Richard T. Schrader

I read what I call the original zombie story, the one that started it all, Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham Parkes. He uses shambler plants. If you understand all of this like I do, you see that this genre is all there from outbreak to long term survival, with the various rival groups with their radical answers - just his zombies are zombie plants. His genius should come back in a new movie of his story as human zombies. So many people debate slow vs fast zombies not realizing that Wyndham already knew that issue and already solved it. Slow zombies are being phased out because they can't win. They are not threat enough that the human military doesn't just blow them all way rather easily. His slow zombies are truly frightening, because in his story, nearly everyone is blind. Are slow zombies scary? They are when you have no eye sight and you need to go feel around for food, and those things are both waiting for you and hunting you. Also, they are communicating with that tapping so that when you do have your rules and your base, they are still coming for you, and will root you out. Root you out, plant zombies - good one. After I read that, I wanted to make a truly all functional zombie nightmare where survival does have humanity on the edge of extinction because you simply are not going to get away with the tactics of the typical zombie universe.

My favorite books are generally non-fiction on history. I read a lot of antique famous quotation books. I have read lots of the classics from Moby Dick to Paradise Lost. I quote a lot of Paradise Lost in my books. I really love ER Burroughs. I love Homer, which I quote a lot too. I study Mongols, Romans, Meso-Americans, Ancient Greece. I just read the Aeneid recently. I loved Clavelle, Dune, Heinlein, Stainless Steel Rat, Philip Dick, HG Wells, Conrad, tons of books. It is easier to say, that I read less of people who are still alive. Most anyone dead and famous, I read their stuff just to be informed. I read the Count of Monte Cristo, Le Miserable. "Dark as a pocket." Is one I took from that.