I’ve been missing from this dusty little home here, but it’s been for good reason. There’s been a lot of podcast construction going on in the back ground! If you haven’t tuned in yet, the first episode of the 1951 Down Place podcast was released! Judging from the feed back, people loved it! Episode 2 is in the can now, so be watching for that to be released at the end of October!

But now for the NEW news! In the next two weeks or so, I’ll be releasing another all new podcast called the “Dad and his Weird Friends” podcast! While the title doesn’t reflect the subject matter, it does reflect the cast! Every other week, I (being Dad) will be sitting down with a different friend (being the Weird Friends) and we’re going to talk books. Science fiction books. Horror books. Comic books. Fantasy books. Big books, little books, e-books, paper books! I’m a bit of a junkie as it comes to reading and I haven’t found a book podcast that fits my wants for the drive to work….so myself and my Weird friends are going to remedy that.

The subject matter will vary widely, as will my guests! Every other week I’ll throw in some book news, in depth discussion on a new book and some thought provoking questions ripped from the pages of speculative fiction. You can look forward to friends from other well known podcasts such as Night of the Living Podcast, the Bloody Good Horror Podcast, Damaged Hearing and a whole lot more!

The first episode will be recording soon as I sit down with Mark Newell, my cohort from Bloody Good Horror and talk about Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One”!

Be sure to check back here at Cinema Fromage often for updates as I will be announcing the official feed address here at the site! You can also follow the new Twitter account Dadsweirdfriend, shoot as email at dadsweirdfriends@gmail.com or leave us a voice mail at (585)-209-3473.

Most importantly, we’ve launched the Dad and his Weird Friends discussion group at Goodreads.com! This will be the place to discuss all of the books mentioned on the show, talk about genre books in general and ultimately relish in your nerdy book loving splendor! So be sure to head over to Goodreads.com and join the group!

This past year, the literary world was plagued with a new phenomenon; the hybrid of mixing heavy horror elements into a number of standard literary classics. You’ll be most familiar with patient zero of the craze, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”. For myself, the idea was cute but the execution just didn’t pay off. For me at least. it still felt like “Pride and Prejudice” and there just happened to zombies squeezed in there. Now there are a veritable plethora of similar books out there and if you didn’t like the idea the first time around, chances are you’re not going to like any of the others. Then music journalist Alan Goldsher came and changed up the formula a bit.

Enter: “Paul is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion”. If you haven’t figured it out by the title, your favorite and mine The Beatles are zombies. Well, all of them except Ringo. He’s a seventh level ninja lord. None of that undead business for him.

Instead of a straight up fictional narrative, “Paul is Undead” is told in a collection of interviews with members of the band, other associates, fans and such. While the idea of a zombie Beatles band may seem a bit ludicrous, when it is packaged in the interview collection format it reads as a fun history. The book starts with John Lennon being shot in 1980, just like real life. Unlike real life, he’s a zombie so it’s not that big of deal. From there we learn the origins of the band, their current state of decay and their rampage over the years. It’s a great bit of fun.

Not only is the loose collection of interviews the perfect setting for such a tale, Goldsher does a great job of inventing this little world that the zombie Beatles reside. It’s not that different from our own; there are just zombies in it. Lots of them. Lots of different kinds of them. You have your Liverpudlian variety that John, Paul and George hail from. They come with a grayish pallor and a complicated process of conversion that makes killing them off a bit difficult. Other parts of the world give birth to other types of zombies. Your classic Romero shambler? They might come from the wilds of Africa. It’s Goldsher’s attention to detail and a breath of heavy imagination that gives the somewhat tired zombie genre a good shot in the arm to make it fun and different. Let’s not forget the fact that the book is actually pretty hilarious as well. The jokes run fast and frequent throughout the boys rise to fame. Remember Mick Jagger? Of course you do. He’s still out there doing his thing. That could be because he’s been a zombie hunter for quite a few decades now. Hunting zombies keep you shape. Once again, a fun little element that ties into the fun.

“Paul is Undead” is a great light and breezy read. I laughed out loud a number of times just at the sheer zaniness of it all. Goldsher does a great job of making the fantasy version of the Beatles history mirror the real Beatles history. I’m not enough of a buff to say for certain but I feel pretty safe in saying that he touches on all of the major moments in the bands reign with a high point of accuracy. He is a music writer after all and his love of band and their craft shines through. Lucky for us, he appears to love zombies as well!

Give it a read, it’s a good time!

In addition to all this, I just received word yesterday that Goldsher has just announced the sequel to “Paul is Undead”, “Poppermost Over America: The British Zombie Invasion 2”! If you want to read up, head over to the book’s blog at http://poppermostoveramerica.blogspot.com/ check it out! Be forewarned though; the site will contain a lot of spoilers for the first book, so read at your own risk!