Wasted, Inc. : Paroxysm

Preliminary reviews for Paroxysm:   First of all, many of you are probably asking: Who in East Hell is Gremlin? There is no easy answer. Gremlin is one half Douglas Adams, one half Stephen King, one half Kurt Vonnegut, one half Chuck Palahniuk, one half Dave Barry, one half HP Lovecraft, one half Deity, one half non-existent deity, one half Harry Knowles, one half Kevin Smith, one half James Randi and three-fifths Oligarch of the universe. This staggering amount, approximately 610%, is only fitting for someone bigger than life, which is Gremlin to a T. Gremlin is a little-known (sorry, Grem) Denver and DuhMoines based novelist who has been quietly churning out some of the most entertaining novels ever written on this side of Sector 97. This book is the Zombie horror novel for people who REALLY LOVE Zombie horror novels. It is also the Zombie horror novel for people who REALLY HATE Zombie horror novels. For the other 863% of us, it's just a damned entertaining read. In fact, I was so absorbed by this novel that I completely failed my statistics class! —'Ford Prefect', Mesa, Arizona   "Paroxysm", by Gremlin, is not for the faint of heart. It's bloody, intense, and detailed. It ranges from a paleontological dig in Antarctica to Des Moines, Iowa; from a zombie fansite webmistress to a British professional killer. And oh, man, is it good. Gremlin is aptly named: He'll get into your psyche, nestle himself down comfortably between a few primal fears, and set to work tearing down your carefully-constructed walls against anxiety. When he's finished, you'll be keeping the lights on in your house too. And that's just from the preview - 119 pages replete with paleontology, foreshadowy bliss, dinosaurs and well-thought-out character development. Oh. And zombies. Yeah. This is a book about the end of the world as we know it - and Gremlin uses zombies to do it. Thing is, these zombies are all too possible - which makes them triply terrifying. "28 Days Later" scared me, but it was the leap-out-of-your-seat-at-the-boo variety of shocker. This has a measured pace. It's stately and elegant and has the same feel as an anticipated car wreck. It's a solid story. Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it - and then make sure your electricity bill is paid in full. This is not a book you want to read before being plunged into darkness. —Rowan Crisp, RowanCrisp.com   grem: I know exactly who and where you are, I'm organising a class action against you and that crap you publish —Chimpolaux the WonderDummy

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From Paroxysm:   Philadelphia looked like Chicago had, but worse. Worse than Detroit had. Worse than Denver. Worse, in sad fact, than any zombiefilm she’d ever seen. She reconsidered that. Philadelphia was simply worse than any film she’d ever seen, regardless the genre. Every building in sight—skyscraper and 7Eleven alike—was on fire. Large fire. Billowing and surging. White and yellow and orange and red dancing in charcoal and black. Every car abandoned, overturned, burning, or any combination thereof. Every tree grey in the haze, littered and spotted with ash. Philadelphia was lightyears beyond the shortsighted satire of Night of the Comet. Beyond the lowbudget tapinosis of Night of the Living Dead. Beyond Escape from New York. Beyond Planet of the Apes. Philadelphia was an evening campfire in the final hour before dawn: burned to the shadows of ashes, fuelled no more, but blistering hot and deadly to the touch. Infernal dust too dirty to cleanse and too hot to coat. Apocalyptic. Or worse. Caught between Ragnarok and a hard place. Progress was not easily made. The streets were simply gone. Invisible. Hidden beneath cars and zombies and fires, also in various combinations. She gaped at them: armies of two- and three-metre pillars of flame, walking along casually, toward her, away from her, into buildings and out, bumping blindly into cars and turning away, collapsing as their tendons melted in the heat. Nothing she’d ever seen before. Not in a film, not in a videogame, not in a nightmare, not in a dream. Not on the planet. This was new. This was final. This was insane. She watched it happen, and it failed to resolve into cogent actions in her mind. Flaming zombies walking into flaming trees and simply disappearing; flaming zombies produced from flaming buildings as if by pure magic—searing offspring of some living, migrating blaze. Cars burned and smoked and steamed and exploded at random. There was no pattern in layout or in sequence. Pure, flaming chaos. Without reference. In a slight panic, she realised that, if she suddenly veered off her simple, northeastern course, she’d never even know it. Not until the flames died down enough to reveal the sign: WELCOME TO MIAMI or WELCOME TO SEATTLE or WELCOME TO LOS— Behind her, he hissed. Or moaned. Or screamed. Or howled. He may have done all at once. It wasn’t a human sound, whatever it was, or even mammalian. It was just unintelligible pain. It had happened. He’d become a damned zombie. So that was that. One more thing out of the way.

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Paroxysm (Paperback) $29.99