Babel Clash

Okay, I’m now stroking Mira’s hair because apparently I’ve struck a nerve. There, there, Mira. It will all be okay. That mean old series will get in line at some point. Or something. Though I do think it’s funny that both of accidentally wrote zombie books and accidentally wrote series. There must be something about zombies that inspires in a different way. Maybe it’s the brains thing. That must be it, they just take over your brains. 

I wonder if it was that way for George Romero, too? Or Simon Pegg? Or any of the other great zombie creators? I know for me, zombies tend to take over my brain whenever I have an idea for a book. I get a kernel or a character and then it starts itching. Twitching. Telling me to think about it. And I can’t stop (hmmm, also kind of like a zombie) until I work on it.

Lots of times people ask writers where we get our ideas from. It’s probably the question I get asked most (along with ‘so are they real books?’ and the answer is yes, they’re freaking REAL books). Like there’s an idea store or something that you could roam into and browse the aisles and just pick something out. Welcome to Idea-Mart! May I offer you a mind cart? Sometimes I wish it were that easy. Add item A plus item B and mix well, bake at 350 and voila! A New York Times Bestseller.

But it’s a little more fluid than all that. Sometimes I get ideas from characters, as I mentioned in my last blog. Sometimes it’s a scene that pops into my head (like the therapist scene in MWZ). And sometimes it’s something like an article in a newspaper or magazine, a vague reference in a movie or a line I overhear on the street. And that gets me thinking, “Gee, what if…”

What IF someone started a zombie extermination business?

What IF the zombie cure gave the person who received it some kind of zombie superpowers without the zombie side-effects?

What IF someone was trapped in a lockdown rehab when the zombie virus started to spread?

What IF someone was on a cruise and everyone got turned into zombies?

And those are just the zombie ideas! Don’t get me started on my thoughts on superheroes, witches and shapeshifters who turn into depressingly awful animals (some people shapeshift into cougars, but what if you shapeshifted into a squirrel with giant nuts). The what ifs take over, popping up like weeds in the flowerbed of my mind and the way I’m able to pull them is to write them down and develop them into healthy stories.

Most writers I know are the same. It’s never a problem of not having ENOUGH ideas, it’s not having enough time to dedicate to them all. Damn the need to sleep, eat and pet the cat!! If only I had thirty-six hours in a day! I could get so much done. Wait, sorry, I was just rubbing my hands together like a mad scientist. That’s bad, isn’t it?
But what if the mad scientist… oh damn, another weed!

So you’ll have to forgive me today if my brain is a little… squishy. No, I have not been attacked by rabid zombies (yet!!), it’s just that as I’m writing this I have just spent a powerhouse week banging out the end of my third book in the “Living With the Dead” series. I’ve written lots of books over the years (under a different name, in a different genre) but never followed the same characters through multiple books, so this has been a lot of fun for me. And since I know Mira is also writing a continuing series I thought maybe she would have some thoughts on this topic as well.

In MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES (which have I mentioned is available freaking RIGHT NOW at bookstores near you and you should pick it up because there are A. Zombies and B. It’s funny and C. I’m batting my eyelashes and looking at you sweetly right now) I start off with my main character Sarah and her husband, David. They’re a couple on the edge of divorce and then WHAM… a zombie apocalypse starts and really screws up their day. But it helps them put their problems and their marriage in perspective so… well, it’s not all bad.
And that was pretty much as far ahead as I thought. I mean, I wrote MWZ in order to entertain myself. It was so way far out of my usual genre and I love zombies and I thought it would be funny and I wanted to use all my own zombie knowledge. But my agent loved it and suddenly it was sold and life was oddly wonderful. But then Orbit said, “What’s going to happen to them next?”

And I realized I had to answer that question. And write another two books about my couple. Ultimately it turned out to be pretty fun. Not only did I get to follow them as their relationship changed and grew (cute mad scientists and zombie superpowers are just two of the new challenges that will face them in the upcoming books) but I also got to see their characters change.

As a I writer, character is usually what comes to me first. In my opinion character is plot because who a person is will directly influence how they react to any situation I put them in and that will change how to story develops. If Dave and Sarah had decided to stay in their apartment and just wait out the apocalypse, then MWZ would be a very different book than it is when they decide to take a risk and a road trip. Both are good stories (a great “trapped in the apartment” zombie story is Quarantine and its Spanish parent [REC]), but they are very, very different in the way they develop and feel.

Plus, I wanted their challenges to be different. MWZ is a very straight forward “oh shit, there are zombies, what do we do?” type story. But in the second book, they KNOW what the zombies are and how they fight them. So I had to change the zombies. In the third book I had to create new challenges, both zombie and human.

So now I’m done with the third book and I’ve seen Sarah and David grow and I find myself wondering what readers think of stand-alone books versus series. And also Mira, you have a really twist ending to FEED (which I won’t give away) and that changes your series considerably. How do you build a series?

Well, I hope you spent all of Sunday wondering the answer to Mira’s question at the end of her Saturday Blog. Why did Jesse feel the need to destroy everything to launch off her apocalypse in MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES. Actually, I found Mira’s whole blog very interesting. It’s true that there are a few apocalypses where everything doesn’t go to hell in a hand basket. In fact, in one my favorite zombie tales, “Shaun of the Dead” we end the movie with Shaun and Lizzie living life as usual, watching the one year anniversary news shows on their outbreak (when Coldplay is headlining the Z-Aid concert, CLASSIC). Clearly life is back to normal (with the exception of Ed out in the back playing video games and occasionally trying to take a bite out of Shaun). 

And I actually also agreed with Mira’s reasoning for why an apocalypse takes you to hell in a hand basket or not. The whole concept of the awful trifecta of Population Loss/Lack of Governmental Response/Failure of Vital Services really does make all the difference. It certainly does in my story. But I got the trifecta, unlike Mira. Over half the population is wiped out on day 1, the government doesn’t have a response (well, they do, but you won’t see it until the end of Book 1 and through Book 2-3) and Vital Services? Yeah, my characters basically have a repeating message on the radio telling them to remain calm. Awesome. And I think sort of realistic when you consider the messes made of some recent natural disasters.

So why did I go that way? Well, when I imagined Sarah and Dave, emotionally screwed up married couple on the edge of divorce using their dead marriage counselor’s advice to escape a zombie apocalypse, I didn’t want them to be able to depend on anything else in the world but each other. Simple as that. If Sarah could just call a cop on her cell phone or Dave could IM the National Guard, well then they wouldn’t really have no way out but to work together. At every turn I had them realize more and more that the only people in the world they could really trust were each other… and that is really the catalyst that drives them to answer the question “Are we going to be together or not?” by the end of the book.

Plus, another big difference between MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES and FEED (which I loved by the way, I actually thought the idea of still having a social and political infrastructure was freaking brilliant) is that Dave and Sarah don’t know WHY this is happening. They know there was a lab on University of Washington campus, that it was somehow related to the government and that zombies have been rampaging ever since, but there’s little news, little information and no contact with the outside world almost from moment one of the book. The government actually cuts off the areas affected (and you’ll see more of that in the second and third books). They don’t spend a lot of time asking why, either. They just spend a lot of time running like hell and hoping they’ll live to see another day. In that way, I think I’m more like “Shaun of the Dead” or maybe even “28 Days Later” in that the cause is a mystery that isn’t really ever answered completely.

But there’s another side to zombie films and books. The “why” side. You see it in “Resident Evil” or “I Am Legend” or in Mira’s book, FEED. The people in those stories know exactly WHY they’re in this situation. They know how “it” happened, whatever “it” is. And that may be just as scary as the empty, not-knowing that David and Sarah encounter.

Okay, now I really want to get down to brass tacks. Seriously we have been talking about the tone and the feel of horror and why zombies are so damn cool and that’s great. But I think the real reason I love writing zombies is this:

I like to blow shit up.

Okay, maybe I should be clearer just in case the FBI decides to read this blog and expand my file. I haven’t ever actually blown anything up. My brother used to blow up his GI Joes with firecrackers, but I wasn’t really involved in that. But the idea of blowing stuff up is soooo cool. And what gives you a better excuse for doing it than a zombie apocalypse? I mean, seriously. Anarchy is the name of the game in Zombieville. If you aren’t blowing things up, you are doing it wrong.

And it isn’t just the blowing up part. Nope, you can also shoot people. Or say… kill them with their own stiletto. Or with a toilet seat. There are a hundred creative ways to kill a zombie and no one even bats an eye about the murderous rampage you are participating in (or… writing. Yes, writing, not participating).

Apocalypses are different from regular wars, I guess. In regular war you get soldiers with weapons and they’re trained. In an apocalypse we’re all soldiers and everything around you is a potential weapon. Those with the ability to creatively kill will be highly valued.

Oh and speaking of that, after the shit goes down, what we value in general will change. White collar workers, I’m sorry but you will be useless. People who can grow food, drive heavy equipment, run the electric grid and kill stuff will be GODS. They will rule and have many wives (or husbands) as a reward. Because as we know, in the post-apocalypse we’ll all go Lord of the Flies or Mad Max and run wild.

Sounds pretty fun to me.

Except wait, Mira, in FEED… it kind of didn’t go that way. So what’s up with still having a political and social infrastructure, man?

Yesterday Mira Grant welcomed you into the First Church of Romero. You know, the one where the primary tenant is “kill it before it kills you”? Yeah, I’m also a member, so you know it’s where all the cool people hang out. Come on in, grab a shotgun and stay a while.

However, unlike Mira I was baptized into the church in a slightly different way. I was not allowed to watch horror movies as a kid. I once cried until I nearly threw up at a preview before another movie for a Freddie movie, so that pretty much ended my mother’s flexibility on things that went bump in the night for me. Add to that that my little brother sharpened a piece of wood into a stake and kept it behind his door “just in case” and the two of us were pretty much cut off from all things terrifying from the jump. It may have been just self-preservation for our parents.

But, the one thing that was utterly supported in our family was comedy.
 
My mother says the first joke I ever “got” was when my brother was still a baby. She was putting him down to bed and she heard a huge crash from the living room. She ran in to find me, all of about three and a half, laying on the floor under the couch. I had fallen off the couch laughing at “Young Frankenstein”. The part I thought was so funny? When Gene Hackman’s blind man sets the Monster’s thumb on fire, thinking it’s a cigar. By the way, that scene still gets me.

So let me reiterate… a movie where teens set the bad guy on fire in order to save the world from his monster squad… BAD in our family. A movie where Gene Hackman sets someone’s thumb on fire (who is also pretty much a zombie BTW)… GOOD in our family.

So, since I got old enough to take myself to horror movies, I’ve always been drawn to horror that was funny. “Scream”… funny. “Shaun of the Dead”… funny. “Fido”… funny. And then there was “Zombieland” and suddenly I had an idea for a zombie story that combined divorce, death, mayhem, cults and was… funny. Suddenly a whole world opened up for me.
 
Like Mira said yesterday, make your survival plan be about escaping the zombies and suddenly the whole world has an opinion. And making a story about all those sort of NOT funny things (you know the aforementioned divorce, death, mayhem, cults, etc) funny meant it was okay to talk about them. I started wondering out loud to my husband about strange ways to kill people (my favorite in Married With Zombies is still a creative use of a toilet seat) and he never even looked at me cross-eyed (but when I watch True Crime shows on A&E he gets nervous, go figure). When I called my brother asking if he’d like to be in a cult, his immediate answer of “yes” was perfect, not troubling.

So maybe that’s what appeals to me most about zombies. They make the unspeakable speakable and the totally terrifying funny.  And if you like jokes about exploding heads and jumping out of two-story windows, I might just have the one for you.