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Creating the Zombie Squad
Author Bryce Summers discusses his book, The Zombie Squad.
The Zombie Squad is an intriguing blend of adventure, horror, and humor. What was the balance for you when writing the story?
This may sound quite silly, but my mind kept returning to Scooby-Doo episodes where Shaggy and the gang were inside the Mystery van traveling to place and would uncover some sinister plot. I was not writing a children’s book though, and I wanted something that was teen oriented and put a toe over now and then into the adult world, barely. Any time people are stressed because the world is falling around them, this is going to cause an eruption of dynamics between characters, and here is the opportunity in the writing to get a chuckle.
Sam and his friends are well defined characters. Did you pull from any personal experiences to write these characters?
When I was in my 20s I worked with teenagers and pre-teens, but that was awhile ago, and I unfortunately had no teens to watch when writing this book. The teen characters did end up being a blend of the youths I remember working with, a recollection of my own teenage years, and Sam was partially modeled from characters on the TV show GLEE. I had no idea what slang teens used these day and during my research I found I was a bit clueless coming across words like tope, turn up, cray cray; but I did know about hashtag being used in dialogue for sarcasm, or throwing shade, which I love. Apparently, gangsta is still in, and that’s from my era. My one regret was not using “Bye Felicia” anywhere in the story.
The kids come into possession of a Zombi Astral; a portal key to unlocking a demon world. Where did you get this idea and how did it develop into a story?
Just a preface, I am not an expert on Haitian culture, or Vodou (not Voodoo which is rooted in America). But in my research the Zombi Astral comes from Haitian Vodou. There’s an individual in Haitian Vodou who is a sorcerer, or known as the Bokor, who revives a corpse so it’s animated and captures the soul of the dead person in jar called the Zombi Astral. I took liberties and decided to redefine the Zombi Astral and made it a talisman that acted as a key that opened a portal to a demon world (spoiler, sorry). Anyway, that sounded much more fun than keeping a lonely soul inside a jar.
What genre do you think best fits The Zombie Squad and what draws you to this genre?
I am told that YA is not a genre but refers to age group, so I won’t say that. I will say it’s a Post-Apocalyptic Supernatural Thriller for teens.
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The Zombie Squad
You can escape from any dreadful situation if you have the courage to do so. The Zombie Squad offers various experiences that uniquely draws the line between right and wrong. The right choices, at first, bring brutal hardships and pain but as the story unfolds, the reader comes to know that the choices were made for the right reasons and in turn saved thousands of people from the shadow of evil. The book contains all the charm and poise I’ve come to expect in young adult books. The author’s great imagination and skill at giving it life on page creates some unbelievably visceral scenes and deftly blends fiction with reality. Bryce Summers seems to have great knowledge of the behavior and mindset of a professional criminal. He delivers detailed scenes with focus given to even the smallest of details, which is really what made this book worth reading. Although, some of the chapters were a bit too dramatic for me, I know there are some readers that enjoy over the top style characterizations.
The book starts with the appearance of three criminals who work for a man named John Guerra. They’re hired to find a cursed talisman. They first visit an old man named Toussaint Julme who is on his deathbed in a hospital. Before they’re able to begin their investigation Toussiant dies and in his hand is a picture of Datal (his brother living in New Orleans) that gives them their first clue to finding the talisman. Later they find out that it’s actually a Zombi Astral; a portal key to unlocking a demon world which belonged to their master who bought it from Toussaint’s nephew. This is the opening of the story, but the next chapters take an interesting turn and fly by easily; the criminals visit Datal’s store in New Orleans, a young cast of characters come in contact with the Talisman, a great setting of a horrifying world through which the young classmates have to go through, the resilience shown by Datal and the young students. The moral to the story is clear, there is evil in the world that can’t be kept hidden and must be confronted no matter the cost. I wish the author did a better job at summarizing his thoughts as there were long bits of exposition and explanations that really dragged the story. But the one thing that I immediately think of when I remember this story is the creativity. There were very imaginative and descriptive scenes that made you feel as if they were real, and then I was slowed down by the long swaths of explanations. But overall I enjoyed the book. If you’re looking for a well-crafted fictional horror story then pick up, The Zombie Squad, you won’t be disappointed.
Pages: 347
ASIN: B010N8GCPU
LITERARY TITAN 