It Has Been Done

Wax Satan
Originally uploaded by Jacob...K

So today I spent the majority of my day working on finishing up the first draft of a short story I started about three weeks ago. I finished the draft about two and a half hours ago, and as I wrapped it up, I felt slightly unhappy with how it turned it out.

I already gave myself a talking to while on the treadmill. First of all, it's a first draft, which means nothing is set in stone. It's not like I'm handing it over as is (cringes at the thought). I'm letting it rest for a couple days, and plan to pick it back up Wednesday or Thursday to read it over and see how it can be polished and improved.

In the meantime, I've had an idea brewing for a couple of days for a new zombie story, and while I was on the treadmill tonight it clarified itself. So I'm gathering some research before bed and getting to know my new characters.

Overall, I feel like I had a productive weekend. Last weekend I really did not get a lot of writing done at all, and I felt the drain of it during the week. Especially considering how much I had accomplished the two weekends before that. I was on a roll there for awhile, completing a short story or memoir each week, polishing it up and workshopping it, then sending it out. I hope to get back into that routine, where I'm at least sending out one thing each week.

I'm off to get this new piece started, then a little reading, then bed. Oh, and if you're wondering why I have the glorious devil from "Legend" as my picture today, it's because the story I finished today featured that fiery fiend, the prince of darkness.

P.S. I wanted to clarify that the story I was talking about in yesterday's blog was, in fact, a short story, and not a novel, for all you wonderful folks who commented on yesterday's blog. It would absolutely take me way longer than 3 weeks to write a novel... unless it was during NaNoWriMo and I was on a roll. :)

Maybe it's the Margaritas....

Mexican margarita
Originally uploaded by Mel B.

I am not a drinker. I used to drink every weekend when I worked in a bar and my coworkers and I would spend our Saturday nights laughing in the corner table while our regular customers tried to get us really drunk. But because I come from a long line of alcoholics, I don't like to drink often. Now and again, I'll have a beer or a glass of wine, or if we go out to dinner I'll get a margarita, but the stress of this week had me longing to unwind.

So, I put the lime in the coconut and mixed it all up, and I've been unwinding with my salt-rimmed glass. I definitely needed to relax, and something inside of me was holding me back from just letting it go. I didn't meditate last night because I had a headache, and my poor husband said I was a virtual nightmare all night long: kicking, yelling in my sleep and sawing logs like a lumberjack. Apparently, I even told him that I was going to pop him in the face if he didn't stop nudging me. Poor guy.

I've had a sleep disorder ever since I was a little kid. I used to sleepwalk, and have sleep-talked and snored since I was about 3 years old. In times of increasing stress, my body shuts down, but my brain just keeps going. I wonder how I get any rest at all, and realize during these spells just why I wake up feeling exhausted.

Meditation is the key, and maybe some muscle-relaxing margaritas. I feel nice right now, and ready to drop into a hot bath with my new zombie anthology. I'm sure some would say that reading about zombies before bedtime would inspire nightmares in them, but those are the kinds of dreams that stories come from for me. So here's hoping that the margaritas and the zombies tickle my inspiration. I have an unfinished zombie story that would LOVE it if I finished it this weekend.

But first, I'm off to check out Episode 19 of James Melzer's Zombie Chronicles podcast. If you are a zombie/horror fan, and haven't checked out this podcast, you don't know what you're missing. You can check out more about James Melzer and listen to the podcast for free at James Melzer. Good stuff! Check it out.

How to Build a Better Cyborg...

Cyborg manual
Originally uploaded by runran

A lot of my writing lately has either been about zombies or cybernetic beings, and the other day while I was writing down an idea I had for a future short story about androids, I started thinking about some of the best stories ever written about cybernetic beings/androids.

The funny thing is they all seem to call into question the same issues. Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," has an elite model of android that blends in perfectly with mankind, but mankind still feels the need to wipe it out, while the androids just want to live a better life.

First and foremost, why on earth would mankind create cybernetic beings that LOOK and ACT just like mankind? Beings that could infiltrate the ranks of humanity undetected, live among us...

Then I thought about the movie AI, one of the most moving films about artificial intelligence that I have ever seen, and I realized that if we created things that were like people, that is probably exactly how we would treat them. We would make them as real as we could, so they were just like human beings, and then we would demoralize them and use them for circus entertainment and target practice.

Which, of course, is probably what prompted the cylons of Battlestar Galactica to retaliate against and attempt to annihilate their inhumane, human masters. So that brought me back to my original thought. Why would we create something like that if we were only planning to be cruel to it all along?

The short story that I will have featured in the upcoming issue of eMuse speculates on the above, basically posing the question, "If mankind could create a pseudo mankind to take his aggression out on without the guilt, would he do it, and would it be guiltless? In abusing a replication of mankind, is he not abusing mankind?"

What do you think? Is the portrayal of mankind in these types of stories a prelude of things to come? Will we one day create beings so real that they are indistinguishable from their creators only to treat them like crap?

Anyway, back to the keyboard. I'm thinking of clever ways to combine zombies and cyborgs... should make for some whacky horror/science fiction.

Sychronicity... Zombies March Across My Life (Again)

I love synchronicity. Whenever things in my life start to line up in an obvious way, I can't help but step back and feel the confirmation from the universe. The current synchronicity may not seem new, considering how frequently I blogged about it during October and November, but zombies are back on the writer's block.

An inspiration for a short story popped up last week that I've been toying with between getting a few last minute reviews done for eMuse, which is scheduled for a March 15th release (ooh, the Ides, Beware,). I spent most of my weekend taking care of last minute business so the contents can move on to the next round and into the hand of our amazing tech team. While I won't delve too deeply into the plot, let's just say I've got two kids facing off against a zombie infested world. I'm already really enjoying working with it.

How is that synchronicity, you ask? For the last week, since the idea popped up, zombies have been everywhere. Now if it were closer to zombie day or Halloween, I could see it, but there aren't even any zombie films out right now to increase the zombie population. So everywhere this last week, zombies keep popping up. They were in my email, in a podiobook I downloaded to my iPod, on television, in my mailbox...My friend Susan even sent me a link to weird college courses in the U.S. in which a zombies in culture course existed. They are literally everywhere. They may even be gnawing on brains in the room behind me, but I'm afraid to turn around and look.

The fact that I started this new story and zombies began to reappear everywhere felt like confirmation from the universe that I was on the "write" track. So YAY!

Along with working on eMuse last minute bits and pieces, I also wrote a memoir for Chicken Soup for the Soul and sent it out this morning. That's two pieces out this week. I'm really happy about that. Do you have goals you try to adhere to on how many pieces you send out each week, or how many words you write each week? Has synchronicity been at work in your life lately? If so, how, and did you feel reaffirmed, or just completely creeped out?

I leave you with Elvira and Leslie and the Lys...

Limbs, Blood & Gray Matter Everywhere

Well, despite the fact that I spent most of my day procrastinating, I did manage to add 2537 words to my NaNoWriMo total today. That brings the overall total to 8560. I'm currently on chapter three. The body count is rising. There are six dead so far, one of them a suicide who had been bitten by a zombie.

Chapter two was pretty gory. It was where most of the violence and vomiting took place so far, and I am feeling a little disconnected from the characters right now. I feel like Ryan has fallen a little flat because all of it has been the interaction with really limited emotional response. I may need to go back in and connect emotionally or I don't know if I'll be able to go on. It's very rough.

In my procrastination today, I did manage to have great conversation with some friends I went for a nice walk and did a lot of thinking. All in all, I feel it was a good day. On to the next.

And then his secretary ate his face...

There was a part of me that worried it would take me too long to get into the action in my NaNoZombie novel, but tonight I got right to it. Of course, the zombie attack had to take place right in the middle of a boring executive meeting. What better way to get out of a meeting? Though after watching the zombie secretary quickly devour two suits, I'm thinking maybe I might have actually enjoyed the meeting better. My poor protagonist is currently vomiting into a hallway radiator and trying to figure out how to help the people still trapped in the conference room.

Four days in and I'm about 2000 words behind. My four day NaNoWriMo total is at 6023 words, but I will kick that totals butt tomorrow.

For now, it's late. It's been a long day filled with zombie secretaries and of course, new presidents. Apparently the results are in. Barack Obama will be the new president of the United States. I'm excited. This is the first time that I felt good about my vote, that it wasn't just choosing the lesser of two really icky evils. Our country is ready for change, and I look forward to where the future will take us!

A Bad Place to be When Zombies Attack...

So, day two in NaNoWriMo and my current word total is at 3141. I'm not done for the day, but definitely taking a break to do some reading, eat dinner and maybe catch an hour or so of television.

I'm at the early stage of chapter two and things are coming together rather nicely. While the story is written in third-person omniscient, I am mostly focusing on the character of Ryan Greene. Ryan used to be a travel writer, who spent his twenties making a living exploring remote, exotic countries. The more removed from urbanism, the better for Ryan. He's something of a survivalist, and has a degree in cultural anthropology and archeology. He is now the co-host of a television travel show that balances between the remote wonders of the world and their neighboring night life. His co-host is a nightmare. I've only known her for two days and I already hate her guts myself.

It occurred to me as I was writing the introductory scene of chapter two that Ryan hates the city. He's on his way to a network meeting in New York City's Time Square, which is where he'll be when the zombie outbreak takes place. What more awful place could you possibly be when zombies attack than a place that makes you want to break out in hives?

So, as the scene comes together, I keep asking myself if I'm going to be able to hold poor Ryan together. After all, he's going to be the one that has to lead everyone to safety in the end...

I am also intrigued by a secondary character that has sort of stepped into the spotlight. I'm anxious to see how the two characters come together, and can't wait to get them to that point. It should be fun.

NaNoWriMo Kickoff!

I did everything in my power to stay up last night to start my NaNo novel after midnight. I started out watching the Ghost Hunters Live seven hour Halloween investigation hosted by Josh Gates, and though I was completely engrossed, I did manage to get out the first 100 words between commercials. Then, I passed out just fifteen minutes before the end of the investigation.

So, after spending most of my afternoon procrastinating with everything from cleaning, bathing and working to cooking, napping and chatting on twitter, MySpace and the phone, I finally managed to glue my behind to the chair so I could squeeze out 1903 words.

The zombies have yet to appear, as I am trying to establish characters and their current relationship and situation before the big apocalypse, I did manage to sprinkle mysterious sickness in through a phone call. Yay for mystery Solanum virus.

Now, I didn't do a lot of pre-plotting. I have no outline I'm working from, except for the basic plot outline that started in my head. I did start out with two main characters, but about halfway through the introductory chapter a third character emerged that proved to be equally important, so now I have the three main characters already introduced along with their relationship to each other and their current situation.

I'm off to watch an inspirational zombie flick, but hope to get more written before I drop off to bed tonight. I'd like to get to at least 3300 so I have a nice buffer.

Good luck to all of my NaNoWriMo friends. May the word force be with you today!

The Every Day Zombie

If there's anything I've learned during my recent foray into zombie culture, it's that the best zombie stories in the world are not the typical zombie apocalypse tales they terrorize us with in the movies. While I won't deny George A. Romero is one of my heroes, and that his films are a definite inspiration, many of the better zombie stories I've read have been different. Zombies as advocates for painful death, zombies rising to support anti-gun laws, murder victims rising cursed from their graves to follow their killers like lovesick puppies... all relative in a world gone mad without the apocalyptic pressure. Those situations are all on the more extreme level, but there are worlds in which zombies and humans coincide, where teachers hang onto their drive and try to teach the zombie children even though there is no hope for the future.

One of the nice things about zombies is that there is an abundance of material for research, and writers like Max Brooks make their fictional contributions so incredibly real that you can almost imagine you're living in an upside down world infested with the walking dead.

I started to have a moment of anxiety over the fact that I hadn't drawn up a master plan for NaNoWriMo, even though I rarely plan before hand. Then I decided to adopt a zombie mentality about it. Zombies have no plans. They don't have elaborate or extensive plots driving them; they simply are. While I have the basic idea formulating always in the back of my mind, I know that anything can shift the plan at any time and I'm not afraid.

I do still have my zombie short story to finish--a piece I hope will be connected to the world I am creating in the novel. I had a point where I wanted the two female protagonists from the stories to at least cross paths, so that should be fun. Here's hoping I get it done before tomorrow night. At least the rough draft anyway. The Ghost Hunters Live seven hour episode hosted by Josh Gates has me hesitant to even start my NaNo novel at midnight, but I'm sure I'll find a way. I'm also still debating on whether or not I want to go to the local kickoff. Meeting new people is scary. Zombies don't meet new people, they eat them. :p

Why Write Horror in a Horrific World and Time?

Recently a friend of mine asked me why I wanted to write about zombies, especially in light of dismal world circumstances. "Isn't there enough doom and gloom in the world without adding to it with another apocalyptic horror story?"

My answer was complicated. I knew why I wanted to write about zombies, but I wasn't sure how I could put it into words so someone else might understand my reasoning. Did you ever see that "Scared Straight" program the correctional facilities do to youth offenders? Instead of sending you to prison, we're going to give you a hardcore glimpse at what awaits you if you don't straighten up and fly right. The concept I'm employing for myself is similar, only with zombies and life.

I reached a point where I started to feel like my own life was askew. Not that I'm eating brains, or anything horrid, but I had fallen into some serious patterns in my life that were detrimental to my physical and mental health. Sluggishly moaning through life, the purpose behind my every move revolved around the next paycheck, the next meal, the next night's sleep... I felt like I was hardly existing in a world that was slowly crumbling down around me.

Depression? Maybe a little, but for the most part it was just this empty, lacking feeling in my life. The last big risk I had really taken had been going back to college at 27, and after I graduated I fell into a comfortable, but risky freelancing lifestyle. Life was comfortable. Even if our lifestyle didn't always feel comfortable there was a lot of pressure and fear about maintaining our comfort level. Zombies don't think about comfort. Zombies don't think about anything, they just go through the motions and devour in order to maintain their existence. To me, that is the same thing as sacrificing your wants to exist comfortably.

So, my zombie desire awakened. Suddenly I started to think about life in a new way. I thought about humanity, and how all too often things seem impersonal and disconnected in our world now. I wondered if there were an apocalypse tomorrow, how would people react. It made me think of this old episode of the Twilight Zone. A man spent a year building a fall out shelter for his family, and all of his friends laughed at him. Then the big one hit and when he and his family fled to their shelter, no one else had a safe place to go. The friends became violent, insistent that he owed them space in his fallout shelter. Even for the time it was filmed, it was brutal.

I started to question myself about how I might react in an apocalypse situation. We tend to live in a remote area, but we're also along a major highway. We have a nice plot of land and could easily slip into the woods if needed, but if people came to us looking for help would I turn them away? Would I run, constantly motivated by my own safety over everything else? Now, I don't want to be a hero, but I certainly don't want to be a coward either, so that is where my desire to write about zombies really kicked in. I wanted to explore the human condition. I wanted to put people in different situations and see how they would react under pressure. Maybe I even wanted to create a zombie slaying heroine or two that started out afraid of the world, then rose to the ranks and became a bit of a leader. Because if there is anything I learned in college that changed the way I will think about my actions for the rest of my life, it was this: There are three types of people. 1. People who latch onto leaders because they don't want to be responsible for the outcome 2. People who willingly aid leaders in an attempt to make a better situation 3. Leaders. In my life I have done everything in my power to be a #3, and when I fall short there, I do my best to be a #2, but as long as I live, I never want to be the #1.

Of course, there is a fourth type of person, but that is the zombie, and even though they once lived, zombies aren't really people anymore. I know I never want to be a zombie either.

So, in answer to that question, I do think there is enough horror and violence in our world. I could probably live out the rest of my life rather peacefully if I never saw the trailer for another SAW movie or psychopathic serial murdering Hitchhiker film. See, there's a difference between zombies, vampires and werewolves. They are the kind of nightmares we can recover from at the end of the movie. We may look over our shoulders a few times, peer through the blinds as the wind moans through the night like a corpse from the grave, but at the end of the night we can go to bed without losing much sleep. We see enough true horrors like murder, mutilation and terrorism every day in the media that it's actually nice to step back and slip into an imaginary world where the horror is supernatural and not the cruel result of our fellow man.

Tuning Into the Universe: Zombies! Zombies, Everywhere, and Not a Brain to Eat!

It never ceases to amaze me just how easily things start to fall into place once you've made a decision to focus on something. I am thinking of my current plot and the plot I've chosen for my NaNoWriMo Project at the moment. Zombies. Now, any given day of the week you can pop into the video store and rent a zombie movie, and there are some pretty obscure zombie novel titles out on the market, but we live in Smalltown, Pennsylvania. All too often, even the most popular topics and items don't show up here until two months after everyone else has moved on. Even our local Borders Store didn't stock the latest Neil Gaiman book without a request. Sick. I know.

So, when I began immersing into zombie culture, I expected little, to no help from the local library, video rental store or Borders. When I first started looking three weeks ago, the library had nothing. They still have nothing. I can probably order titles from one of the other branches in our county system, but even the system has NOTHING on zombies. Not even the Haitian voodoo zombies. The video store has actually gotten in some pretty obscure titles, even a few foreign zombie flicks. I was shocked. The greatest shock came from our local Borders store. In the last three weeks they went from having nothing more than the Max Brooks Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z books to putting out an entire display of zombie books, including Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your Brains and The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead.

The section containing survivalist books had also added quite a few titles, making recent trips to Borders somewhat expensive. All in the sake of research--completely necessary, of course. It's also nice to expand your horizons and your library, so I'm certainly not complaining.

Now here's the thing. Either the universe is completely tuned into what I need right now, or everyone better start preparing because the zombie apocalypse is coming. I'm giving credit to the universe, but if zombies do attack, at least I'll be prepared. ;)

Zombie Defense Training and Zombedies

I already know that if I want to get my characters out of zombie infested areas, I'm going to have to do some serious zombie defense training. The inner-researcher has prompted me out into the garage twice to look at the machete we found after we bought the house almost four years ago. I keep thinking about how good it would feel to exercise my right arm on some of those pumpkins next door. Maybe a watermelon would be more realistic. Max Brooks' says that the best zombie defense weapon outside of your own physically fit body is a steel crowbar. Not only is it incredibly solid, but it's multi-functional in a world gone mad.

Some of the research I have been doing has been really interesting. The survivalist book I started with, How to Survive Anything, Anywhere by Chris McNab has some incredibly useful information for every day situations too. We hike, sometimes in state gamelands where there aren't marked trails, and it really pays to know how to set up an emergency shelter, but how many people know to trap a fish with a plastic soda bottle...

In honor of my zombie training, I rented the zombie comedy (zombedy) film Fido: all about a boy and his er... zombie? My daughter and I recently saw the previews on the Irish zombedy: Boy Eats Girl. I can't wait to watch it, but since tonight is Wednesday, I am going to tune out for two hours with TAPS and Josh Gates from Destination Truth. Maybe tonight, Josh will find the truth...

BTW, I haven't forgotten about posting my shepherd's pie recipe. I will definitely add it in later this evening.

And before I head out for a couple hours, I'd really like to hear anyone's thoughts about surviving a zombie apocalypse. What would you do to survive?

Prepping the living dead for NaNoWriMo 2008

This is my third year doing NaNoWriMo, and I am very excited to be participating. Last year I didn't do so well, bombing out somewhere just around 10,000 words. The year before, I managed to make it, but the end result today feels like it needs a complete overhaul before I can even think of using it. This year, I've got my basic plot established. I'm having a zombie apocalypse.

Revealing major plot details to the general public always feels like telling people what you wished for when you blew out the candles on your birthday cake, so I will only say this: I am charged about the overall plot I'm working on. I'm about to start creating the host of characters and a small outline to go off of once the massive writing fest begins. I've never been a big fan of outlining, but you can't dive into NaNoWriMo without a good plan.

The inspiration started mid-summer, when I began working on a zombie-inspired short story. Right after I had established the early plot elements, a great How To opportunity came up on Mahalo: How to Survive a Zombie Attack. Hello? Kismet? Is that you? So I took on the assignment, and like the Solanum Virus, zombie fever was in my blood.

Before I could start gnawing on the nearest human being, I reached for Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide, and the zombie fixation escalated. Zombie films have been a staple in our household for years anyway, but it was time to have massive marathons. I also had the desire to dig up a series of books featuring zombie short stories from the 90's, but have yet to unearth them from the dusty past. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a John Joseph Adams edited short story collection that just came out near the end of September entitled, The Living Dead. Featuring short stories by Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and a host of other phenomenal authors, it promises to be a fantastic read.

So the research period has begun. Over the next couple weeks don't be surprised if my blogs take on a strange, survivalist undertone, with tips on where to find underground water, how to identify edible plants and fungi and improvise cookware on the fly. I mean, let's face it, when zombies attack, how long you survive is going to depend on a host of things like:
1. How fast you can run.
2. How well you can plan and think under pressure and depression
3. Your wilderness survival skills

Because there are so few people living in the wilderness, the zombies will probably not venture too far into the woods in search of food. Wilderness survival knowledge is going to give anyone a major leg up in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

I'm excited about this coming NaNoWriMo competition. I can't wait to get started, and I'm avidly devouring research, both of which are very good signs. Stay tuned throughout the coming weeks for more details, and of course, once the competition begins I will be logging my progress as often as I can.

The Horror Pops

Whether it's Halloween or not, the Horror Pops rock! I have had this song stuck in my head for weeks, so I thought it was time to share the mind-numbing goodness: