#markkloss

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Game Hunter: My Zombies.

In the last decade or so zombies have achieved a bit of a resurgence and I saw the popular films ‘28 Days Later’ and ‘Shaun of the Dead,’ the first showed zombies to be fast and viciously dangerous and the second depicted zombies as slow, lumbering and easy to be killed. The rest generally showed zombies in one of these two categories and they were always grotesque!

From this I came up with the idea to have my zombies not so categorised, and so I have fully turned zombies, half-zombies, quarter-zombies and so on, it is not a static state but rather they deteriorate!

The general theme in zombie movies or books is that zombies are evil, without heart or soul and need to be killed or at least escaped from. That was until I read ‘Warm Bodies,’ what a different perspective! The hero and the rest of the zombies aren't nearly so cartoonishly grotesque and they have feelings, heart and internal thoughts! I loved that and so my main characters became these quarter-zombies with feelings.

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Game Hunter: The Inspiration

We are interrupting our current series of blogs to give you a special blog on Game Hunter. The reason for that is TODAY Game Hunter was published!!

I am so chuffed and excited, and I hope you all enjoy the final product as much as I do.

In honour of Game Hunter, I thought I would tell you my inspiration and how I ended up with this story.

[markkloss-blog]

Flowers

There cannot be a better sight

Than open flowers’ gentle light, In the morning or deepest night Dancing colours or baby white.

Recovering from the devil’s blight And hungry insects' savage bite, Facing the winds without fright Growing with deceptive might.

Wings of pollen taking flight Rising up to heaven’s height, With nature’s strength to excite The busy bees’ appetite.

Exploding like packed dynamite Hugging ground or shinning bright, The sturdy roots holding tight Fighting for their birth right.

This promise of spring delight Causes my heart to ignite, Dancing, skipping like a kite There cannot be a better sight.

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My Active Imagination.

[markkloss-blog]

My Active Imagination

I believe most children have an active and fertile imagination. Sometimes it gets squashed out of them by parents or the school system, sometimes it just gets lost by the wayside, and for the lucky few it is encouraged and admired. Mine apparently started young, as my mother once told me how she would be entertained for ages, as I talked away to myself about some imagined game while sitting on the potty. Although as you can imagine, I don’t remember those games now, I can just see my young self, weaving my own personal worlds. In the garden, I used to play for hours being a bus driver on my three-wheeler, stopping at bus stops, being late, early or just on time. There would be entire stories about the passengers; those who were running late to a birthday party, those who just rode on the bus for the view and those who tried to get on without paying. I always had a lot of fun with that. When I was about 10, I could spend hours in my bedroom acting out different wars with my toy soldiers; creating the ebb and flow of the battle, the feelings, the blood and smashing defeats or victories. In fact I can still get into that and, though my books are usually lighter, I believe you can see that in some of my poems, such as Force Over Reason, Why did I Stand Tall? and The Message. Though it may seem like normal kid behaviour, I am glad to remember those childish beginnings of my imagination. As a parent, I have always strived to cultivate and not squash the imagination of my children, because no matter the game or idea, that is a child’s best way of expressing his or her own world of fun and interest. For me, writing is an important method of releasing my switched-on imagination. I can never ignore the stories, worlds and ideas wanting to come out. Writing is my way of doing that…just like those games from a wild young boy once were. I want to take you on a journey with my blog, from those young days of my life, up until the present and the release of my books. I hope you enjoy!

Mark.

http://www.markkloss.co.uk/