Friends 'til The End

I'm in love with the apocalypse. If you've been around me or read my stuff for longer than five minutes, you probably know that already. When I wrote my first book, A Chemical Fire, I set out to make my definitive apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic zombie/pseudo-zombie story. I put all those things into it that I'd never seen in a movie or comic or book but always wanted to, and when it was finished I expected it to be out of my system. I would still read it, sure, but it was a well I wouldn't dip into again.

When it came time to spread the word about A Chemical Fire, I began to look up blogs and sites that dealt with apocalyptic fiction, and what I found surprised me. There's an entire community out there that loves the concept of the end of the world just as much if not more than me, and the people who run those sites are the most passionate of all. For the most part they make no profit from their sites, and those who do only years after anyone trying to cash in would have long quit. Yet they continue to search for news, update their sites, respond to readers and field email.

I'm a fan of these sites now. I visit them religiously and follow them on Twitter, and it's because of this that I ended up going back into the genre to write The Mountain and The City, which started out as a short story and turned into a serial, part three of which came out a few days ago. I never intended to be here again, but here I am. The well turned out to be deeper than I knew.

The contact I've had with the faces behind these sites has been overwhelmingly positive, people who are way too friendly to be rooting for life-ending cataclysm, so I wanted to share those sites with you. Check them out, see what you like. And if you end up like me, sticking around for longer than you planned, tell them I sent you.

Online Post-Apocalyptic Fiction - A Squidoo lens by Shanna that points to all kinds of content, a lot of it free.
The Post Apoc - Run by Eric, a passionate guy who also seems to be obsessed with handmade weapons. Not updated often, but definitely entertaining. He wrote a review of ACF and even hosted a giveaway.
Megaton.us - An entire network of PA sites, including some fairly active forums. Bill, aka Megaton, still finds time to read my stuff and tell people about it.
Quiet Earth - A great site for movie news especially. It has started to branch out a bit and included more general sci-fi and generally dark material.
Survive The Apocalypse - This site offered to feature an original story of mine, and when I sat down to think of what that could be I ended up with The Mountain and The City. Sadly they've since changed formats and ditched the fiction section, but it can still be found on the old version.