Zombie Bake-Off

from the back jacket:

ZBO
click the image for the full cover

“It’s time for the annual Recipe Days bake-off in Lubbock, Texas. Soccer moms and grandmothers gather to show off their family recipes, learn new secrets for the perfect shortcake, and perhaps earn a chance to be on the famous cooking show, How Would You Cook It, Then?

When the bake-off is crashed by a federation of pro wrestlers — including American Badass, Jersey Devil Jill, Tiny Giant, The Village Person, Jonah the Whale, the Hellbillies, and the fan favorite Xombie — all hell is set to break loose. Your heart beats faster as you anticipate who will come out on top in the ultimate showdown of the century: soccer moms or pro wrestlers. Anything can happen.

An infected batch of donuts has transformed most of the wrestlers into mindless brain-eaters and the doors of the convention center have been chained shut, leaving the survivors locked inside, forced to fend for themselves against the hungry dead.

Possessing the intensity of a shotgun to the face, Zombie Bake-Off is a stripped-down masterpiece of blood and doughnuts from celebrated author Stephen Graham Jones.”

from me:

I wrote this when I was hungry. I wrote this long before I was studying zombies. I wrote this in 2007. This is that story. I wrote this side-by-side with its screenplay. I love this cover. I was missing Demon Theory when I wrote this. I didn’t want to ever do Demon Theory again. I always wanted to be a racehorse namer. I found that being a pro-wrestler namer’s close enough. I used to live for wrestling on Friday nights. I wrote that story “Raphael” because I loved and still love wrestling. I kept picturing The Rock as Xombie, in here. And Andre as Tiny Giant, of course. I can’t stop looking at this cover. That Advocate pull completely cracks me up every time. This is already a movie in my head. Everybody come in, watch it with me.

links : Mourning Goats | Hellnotes | Matthew Vaughn | Booked Podcast | Chizine | Jesse Bullington | Denver Post | HorrorTalk | Book Battle | Pro Wrestler vs Zombies? | Open Book of Horror |  Drew Rowsome  |  Considering Stories  |

University of Colorado zombie specialist Stephen Graham Jones shows how to put a fresh spin on a classic dish. The basic ingredients are a bunch of soccer moms attending a cooking show and a few dozen zombie-infected day-old doughnuts. Season with a group of very antisocial professional wrestlers. Shake continuously inside an auditorium along with a very determined show organizer. And then go wild eating brains — Denver Post

Stephen Graham Jones cleaves flowery narrative and leaves out complicated, unnecessary dialogue.  What is left for the reader is Zombie Bake-Off, a combination of his love for a local arena, baked goods, and zombie stories.  In a literary world now jam-packed with tales of love disguised with glittery vampires, shirtless werewolves hellbent on obtaining pricey real estate on the California coast, and Presidential monster slayers, Jones tells a simple tale of a zombie horde reigning terror on the few humans left inside a building, trapped, and forced to take a stand.  The simplicity of this novel is a refreshing nod to the George Romero movies of old. – Mourning Goats

Zombie Bake-Off is fast, witty, original and ridiculously entertaining. Stephen Graham Jones has created an action-packed literary pastry that packs a sugar rush you just have to experience. — HorrorTalk

audible
best audionovel of one of my books so far, I think

and, a #coverflip from karina @skullulele:
zbo_ha

alamo
and I think this guy won the costume contest, too, so: won that ZBO he’s holding. this is at Alamo Drafthouse
and so it begins (spotted in front of the public library, nobody even close to close to this bench)
and so it begins (spotted in front of the public library, nobody even close to close to this bench)
Author: SGJ