Elvis Shackleton Talks About GOVERNMENT OF THE LIVING DEAD
Added on 09 July 2011
Long Midnight Publishing's Executive President In Charge of Marketing, Elvis Shackleton, talks to beat reporter Cavandish Moffat about Douglas Lindsay's forthcoming on-line novel, GOVERNMENT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
Cavandish Moffat: Nice to meet you again, Mr Shackleton. To be honest I thought you were dead?
Elvis Shackleton: Well, yes, I was. For a while. Back now. It's very much in keeping with the theme of the new novel. The living dead.
CM: So, you're a zombie?
ES: I do prefer living dead. Zombie is such a pejorative term. And hopefully I'm slightly more erudite than your average, what you would term, zombie. I'm kind of living dead lite.
CM: You're not going to chew my face off?
ES: I doubt it.
CM: You have a great title to this, the latest instalment in the Barney Thomson series. What was the inspiration?
ES: It's a line that David Cameron himself used to describe the last Labour government, after the 2009 Budget. 'What on earth is the point of another 14 months of this government of the living dead?' Great line.
CM: And do you think it's now ironic, given that Cameron is the Prime Minister of an ineffective coalition that is consequently having to change policies in order to survive, and is now being crippled by a media scandal which, entirely through Cameron's own actions, is dragging the government into the very heart of tabloid sleaze?
ES: As William Shatner says in Airplane 2, 'irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.'
CM: There's also a suggestion that in this book the zombies are going to be used as a metaphor for the British people, who buy the tabloid newspapers and watch reality TV and binge drink and go on stag weekends to Prague to run naked through Wenceslas Square, and who, largely, don't give a shit about how the tabloid press get their stories?
ES: You'll just have to wait and see.
CM: Actually, that would make it Country Of The Living Dead, rather than Government Of The Living Dead.
ES: My lips are sealed. Although, to be honest, I know Douglas hasn't actually started writing the book yet, so I don't know if even he knows.
CM: He really is just going to make it up as he goes along, starting on Monday?
ES: Seat of the pants.
CM: Terribly exciting. It's the novel-writing equivalent of BASE jumping, or appearing live on Blue Peter with animals.
ES: Yes. Well, if you'll excuse me, I think I just need to go and eat someone. I mean, thing. Something.
CM: Thank you for talking to us today.
GOVERNMENT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the all new Barney Thomson macabre zombie horror noir barbershop death junky political thriller, starts Monday 11th July 2011.
