I’ve mentioned before that I don’t always have my finger on the pulse of zombie fiction, so to speak. I figure that’s forgivable seeing as a good chunk of the zombie genre’s specimens don’t have pulses to speak of.

Still, occasionally I do get my read on, even if it’s a somewhat belated one. If you’re not aware, there is a Reanimated Writers coalition which serves as a community for folks who write zombie fiction. Not too long ago, they came up with an intriguing premise: a short-story contest where zombie tales would be paired up one-on-one in various genres with folks voting to determine the winner of the “round.” The losing author would be “knocked out” while the winner progressed to a further round.

The catch? None of the stories would have the author’s name attached, a conceit which would theoretically prevent any personal feelings from influencing the outcome. The stories would live or die on their own. Insert obligatory “undeath” joke here.

With my usual sense of timeliness, I failed to get around to being part of the initial voting, and before I knew it the contest was done. This despite a friend involved doing his best to prod me towards participating. Don’t worry, he was still scrupulous about the rules and only expressed that he was curious if I might recognize his style. In the end it didn’t matter due to my steel sieve of a mind.

But anyhow… now they’ve made a book out of it, and I ended up buying that, which is arguably better as a support. This is what I tell myself. I read through it during the recent hiatus and it’s about what you’d expect from an anthology, with varying degrees of originality, storytelling skill and even grammatical prowess on display (a disclaimer from the editor warns that all tales are presented in their original forms).

The really unfortunate part from my perspective is that they abandoned the main conceit for this print version and labeled all the stories with their authors, both in the table of contents up front and on each tale itself. True, the voting is long over and the outcomes are now predetermined, but I had retained some hope of being able to give my buddy that honest feedback on whether I recognized his stuff without his name plastered on it. If they do another of these I would hope they consider retaining the anonymity. The authors should of course be credited for their work, but seeing as this is a small publisher exercise free of any big house or guild constraints I don’t see any reason the stories couldn’t be kept unattributed in their entries and then at the end of the book you’d reveal who wrote what and who ended up being the ultimate winner.

That said, you’re getting a good fistful of different takes on zombie fiction from various voices for either a 99 cent digital version or a $10 perfect bound book, which ain’t bad, especially if you’re a real zombie enthusiast. Give it a look if you’re interested, and also keep an eye out because it’s almost a certainty Reanimated Writers will come around with a second card!