Apocalypse Pictures Presents

Lights. Camera. Survival.

In the aftermath of a catastrophic pandemic called the Red Death, those who remain have banded together in barricaded enclaves, struggling to survive in a world where no one goes unarmed anymore.

But Gil Thornton, an aspiring screenwriter and director before the plague, has a crazy dream--to make a movie in the ruins of civilization. He has one working camera, a script, and a dedicated cast and crew, each with their own set of skills. When a disastrous encounter leaves the Apocalypse Pictures team devastated and without hope, Gil decides their only chance to finish the film is to break into the heavily guarded Hollywood Hills and shoot on the Universal Studios backlot.

To get it done, they must face nanotechnically reanimated corpses, a madman from Anaheim and his rodent-garbed gang, and a former movie mogul backed by a private army. Gil and his team will have to choose between getting the shot and saving lives—unless there’s a way to do both…

Matt wrote his first story—”The Elephant and the Cheese”—when he was eight years old. It was the first time he had ever filled an entire page with writing. To his young mind, that seemed like a major accomplishment. It occurred to him shortly thereafter that writing stories was what he wanted to do with his life.

Matt gravitated to science fiction, fantasy, and horror at an early age, too. He discovered Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” in a grade school reader, and read it over and over whenever he got bored in class. (Needless to say, he read it a lot.) Other classics soon followed—Dune and Lord of the Rings and Foundation, the usual suspects. As a boy, he often pretended his bicycle was Shadowfax, and that he was Gandalf, riding like mad for Minas Tirith. Yeah, he was that kind of kid. Half the time, his family and friends didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

Matt’s story “Alan Smithee Lives in Hell” placed second in the 1997 Science Fiction Writers of Earth Contest. In 1998, he attended Odyssey. The workshop led directly to his first sale—”Black Boxes,” in Absolute Magnitude. In 2002, Matt won a Phobos Award for “Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown.” He was a 2008 winner in the Writers of the Future Contest. He has since continued to publish in various magazines and is the author of The Prison World Revolt series.

Matt lives in Nebraska. He has husked corn only once in his life, and has never been detasseling, so he insists he is not a hick.