The Anatomy of a Murderhole

So, I used to work in the local film industry. I was creative director at a film and commercial development company. I worked on a bunch of local stuff and helped with the production side of a few national campaigns for the Army and Phillip Morris. I know. That's like saying, yeah, back in high-school I was chummy with Lucifer and Yog-Soggoth. We'd drink beer and shit.

Anyway, I've asked a few of my old coworker for favors, and they were kind enough to agree to them. So, Wednesday night, I'll have a green cyclorama wall, an HD camera, and my old, awesome friend Chris Cranford helping me shoot elements of a short called, "The Anatomy of a Murderhole." I think that's what it'll be called. Murderholes are areas, in this case on Bridge City (which you can learn more about here), where zombies are led to slaughter and then dumped in the river.

It's gonna be an animation/book trailer for my zombie novel THIS DARK EARTH. Here's the copy that my super agent, Stacia Decker, came up with to pitch it to editors. I think it's absolutely perfect.

So you survived the zombie uprising. Now what?

The land is contaminated, electronics are defunct, the ravenous undead remain, and life has fallen into a nasty and brutish state of nature. You need: food, water, weapons.

Welcome to Bridge City in what was once Arkansas—part medieval fortress, part Western outpost, and the precarious last chance for civilization.

A ten-year-old prodigy when the world ended, Gus is now at fourteen a battle-hardened young man. Gus designed Bridge City to protect the living few from the shamblers always at the gates. Now he’s being groomed by his physician mother, Lucy, and the gentle giant Knock-Out to become the next leader of men. But an army of slavers is on its way, and the war it wages for the city’s resources could mean the end of survival as we know it. Can Gus be humanity's savior? If he is, will it mean becoming a dictator, a martyr, or maybe something worse than even the zombies?

Grab a sturdy headknocker, strap on some Kevlar, and prepare to shape the future of humankind.

John Hornor Jacobs' dystopian vision THIS DARK EARTH is both a rousing adventure story and a thought-provoking meditation on the meaning of humanity, the nature of civilization, and the importance of a well-built murderhole.

I've got a couple of friends that are gonna be dressed up in full motorcycle gear - the Kevlar armor for doing the nasty, close up work in the murderholes. But I need some more bodies to shoot as zombies. And here, when I say "shoot" I mean solely with video.

Anyway, if you live in the Little Rock area and you want to do a little shambling, please contact me here.

NOTE: Okay, I'm focusing on the zombies here. I've resisted embracing the zombies because sometimes I can't believe that I've written a novel with them. However, I'd like to say in my defense, it's not a book about zombies. It's a book about how people deal with horrible situations. It's a book about the bonds of love between us all, and the human condition. It just happens to have zombies. That is all.