point is not to be too fussy, and write where and when you can. Anyway, writing’s not about where you are or how you do it, writing’s about what’s going on in your head.

2. The Zombie Question: What enticed you to writing this zombie story?

Two completely random things. One, was being introduced to a band called “…And You Will Know Us by Our Trail of Dead” and totally knowing there was a zombie story in that name. There just had to be. Two was, well, the Australian outback. The interior of Australia is such a vast, empty-looking place, but there is so much history buried just beneath the surface. So the story came about when I realised that these two completely different things needed to go together. I guess you could say it all started with an image of a figure trudging through the outback, with the dead trailing behind them.

3. The Random Question: If you could spend time with any fictional character, who would it be and where would you meet?

Oh I like this question. It would be Lina Inverse, from the anime/manga The Slayers, and we would meet in a restaurant. We would stuff ourselves full of delicious food, then she’d teach me some kick-arse black magic spells, and we’d go have adventures (and eat more along the way). Why yes, I may have already thought about this. Why do you ask?

Joanne Anderton lives in Sydney with her husband and too many pets. By day she is a mild-mannered marketing coordinator for an Australian book distributor. By night, weekends, and lunchtimes she writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her short story collection, The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories, was published by Fablecroft Publishing in 2013. Her novel Debris was published by Angry Robot Books in 2011, followed by Suited in 2012. She has been shortlisted for multiple Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and won the 2012 Ditmar for Best New Talent. You can find her online at joanneanderton.com.