Just a quick, belated word about the Grimm Up North festival in Manchester last weekend.
It was a cracking event with a well-supported screening of Autumn taking place on the Sunday. Dickon Tolson (who plays Carl in the movie) was also there and the two of us sat down for a Q&A session after the showing. Huge thanks to fellow author Iain McKinnon (remember that name – more news about Iain coming in the next couple of weeks) for stepping in at the last moment and hosting the session. The Q&A was taped, and as soon as the footage surfaces I’ll post a link.
Thanks to the organisers of the event for showing Autumn and for inviting me along. Thanks to them also for shoving us in a room with a load of props from the workshop of legendary monster maker Bob Keen. As a horror geek it was very cool to be interviewed surrounded by bits of dead animal and severed limbs from Dog Soldiers, Cenobites from Hellraiser and the like…!
Special thanks to those fans who came along to see the film – I really appreciate your support and I hope you enjoyed the event. It was great to meet you all and to finally put faces to the names and email addresses!
Congratulations to the organising team for putting together a very successful weekend. Congratulations also to Carl Whiteley and the Zombie-Aid team for successfully breaking a few zombie-related records on the Sunday: a UK record for the number of people taking part in a Thriller dance, a double zombie wedding and, finally, taking the world record for the number of zombies in a shopping mall (beating even the world-famous Monroeville Mall immortalised in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead!). As we left the festival the streets of Manchester were filling with more than 1800 zombies – a very surreal experience! I thought I’d be getting used to the undead by now…?!
I can’t believe how quickly this year is going. Hope everyone had a good Halloween weekend. I certainly did, because I got to watch the AUTUMN movie on the big screen at Grimmfest! A full report will follow later this week…
In the meantime, a couple of new interviews are now available to listen to.
As promised, here’s an exclusive look at the new AUTUMN teaser…
Now, about that announcement for UK readers…
If I’m honest, I’m a little embarrassed about this after the build-up we’ve been giving to Grimm as the UK premier. What I’m going to tell you now is something that was arranged by the film’s distributors and I only found out about it a couple of days ago. On one hand I feel pretty awkward (particularly for those of you travelling to Grimm), but on the other hand, I’m really pleased because anyone in the UK will be able to watch the film much sooner than they’d probably have expected.
I hope many of you will watch it and enjoy it. As I’ve said previously, if you’re looking for a traditional zombie flick full of blood and guts, violence and flesh-eating then you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for something different… something creepier and more introspective, something unsettling as oppose to something repulsive… then you should enjoy the movie.
I’ll be posting another AUTUMN blog later this week. I hope many of you will enjoy the movie (either this weekend on TV or next weekend at Grimm) and that you’ll come back here when you’ve seen it to let me know what you thought.
Come back here at midday tomorrow (UK time) when I’ll be posting a new AUTUMN movie teaser courtesy of my friends at Renegade Motion Pictures. And this will be an exclusive – the clip won’t officially appear anywhere else for a couple of days.
Oh, and there’s something else: UK readers, brace yourselves for a surprising announcement tomorrow too…
My UK publishers Gollancz have launched an exclusive competition to win a pair of tickets to the UK premier of AUTUMN on 1st November at the Grimm Up North film festival in Manchester.
Attention readers in North America: the third annual Hamilton Zombie Walk takes place at 3pm on 24th October. You can find out more about the event here on Facebook or MySpace. As many of you may know, the AUTUMN movie was filmed in and around Hamilton so expect a strong contingent from the cast and crew to be in the undead crowds. As in previous years, the event will be hosting a food drive in support of the Hamilton Food Share so please contribute and help the organisers to meet their target of doubling last year’s total donations (which would be an incredible 500+ lbs of food!)
As an added bonus, this year there will be a special showing of AUTUMN followed by a Q&A session (tickets available on the day).
Click the image below to find out more and if you’re in or around Hamilton on 24th October, please support this great event.
Tickets are now available for the UK premier of the AUTUMN movie at the Grimmfest festival in Manchester on 1st November. Here’s the announcement from the official press release:
AUTUMN GUESTS. To celebrate the premiere screening of Steve Rumbelow’s AUTUMN, we are pleased to welcome the film’s stars Dexter Fletcher (Lock Stock, Layer Cake) and Dickon Tolson (The Bill, Casualty, Peak Practice), together with author David Moody, whose cult novels were the basis for the film. David has just had the option on his novel HATER picked up by Mexican master of the macabre Guillermo del Toro, and will be on hand to sign copies of his books. Then he and the film’s stars will all attend a Q&A after the screening on the Sunday!
Permuted Press have just released The World Is Dead, an anthology of zombie stories looking at life after the dead have risen. There are no outbreak tales here, instead we’re presented with 18 vastly different visions of a world where we’re forced to live alongside the undead.
I’ve worked my way through more than my fair share of zombie anthologies recently. This book – edited by Kim Paffenroth of Dying to Live fame – stood head and shoulders above the rest. It’s bloody good. Recommended reading for any zombie fan.
) put me in touch with Celina Andrade of Pirate Cat Radio in San Francisco and we spoke last week. 
, an anthology of zombie stories looking at life after the dead have risen. There are no outbreak tales here, instead we’re presented with 18 vastly different visions of a world where we’re forced to live alongside the undead.
fame – stood head and shoulders above the rest. It’s bloody good. Recommended reading for any zombie fan.
