Scott Craven is a features writer for The Arizona Republic, where he loves to tell the stories of others. You can see his work at www.azcentral.com. He's also a big fan of zombie films, hooked from the moment he saw a young girl chewing on a limb in "Night of the Living Dead." Like the protagonist in "Dead Jed," Scott suffered through his own middle-school horrors at the hands of bullies. Since he could never remove his right arm and beat his enemies over the head with it, he invented a character who could. The book is part catharsis and part revenge, but mostly a lot of fun to write.