Read The Dead Series (Book 1): Tell Me When I'm Dead Online
Authors: Steven Ramirez
Tags: #Zombie Apocalypse
The Dead Series (Book 1): Tell Me When I'm Dead (43 page)
Tell Me When I’m Dead / Steven Ramirez — 1st ed.
ISBN 978-0-9898718-0-8
A Simple Ask
Thank you for reading my novel. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Now that you’ve finished it, I have an ask.
Will you take a few minutes to write an online review?
Honest reviews are crucial for a writer. They connect us with our readers and provide important insights into how we are progressing in our craft. And don’t worry if you didn’t like the book. I’d still like to hear from you. Really.
Thank you again, dear reader.
More Fiction by Steven Ramirez
Dead Is All You Get:
Book Two of THE DEAD SERIES
“Walker,” a short story
“A Bone in the Throat,” a short story
Acknowledgements
A number of outstanding people made this novel possible. First and foremost I want to thank my family—Corinne, Gabby and Candy—for putting up with me during the writing process. To those of you who have a writer in the family, you know what I’m talking about.
I’d like to thank Neal Hock, who did a marvelous job editing the book. Also thanks to Deborah Bradseth for the beautiful cover design. And finally JW Manus for her amazing formatting skills.
A special thank-you goes out to Kevin Asmus, who was gracious enough to allow me to use his powerful work
Last Man Standing
for the cover. Interesting story there. I was trolling around the web for an image that would capture the spirit of the book. After an exhaustive search, I was ready to hire a model and shoot the photo myself. Then I discovered Kevin’s creation—it was perfect.
I also want to thank my beta readers—especially authors Aaron Dennis and Emma Meade, who offered important suggestions and insights. And my friend and retired police captain Wayne Fritz, who provided a number of technical details about police work.
The following quote appears in the book and is attributed to the author Doug Coupland:
Your ability to rationalize your own bad deeds makes you believe that the whole world is as amoral as you are.
Two Bible passages appear in this work, one from Psalm 79 and the other from Colossians. Both were taken from the Standard King James Version which, if you’re interested, can be found at
www.kingjamesbibleonline.org
I dedicated this novel to George A. Romero and John A. Russo because, like a lot of kids, I grew up with
Night of the Living Dead
. Their screenplay has everything I have ever wanted in a zombie movie, although these things were never referred to as zombies—they were
ghouls
. And like that iconic film, I wanted my story to start small. It gave me a chance to delve into the characters rather than relying on spectacle.
Richard Matheson’s seminal work
I Am Legend
was also a strong influence. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so soon. The antagonists are not zombies but
vampires
. Nevertheless, the idea of a man struggling to survive alone in a world gone insane is powerful. The book is beautifully written and is as much a pleasure to read today as it was when it was first published in the 1950s.
The Playlist
Okay, now for some fun! Here is a playlist of songs relating to this novel. The ones marked with an asterisk are mentioned in the book. The rest are thematic to the story. I hope you find them entertaining.
About the Author
You can connect with Steven on
twitter.com/byStevenRamirez
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/StevenRamirezWriter
Goodreads:
www.goodreads.com/StevenRamirez
Google+:
plus.google.com/+StevenRamirezWriter
Amazon Author Page:
amazon.com/author/stevenramirez
Steven’s website and blog can be found at
stevenramirez.com
.
Steven uses Authorgraph to connect personally with readers.
Request an Authorgraph
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Want to know about new releases from Steven Ramirez? Sign up for his newsletter at
stevenramirez.com/newsletter
. You won’t receive spam, only information about new releases and reissues.
Steven Ramirez
began writing seriously as a sophomore in high school, concentrating on that time-honored vehicle of teen outrage and simmering hormones—poetry. Each week, he created these verses and “borrowed” the school’s copier equipment, which allowed him to distribute his work to the unsuspecting world. He still owes the high school twenty-eight bucks for supplies, so please don’t tell anyone.
In college, he dabbled in short stories and filmmaking, all to avoid working on his actual major—music. After a trip to the UK and Spain, where he learned that Californians really
do
have an accent, he returned to the states and graduated with a BA in music, which helped him land a job answering phones.
Eventually, Steven began writing screenplays, mostly because everyone else in LA is writing a screenplay. It’s the law—look it up. If you are not at least “working” on a screenplay, they banish you to South Orange County, where you can take up surfing. Come to think of it, they might have rewritten that law, but you wouldn’t know it visiting Starbucks. What set him apart, though, is that for a while he had an agent. He still didn’t sell anything, though. Agents are like lawyers. Unless there are crisp, new thousand dollar bills nailed to your forehead, they tend not to return your calls.
Then came a fateful meeting with the Davids—David Rimawi and David Latt of
The Asylum
, the prolific studio responsible for ‘
Sharknado
.’ These fine gentlemen read Steven’s work and decided to take a chance. The result was the horror-thriller film ‘
Killers
.’ It was funny, bloody and action-filled, and featured a young
Paul Logan
, who has gone on to enjoy a nice movie career while Steven became old, embittered and … wait, that’s somebody else’s life.
Tired of hawking screenplays, Steven returned to short stories. Though over the years he had written several novels—none of which were published—he decided to try again and in 2013 published
Tell Me When I’m Dead
, a zombie thriller. In 2014, he followed up with the sequel,
Dead Is All You Get
, and is hard at work on the last book of THE DEAD SERIES trilogy.
In addition to writing, Steven is a pretend musician, having written songs and played in bands since high school. He started on the accordion long before it was popular, then graduated to the piano. Thankfully, he decided to give up music and focus on writing.
Steven lives in Los Angeles with his lovely, long-suffering wife and two beautiful daughters. He has a highly distracted Shi Tzu who insists bananas are a major food group. He enjoys Mike and Ikes with his Iced Caffè Americano, doesn’t sleep on planes and wishes Europe were closer.
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