The Passenger (Surviving the Dead)
Read The Passenger (Surviving the Dead) Online
Authors: James Cook,Joshua Guess
Table of Contents:
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imaginations and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE PASSENGER: A SURVIVING THE DEAD NOVEL. Copyright © 2013 By James N. Cook and Joshua Guess. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the authors and Amazon.com.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Epub Edition © AUGUST
2013
The Passenger
A Surviving the Dead Novel
By:
James N. Cook and Joshua Guess
For more information, news, and updates on James N. Cook and the Surviving the Dead series:
Visit James N. Cook on
Facebook
Follow James on
Twitter
Read James’s
Blog
To keep tabs on Joshua Guess and his goings-on, you can:
Like his author page on
Facebook
Read his
Blog
Or follow him on
Twitter
Also by James N. Cook:
Also by Joshua Guess:
Victim Zero
, Book One of The Fall
And all his other books
, too numerous to list here.
Authors’ note:
Please
Read Before Purchase!
If this is you
r first visit to the harrowing world of the Surviving the Dead series, feel free to disregard this authors’ note entirely. (And yes, I meant for authors’ to be plural. There are two of us this time around.) If you are a longtime fan of the series, however, you really need to read this.
For my stalwart friends revisiting this world after several months’ absence, I
would like to set a few expectations up front.
First of all, this is not Surviving the Dead Volume Four. Eric and Gabriel are not featured in this novel. However, you may remember the main character, and a few others, from my first novel
No Easy Hope
. This is a standalone novel set in the Surviving the Dead universe. This book is not crucial to the overall Surviving the Dead storyline—meaning you can skip it and still follow the series just fine—but you will be missing out if you do.
Second, this novel is written differently than the first three. All my other work i
s written in the first person, whereas this novel is, for the most part, written in third person. A significant portion is written in first person, but I did not write those sections. My good friend and co-author Joshua Guess did. All my contributions to this novel are, as previously stated, third person.
Why the switch, you
ask?
There are several reasons. I wanted to make it clear to you, awesome reader, that this novel is different from the other three. Writing in first person kind of limits your options as a writer, while third person—with its omniscient perspective—provides a great deal more flexibility. You can add plot elements and provide explanations that would
be cumbersome in first person. Third person also contributes significantly to brevity, making the writing flow much faster. Mostly, though, I just wanted to try it. I’ve been writing in first person for so long, I felt like I was starting to stagnate. I think it is important for me to push my limits and try new things as a writer, and to develop new skills.
H
ow did I do? Personally, I think I did okay for a first attempt. I guess I’ll have to defer to your judgment on that.
Which is not to say that Joshua didn’t write any third person sections. He did.
(He is equally good at either perspective, the cocky bastard.) But I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which ones. If you can’t figure it out, and you really, really want to know, send me a message on
Facebook
or
Twitter
and I’ll clear it up for you
.
Last, this book is a good bit shorter than my previous work.
For example,
No Easy Hope
was 116,000 words, roughly, while this novel weighs in at about 60,000. Still novel length, but more concisely written than my other books.
Now that I have armed you with all
the pertinent information necessary to make an informed buying decision, let me just say that I sincerely hope you buy this novel. Not just because I write for a living, and if you don’t buy it I might have to start eating Top Ramen every day, but because Joshua and I devoted a lot of time and effort to it and we are both proud of the work we did here. It is a fast paced, engaging story with lots of gore, action, and heart: the holy trinity of post-apocalyptic storytelling. We think you will like it.
As always, thank you
for all your support and encouragement, and for letting me live my dream. You, awesome reader, are the reason I do this. Without you, I’m just another lame dude pecking away at a keyboard.
You keep reading them, and I’ll keep writing them.
James N. Cook
Charlotte, NC
July
28
th
, 2013
Foreword
By Joshua Guess
Some of you know who I am—after all, this book is half my work, so I've shared it with my own readers—but some of you don't. Rather than bore you with a bunch of biographical details, I'd rather use this space to tell you why I enjoyed this project so much.
A large part of it was the chance to work with James (Jim) Cook. A year ago today, Jim interviewed me for his blog, and I learned that while we are remarkably similar people, we have very different writing styles. Different, but strangely complimentary. James came up with the idea of collaborating on a standalone Surviving the Dead novel, and in late May of this year, we got started.
I've been writing for half my life, diligently working to develop my abilities. Jim, however, didn’t start until he was 30 years old. Th
at impressed the hell out of me;
No Easy Hope
does not read like a first try. I know, I have a file full of false starts and half-finished manuscripts. When he approached me about writing
The Passenger
, I was excited. Jim has a big audience—that's you—and he told me he wanted help me reach full-time status as an author.
That meant a lot to me. I've worked very hard to get where I am, but I always told myself (and my wife, Jess) that I would stay working until I had the income from writing to go full-time. In March of this year, when our tax returns came in, I broke that promise. There were
many factors in that decision, but mostly, I realized I needed the time off from working to put all my efforts into my next book. My dream has always been to do this for a living, and thanks to Jim, who put the first chapter of that novel,
Victim Zero
, at the end of his most recent book
Warrior Within
, I'm now a full-time writer.
It's been
life changing.
The book you're about to read matters to me for a lot of reasons. One is the obvious: it will make me money. Funds I can use to pay the bills and keep writing. Another is the challenge it represented. When writing my own books, I'm f
ree to do anything. But I find myself creating purposeful restraints that force me to be creative. The restraints I faced in writing
The Passenger,
and the challenges it created,
were twofold: I had to write in a universe not my own, and I had to write from a perspective strongly limited by the context of the story. I think doing so made me more creative, and more original.
Beyond the royalties and their ability to help me write full-time, beyond the craft aspects of the work itself and how they helped me become a stronger writer, and even past the excellent complimentary structure of the story which contrasts my style and Jim's, I got to make a friend.
Before we started working on this book, Jim and I were friendly, but distant. Over the course of the project, we became friends. We talked on the phone regularly as we worked out the story, which led to entertaining conversations and general bullshitting. I'm not saying we braided each other’s hair or anything, but our professional relationship became a strong friendship. When Jim came to Kentucky to finish up the book in person, my mom even gave him a hug.
It was good times. All of it.
Every writer who manages a career out of putting words on paper gets there a different way. Jim struck gold with his first book, finding success almost right away. And he deserved it. His work is strong, his books are entertaining and gripping, and he didn't get lazy. If anything, his dedication to putting out ever-better books as well as interacting with his fans is even stronger now.
Although I've been at it longer, I haven't been as lucky as others. I've had good times, but no explosive popularity.
Instead, I've built my audience slowly, brick by brick. It's been hard work, and satisfying for that. But Jim's generous offer to help speed that along is awesome in the truest sense of the word.
At the end of the day, I'm happy even if this book sells not a single copy. I got a lot out of the experience, the best part being someone I can talk to about the business we're in, a friend who like all good friends will help me succeed as much as he can. Should my career suddenly blast off tomorrow, I would return the favor in a heartbeat.
The last few months have been exciting and scary and a million other things, but above all, they've been productive. The freedom to work on this project, the chance to spend more than a paltry few hours at the keyboard, is the best. Not because of the money, which has always been only a means to pay the bills, but because I get to tell the stories I've always wanted to tell. I get to entertain.
And in this case,
we
get to do that. The book you're about to read is a contrast in styles. It's dark. It's harsh. It brushes the coat of grime away from the raw nerve of human brutality. It forces you to deal with the worst things a person can do when there are no more checks and balances.
I had so damn much fun writing it. I hope you like reading it just as much.
Joshua Guess
Author, Doughnut Enthusiast, and Secret Adamantium-Laced Mutant Hero
Frankfort, Kentucky
July 29
th
, 2013