My "Blurb"

John Zakour is a humor / sf/ fantasy writer with a Master's degree in Human Behavior and slowly plugging away at his Ph.D. He has written zillions (well, thousands) of gags for syndicated comics and comedians (including: Rugrats, Grimmy, Bound and Gagged, Dennis the Menace and Joan River's old TV show.) John also writes his own syndicated comic, Working Daze for United Media. John has been the regular cartoonist for Geek.com and has sold cartoons or gags to hundreds of journals and magazines. John is also a contributor to Nickelodeon magazine writing Fairly Odd Parents and Jimmy Neutron comic books. Recently he has started writing Simpsons comics for Bongo.

John’s first humorous SF mystery book, The Plutonium Blonde (DAW 2001, co-written with Larry Ganem and started of as an interactive web story for the Sci Fi channel) was named one of the top 30 SF books of 2001 by The Chronicle of Science Fiction who called it, “the funniest SF book of 2001”.  (The book is available in Russian, Japanese, and Chek.)  His second novel, The Doomsday Brunette (DAW Feb 2004) has made the Locus best sellers list.  The third book in the series, The RadioActive Redhead, was released December 6th, 2005 and also made the SF best seller list.  The fourth novel, The Frost Haired Vixen (the first written alone) was released December 2006 (it didn’t make the best seller list but actually sold more – go figure).     The next book, The Blue-Haired Bombshell was released in December 2007.  John is has sold two YA novels: Baxter Moon, Galactic Scout (Brown Barn, Spring 2008) and Iz (Meadowhark press, Fall 2008.)  Besides his novels John has sold numerous short stories to anthologies and magazines.  The most prestigious recent publication being a short story in a July issue of the Nature.

John has written the dialog and song lyrics for Frogwares Software computer game Around the World in 80 days.   Some people call the game hilarious (gameboomers), others call it mildly amusing (the NY Times) and others don’t like it, humor is a subjective thing.   For something a bit different John writes skits for the Harlem Rockets basketball team.

John has written the screenplay Life Long Losers for GameOn productions.  LLL will be produced in 2008 with a budget of a 500K – 1M dollars. John also has in development, Captain Fluoride, a humorous educational series about a crime fighting toothbrush.   John has a family martial arts movie, Kamp Karate under preproduction with Foust Studios.   In the past, John has written and helped develop the first year and season of the comic book and animated series: Caramel Crew, for Mobtoons. John also has written for the independent SF TV show, “Realm of the Mind”. John has sold two screenplays: Saucer Girls to Plutonium Films (though he’s sure it won’t ever get made) and the short feature A Date with Death that is being produced in England.   John also helped develop an animated sf horror series, called Prime Squad for MUV Technologies in India.   His romantic comedy,  Skin Deep about an ordinary guy who can’t believe the hottest girl on campus is actually in love with him has won a couple of writing awards.  The screenplay has been optioned twice but both times the making of the movie fell through.  John has also written for Ebru tv. 

John use to be a database programmer / web guru / science writer for NYSAES.

When he's not writing or studying John likes to play softball, watch TV and hang out with his wife and son. He use to do judo and karate, but those have been replaced by tai chi and archery.

In "action" on the softball field (with Tom Rickey in left and Ken Bell making the flip). Yes, he was out