Babel Clash

– and discover that it used to be an S&M club in lower Manhattan — wait, no, that was Naomi Novik and I last Saturday night.  Naomi has kindly invited me to visit the blog and ramble back and forth with her over the next couple of days, but first I ought to introduce myself.   I’m Claudia Gray, the author of the EVERNIGHT series from HarperTeen, which so far includes the books EVERNIGHT, STARGAZER and (coming March 9) HOURGLASS.

My personal vote for most-overlooked-genre creature right now: Mummies.  If you ask me, mummies are at least as good as the currently hot zombies: They’re both undead, they both tend to shuffle a lot, they’re both extremely set on killing you.  But mummies are a lot sexier, right?  They have tombs in exotic places, filled with gemstones and statuary.  They have death masks of gold, scimitars, jewelry and other priceless, cursed bling.  They’re better preserved than your average zombie (at least, after the first couple of days), and also often have the power of illusion to make themselves young and hot again, whereas it’s hard to get turned on by a drooling, gray-fleshed zombie, where any clinch would probably result in some body part being snapped off.

Granted, you can write about swarms of zombies, and mummy media suggest that those guys are mostly loners.  Maybe one undead shuffling thing seems naturally less scary than hordes of undead shuffling things.  However, mummies can usually summon all sorts of things to do their bidding, from scarabs to jackals to mysterious bluish winds that suck the life out of people.  Mummies bring it all.   But where is “The Mummy Diaries” on the CW?  Naomi, how long can this prejudice against mummies last?

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