A Road Paved in Iron: A Voodoo Western Dime novel

Zombie fiction is rife with decomposing corpses, mad scientists and biohazard symbols. Unless its tongue-in-cheek, zombie and man have little place in the social landscape save one brutally molesting the other. Caribbean spirituality, namely Vodou, has a different view of zombies. Whether or not Haitian zombies are undead is unclear but those tales rely on the fact that the zombies are friends and kin among the communities they threaten. They’ve been known to shamble about in broad daylight and mingle among their old neighbors.

For me the horror was not in the death of the zombie, rather in the slavery, in the lack of control and their removal from society at large at the hands of a bokor. While A Road Paved In Iron is markedly fantasy and I can blur the lines about the life or death of the shamblers, the setting allowed me to explore the idea of powerlessness and the agency taken by the bayou doctor. They walk awkwardly and don’t display higher functions but the walking corpses otherwise aren’t recognizably a threat until they are right on top of you. This makes them more dangerous to the characters in the story despite not being cannibalistic or out in massive drives of undead.

Inspired by novelist and game designer, Matt Forbeck, I’ve decided to write a novel a month. I am launching a Kickstarter project for each. If I make my goals and unlock several achievements then the full trilogy can be released. Learn more about the project at Kickstarter.com ^[1].