Braineater
Jones wakes up face down in a swimming pool with no memory of his
former life, how he died,
or why he’s now a zombie. With a smart-aleck severed head as a
partner, Jones descends into the undead ghetto to solve his own
murder.
But
Jones’s investigation is complicated by his crippling addiction to
human flesh. Like all walking corpses, he discovers that only a stiff
drink can soothe his cravings. Unfortunately, finding liquor during
Prohibition is costly and dangerous. From his Mason jar, the
cantankerous Old Man rules the only speakeasy in the city that caters
to the postmortem crowd.
As
the booze, blood, and clues coagulate, Jones gets closer to
discovering the identity of his killer and the secrets behind the
city’s stranglehold on liquid spirits. Death couldn’t stop him,
but if the liquor dries up, the entire city will be plunged into an
orgy of cannibalism.
Cracking
this case is a tall order. Braineater Jones won’t get out alive,
but if he plays his cards right, he might manage to salvage the last
scraps of his humanity.
So
that's what Braineater
Jones is
all about in a nutshell, and if you're looking for something a little
different in your zombie fiction, I'm guessing this new novel will
fit the bill. The folks at Red
Adept Publishing
brought this book to my attention, and as a result I invited the
book's author, Stephen Kozeniewski, to write a little guest post to
give potential readers a little glimpse at his intentions and
inspiration behind this irreverent novel. Enjoy!
a
guest post by
Stephen
Kozeniewski
Ancient
Greece. Athens. 2500 years ago.
Alcibiades
stumbles drunkenly into one of Socrates’s discourses with his
entire entourage trailing him. And when I say “entourage” I mean
it almost exactly in the modern sense. Alcibiades is the
pre-Christian equivalent of a movie star, widely considered to be the
handsomest man in ancient Greece.
Socrates
is having a sober, reasoned discussion with the rest of his students
when Al bursts in, expecting a party. Not finding one, but still
three togas to the wind, Alcibiades decides to relate a drunk story
to the disciplined philosophy students. The story, as drunk stories
are wont to be, is about Alcibiades’s sexual exploits. Of course,
this being ancient Greece and there being very few sexual taboos and
almost no distinction between gay and straight, young and old, orgy
and wrestling, Alcibiades’s story is about trying to seduce
Socrates.
Picture,
if you will, being at a college lecture when George Clooney or
Scarlett Johansson, (depending on your ‘druthers) stumbles in,
bottle of Stoli in hand, and starts regaling the class with the tale
of that time he/she tried to sleep with the professor. Yeah, that
basically.
So
what this story boils down to is basically this: prostitution also
being not such a big whoop in ancient Greece, Alcibiades offers to
trade a night of steamy May-September romance with Socrates in
exchange for wisdom. You know, the hardcore, mainline wisdom that
Soc doesn’t even share with his regular students who don’t get
drunk and come and mess up his classes.
So
Socrates being, you know, arguably the wisest philosopher of all time
and all responds, “Ah, but that’s an uneven trade. You would get
by far the better of the deal.” Point being, the pleasures of the
flesh are fleeting and all but worthless compared to the consolations
of philosophy.
This
is the famous story about Alcibiades. I’m not quite sure why it’s
the famous story about him, because dude had a life. To get
the full scoop, I strongly recommend you check out TIDES OF WAR by
Steven Pressfield, or, you know, I’m sure there’s an old scroll
by Thucydides or Plutarch or somebody. But to boil it down, as an
admiral and a general Alcibiades was never defeated. And while that
puts him in a class with only a few others in history
(Belisarius…um…Belisarius again…) what’s even more amazing is
that he pretty much never fought for the same guys twice.
During
the Peloponnesian War, which was kind of the ancient Greek equivalent
of a civil war, except, you know, city-states, so not really, ol’
Alcibiades had a habit of becoming the greatest military commander
for one side, leading them to spectacular victory, and then suddenly
turning coat and going over to the other side and doing the same
exact thing for them. He fought for Athens, Sparta, Athens again,
Persia, and just back and forth like a pinball. You might think the
belligerents in this war would’ve gotten fed up with Alcibiades’s
nonsense, but I guess when you’ve got Kobe Bryant on your team you
don’t worry whether he’s going to suddenly turn free agent on
you, you’re just happy he’s on your team for right this second.
In
my younger years I came across the story of Alcibiades and was
transfixed. There was something compelling to me about a man being
the consummate warrior, such a perfect soldier that he cared only for
the glory of battle, and not for the banner he fought under. At the
time, which was I suppose around 2001 or so (which hopefully isn’t
me dating myself) I was also a bit of a Western nut, and it occurred
to me that a great place to relocate the story of Alcibiades was the
Wild West. And thus was born the character Alcibé, a military
genius who pinballed, like his namesake, between loyalty to the
Union, Confederacy, Plains Nations, and Mexican Empire. It would’ve
been epic. Heck, I might still finish it some day and then you can
then claim, “Hey, I remember that guy talking about that on that
Wag the Fox guest post!”
Fast
forward to 2009 and you’ll find me diligently (read: not really)
slaving away on a little zombie noir lark called BRAINEATER JONES. I
never in a million years imagined BJ would get published, so I didn’t
really worry about throwing the whole kitchen sink into it. As a
matter of fact, I cribbed generously from a number of my other
unpublished manuscripts. You might even say that BRAINEATER JONES is
a Frankenstein’s monster (ha!) stitched together from my other
works.
You
might, if you were privy to my computer which, for your own sanity
and the healthiness of your libido, I hope you never are, note that
the character Ivan Skaron shows up in BJ as a brainy intellectual and
in an old movie script of mine as the king of the vampires.
Coincidence? Well, no. I needed a name for my brainy intellectual
and Ivan’s seemed to fit the bill. So, too, when Jones decided to
adopt a wiseacre severed head as his partner, was he mysteriously
possessed of the moniker “Alcibé,” which had previously only
existed in my novel about the Gunfight at the Peloponnesian Corral.
I
can’t say crazier things have happened (because they haven’t) but
there you have it, the two and a half millennia long trail of how
Braineater Jones met his best friend. If you’d like to read their
exploits together you can buy the book from fine
retailers like AMAZON.COM, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple.
And
if you’d like to hear more from me, which, after reading this guest
blog, you almost certainly won’t, you can find me at twitter here:
https://twitter.com/outfortune
or on my blog here: http://manuscriptsburn.blogspot.com.
Stephen
Kozeniewski lives with his wife of 9 years and cat of 22 pounds in
Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern zombie. He was born to the
soothing strains of “Boogie With Stu” even though The Who are far
superior to Zep, for reasons that he doesn’t even really want to
get into right now.
During
his time as a Field Artillery officer, he served for three years in
Oklahoma and one in Iraq, where due to what he assumes was a clerical
error, he was awarded the Bronze Star. The depiction of addiction in
his fiction is strongly informed by the three years he spent working
at a substance abuse clinic, an experience which also ensures that he
employs strict moderation when enjoying the occasional highball of
Old Crow.
He
is also a classically trained linguist, which sounds much more
impressive than saying his bachelor’s degree is in German.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for having me, Gef!
ReplyDeleteYou're quite welcome.
ReplyDelete