Sunday, December 14, 2014

Author Spotlight: Greg McCabe author of The Undying Love




For Diane and Jackson, life is just about perfect. They’re healthy, happy, and madly in love with one another. Unknown to them, a virus is sweeping across the globe that instantly kills the infected and turns their corpses into mindless, murdering cannibals. In short: zombies have taken over the planet.

Diane and Jackson find out about the epidemic the hard way when their wedding is crashed by friends and family who have succumbed to the virus. Now, fighting for survival, they're faced with unthinkable decisions.

Follow their story across Southeast Texas as they meet unforgettable characters and face challenges that will put their love, and lives to the ultimate test.

Amazon Link:





Hi Greg McCabe, thank you for agreeing to this interview. 

Tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I’m a proud Texan. I was born-and-raised in Midland, earned a degree from Texas A&M University, and currently reside in the Lone Star State. I have an amazing wife, daughter, son, and dog, and I love spending time with them. I enjoy great wine and food, as well as sports and movies. And if there’s any time left in the day after all these wonderful things, I try to write a few hundred words of fiction.  



What made you come up with The Undying Love? (Which I really did love and this is so my survival guide)
I started getting into zombies (along with the rest of the world it seems) about ten years ago. As villains, I find them fascinating. The very idea of walking corpses that are hell-bent on cannibalism is mind-blowing. I also like how zombies are one of the few bad guys that you absolutely cannot reason with. Plus, the pandemic nature by which the zombie plague is spread provides a great platform for harrowing fiction. My idea for The Undying Love was to take all of these great aspects of the zombie apocalypse and use it as the backdrop for an epic romance story. My goal was to have a zombie story with heart.

What are you working on at the minute?
I’m currently trying to get a few short stories published while I work on my second novel. It’s a science fiction/horror mash-up. I’m pitting two of the biggest villains of the horror genre against two of the biggest villains of the sci-fi genre in a battle that will leave the fate of the world in the balance. It’s a very ambitious concept, and I wish I could say more but I don’t want to spoil the surprise!  


Why do you write?
I was not one of those people who grew up reading and writing. I fell in love with reading and writing a few years after college. I was managing a wine bar in Houston and one of my duties was hanging around until the end of the night and locking up. On slow nights, I would spend hours sitting alone in an empty lounge. I figured I should do something more productive with my time than staring at wine bottles, so I picked up a book. I read a Clive Barker book that had a profound effect on me. It was the first time I’d realized what a good book could do to the mind. It was an absolute revelation. I felt like I had wasted two and a half decades of my life not reading. Soon after, I began writing and discovered I loved it just as much as reading, if not more. I had caught the writing bug, as they say, and over the course of four years wrote a novel, a number of short stories, and even a few poems. I enjoy every aspect of writing, from brainstorming to crafting the story to drafting the first manuscript to relentlessly editing and polishing. I just find it all so thrilling.


What is the hardest thing about writing?
I would say producing the actual first draft. I find the idea phase the easiest and most fun. I also enjoy the challenge of editing. The process of making bad writing good, and good writing great, can be very exciting. The difficult part, for me anyway, is churning out page after page of connected fiction. I think just about everyone out there has an idea for a book or movie, that’s the easy part. The challenge is taking a vaporous idea a turning it into substantial material.


What is your favorite motivational phrase?
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”


What is your favorite movie and why?
My favorite movie is Dumb and Dumber. My family has been obsessed with this movie since it came out twenty years ago. We’ve all seen it too many times to count and quote it nonstop. We’ve created Dumb and Dumber inspired art and a Dumb and Dumber blog. We even made an original coffee table book that features the 100 funniest lines from Dumb and Dumber. It really has taken on a life of its own.

What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t wait until you’re twenty-five to start reading!


Which famous person, living or dead would you like to meet and why?
I only want to meet living people. If they’re dead, then they must be a zombie. Ha…just kidding! I would like to meet Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Probably the most powerful man to ever live, he was a living god and laid the foundations for a regime that would last almost fifteen hundred years. I wouldn’t mind picking his brain over a good bottle of wine.




Thank you so much for your time, Cecily, I enjoyed the interview!


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