Babel Clash

Today is July 4th, but in the Babel Clash world, it’s the Monday before the changing of the guard.  For the last two weeks two of horror’s best authors, Jonathan Maberry and David Moody, have been gracing us with posts about zombies, the craft of writing, and giveaways.  Not bad for two weeks!  I wanted to thank them both for spending the last two weeks with us!  Please use today to promote to your heart’s content - past, current, and future projects (Oxford comma!)  Also, for those of you who have entered David’s giveaway, tune in tomorrow to see who won the autographed books!

You should also tune in tomorrow because we have another set of amazing authors slated to begin posting for us.  Starting tomorrow, we’ll be joined by Seanan McGuire and Devon Monk!

Seanan McGuire is the author of the October Daye series.  In the series, we learn that fairy tales are real, and the main character, Toby Daye, is a changeling - half fae, half human.  The latest Toby Daye novel is Late Eclipses, followed by One Salt Sea in September (notice the Shakespearean references?).  Besides writing the Toby Daye series, Seanan McGuire also spends some of her time writing under the name Mira Grant.  The books by Mira Grant form the Newsflesh Trilogy (the second in the series, Deadline, was just released) and they involve a very interesting take on zombies.

Devon Monk also writes an urban fantasy series.  Her series stars Allie Beckstrom.  Beckstrom is a Hound - someone who can track a spell back to its caster.  In Beckstrom’s world, the use of magic incurs a physical (or mental) cost.  It’s interesting to read how Monk touches on the implications of the use of magic in her Beckstrom novels. The latest Allie Beckstrom novel is Magic on the Hunt, with Magic on the Line due out in November.

Devon steps aside from Allie Beckstrom briefly for a new series. The first book in her new steampunk comes out tomorrow, July 5th. That book, Dead Iron, takes place in the American Wild West in a time where bounty hunters, gunslingers, magic, and steam all intermingle. If paranormal and steampunk are your thing, Monk’s new series starring Cedar Hunt is right up your alley.

Readers, please join me in thanking Jonathan and David while also welcoming Seanan and Devon to the blog. It’s going to be another great two weeks!

It’s almost time to call it a wrap with Jonathan and David unfortunately, but while they still have the floor, we’re going to give away some stuff. Sound like a plan? I thought so! Here’s the deal, David Moody has three sets of books to give away - and he’ll even sign them before mailing them out. The prizes are as follows - three sets of the following two books - Autumn and Hater.  Those are the first books in both of David’s series, so it’s a great opportunity to jump into both of his series (which are well worth the read if you ask me).  Even better news?  David is willing to ship these three prize packs internationally, which means this give away is going GLOBAL!

Before I spill the beans about how to be eligible to win one of, I just want everyone to know that even if you don’t win, I strongly encourage everyone to pick up the Autumn and Hater series because they’re great examples of what horror should be.  I read a lot of books in the genre, and I hold Moody’s books in high regard!

Ok, so you want to get a chance to win a signed copy of both Autumn and Hater?  Here’s the deal.  In the comment section to this blog post, respond with an answer to this question - What scares you the most?

Three winners will be chosen at random from everyone who posts a comment!  The winners will be announced Tuesday, July 5th, so make sure you comment by EOD Monday, July 4th EST to enter.

Good Luck!

Zombies are today’s hot monster.

Well, okay, they’re dead, so they’re probably room temperature. But in terms of their presence in modern pop culture they’re red hot. I love watching zombie movies, reading zombie books and comics, and –yes, I’m a brave man, I’ll admit it—collecting zombie toys. I have a Jell-O mold in the shape of a brain, a radio-controlled robot zombie, zombie finger puppets, and even a bust of Zombie Elvis sitting on my desk.

The thing I love most about zombies is writing about them. So far I’ve written zombie short stories (“Pegleg and Paddy Save the World”, “Zero Tolerance” and “The Wind Through the Fence”), a zombie nonfiction book (ZOMBIE CSU), a zombie mainstream thriller (PATIENT ZERO), a zombie horror novel (DEAD OF NIGHT), two novels in a series of Young Adult post-apocalyptic adventures (ROT & RUIN and DUST & DECAY), comics (MARVEL ZOMBIES RETURN), and an essay for a book about Robert Kirkman’s THE WALKING DEAD (“Take Me To Your Leader”, which will appear in TRIUMPH OF THE WALKING DEAD).

So, yeah…I love my life-impaired fellow citizens.

Anyone who already digs zombies probably understands my fascination. However some folks just plain don’t get it. Especially those who wonder why a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author should (and I quote) “waste his time with that stuff”. Yeah, comments like that make ME want to bite someone.

Zombies have always been metaphors. Romero used his films to make significant points about racism (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), rampant American consumerism (DAWN OF THE DEAD), and the build-up of the US military-industrial complex during the Reagan years (DAY OF THE DEAD), and the de-personalization of our culture in the age of cell phones, texting, and computers (DIARY OF THE DEAD). In his brilliant novel WORLD WAR Z, Max Brooks speaks to our fear of a global pandemic and its mishandling by world governments; and Joe McKinney used his trilogy of zombie novels (DEAD CITY, APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD and FLESH EATERS) to examine government mishandling of disasters like Hurricane Katrina. My novel, PATIENT ZERO is an allegory for the potential mishandling of bio-technologies; and the forthcoming DEAD OF NIGHT explores covert bioweapons research.

Over the years I’ve discussed the zombie genre with many of the key players; each of them was willing to share their insights.

“People like zombie stories because they like to be scared. I know I do,” Max Brooks told me. “Zombies scare me. No seriously, they break every rule of horror. You have to go find most other monsters, but zombies come to you –and not in ones and twos by the way!”

James Gunn, screenwriter for the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, remarked, “Zombies bring up the fear of becoming paranoid –having the ones you love turn up against you; and they bring up our fear of disease. There’s no other movie trope that works on so many levels of the mammalian psyche. We’re hardwired evolutionarily to be scared of zombies.”

And Tony Todd, star of the 1990 remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, observed. “Romero’s zombies represented the silent and often vicious majority. That’s still true. Zombies are a metaphor for the faceless, emotionless, destructive mob that seeks to destroy everything vital, vibrant and alive!”

Zombies are perfect metaphors, and nowadays they offer greater storytelling potential than vampires. Before the vampires were humanized and romanticized, they were the Big Bad, standing in for anything that we fear, don’t understand and feel helpless before. But in recent years the vampire has become the story. They’re beautiful, tragic figures and much of the writing is about them. Not so with the living dead. Except in a handful of zombie tales, the walking dead do not possess intellect or personality and therefore all the writer has to do is establish that they are the threat. Once that’s done, the story focuses on the humans who are caught up in that threat, and from a storytelling perspective that’s a pretty deep fishing hole.

They’re mindless monsters, and there are a lot of them. Once we establish their presence in a story, the audience is encouraged to fill in the blank for whatever specific threat is most potent in their own lives. As a result the writer gets to use the majority of the word count to explore the dynamic of ordinary humans facing a shared crisis and how that crisis impacts them. Stress warps personality, changes relationship dynamics, allows hidden personality traits to emerge, and makes every character go through that process of change which is key to all good fiction. Zombies, in short, are good friends to writers. They allow and even encourage writers to dig deeper into the characters, their needs, their goals and their growth. Zombies help characters come alive.

They allow for the creation and sustaining of suspense. They are a constant and pervasive threat. Blood and gore, however, is not absolutely required. We don’t need to see a zombie chow down on someone to grasp how horrible that is.

Zombies also allow us to address our fears in a way which gives us a measure of control. Brian Keene, the author most responsible
for kicking off the current zombie fiction craze with THE RISING, agrees: “Our daily lives are filled with real monsters and real horrors. Monsters fly airplanes into buildings. These are dark times, and people want an escape. People are scared of everyday life. Sometimes, it’s good to curl up with a make believe monster, rather than the one outside your door.”

If you’re already a zombie fan, I encourage you to read the books as well as watching the movies. There’s some brilliant stuff out there. Stories that will chill you, stories that will shock you, even stories that will make you cry. All of them, though, are stories that will make you think.

If you’ve NEVER read a zombie novel…please, don’t be afraid. There’s a lot of literary richness there. You will be surprised. That’s an absolute guarantee.

As these blogs roll on, David Moody and I will share more and more suggestions for zombie books (and movies) for you.

Go on…take a bite.

Jonathan’s post yesterday got me thinking about some of the landmark horror books and films which have influenced me. Growing up in the UK in the 1980’s was not easy for an underage horror fan – the government of the day banned pretty much every movie that was even remotely horrific (the ‘Video Nasties’ debacle), and what the government didn’t ban, my parents did. Fortunately for me, a friend of mine’s dad ran the only comic store in town. He frequently made trips overseas to buy in stock and, on one particular occasion, he returned with a laserdisc player and a collection of discs. On a day off from school, a few of us piled over to his house to watch a movie or two. It’s no exaggeration to say that what happened that afternoon changed me forever…

Nestled deep in the box of discs was a copy of Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. For me this was the holy grail – a movie it was impossible to get hold of in the UK. We sat down to watch it and, right on cue, a huge thunderstorm broke. The day turned black as night and for the next hour and a half I stared at the screen, completely transfixed. That was when my obsession with the living dead began. Looking back now at my first exposure to zombies, it struck me how my feelings towards them haven’t changed: they still scare me today in exactly the same way they did twenty-five years ago. I’ve identified five reasons why I think this is the case, and I’d be really interested to hear what you think.

Reason 1 – THEY’RE ALREADY DEAD

Okay this is an obvious one, but stop and think about it. You can’t kill them (except for the headshot, and we’ll gloss over that for now). There’s something inherently terrifying about an enemy that refuses to die. Their sole purpose (depending on which books you read) is to kill (and frequently eat) the living, i.e. YOU! And this leads me on to:

Reason 2 – THEY’RE THE ‘TERMINATOR’ OF HORROR MONSTERS

These things just don’t know when to give up. They’ll keep at you until there’s literally nothing left of them, like Arnie in the original Terminator movie. I don’t know about you, but I think the prospect of facing off against an enemy that will stop at nothing to kill you is completely terrifying. And they’ll keep coming at any cost - losing limbs, falling to pieces, catching fire… zombies will shrug off these ‘inconveniences’ to get to you. Also, have you ever wondered what a zombie might be capable of thinking? Are they as mindless as we imagine, or do they remember who they were and what they used to be? (By the way, that’s something I look at more in my AUTUMN books, and Jonathan’s forthcoming zombie novel DEAD OF NIGHT also questions the connection between the zombies and the people they once were).

Reason 3 – THEY’RE EVERYWHERE

I live in a semi-rural location on the outskirts of a major city. Compared to the city center it isn’t the busiest of places, but I’m still surrounded by literally thousands of potential zombies - sorry, I mean people - on a daily basis. Ask yourself, are you ever completely alone? Does a day go by when you don’t see at least a handful of other folks? Come the zombie apocalypse we’re going to be in serious trouble because the enemy already has us hopelessly outnumbered. On a similar note:

Reason 4 – THEY’RE EVERYONE

Everybody you know – your lover, partner, parent, child, boss, employee, student, teacher – they’re all potential zombies. Now I think I could probably take out a random member of the undead public if I had to, but if it was my mom or my wife… my brother… one of my kids even… you know they’re already dead and all hope for them is gone but still, could you do it?

Reason 5 – THEY’RE GROSS

You know the score: we’re dealing with foul creatures that are decaying, literally falling apart in front of us, and it’s never going to be pleasant! No sparkly vampires or well-toned werewolves here! To illustrate my point, here’s a lovely picture of me playing dead on the set of the (very low budget and critically mauled) movie adaptation of my book AUTUMN (an interesting experience I’m hoping to talk more about later in my time here - you can see the trailer in the sidebar).

So what do you think, is it just me? Are zombies reaching the end of their shelf life, or do they still scare the heck out of you too?

The title is fitting because on one hand, it’s time to say good bye to our current guests (which is always horrific because we enjoy when folks stop by to chat) - Daniel H. Wilson and Ernest Cline.  I had a blast chatting robots and the like these past two weeks.  I never officially announced my favorite robots because they tend to be on the evil side of things - The Sentinels from X-Men lore and the Giant Robot that housed Krang on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - but rest assured I was right there along for the ride.

If you haven’t yet, make sure you pick up a copy of Robopocalypse and pre-order a copy of Ready Player One - you won’t regret it!

Then, once you are done purchasing and pre-ordering, make sure to click right back over to Babel Clash because the flipside of saying “Oh the horror…” is coming up right around the corner.  That’s right, our next guests are two of my favorite authors in the horror genre today!  Starting tomorrow, Jonathan Maberry and David Moody will be here to scare you silly (or to just genuinely entertain you).

Jonathan Maberry is a multiple Bram Stoker-award winning author who has given us such works as the Pine Deep Trilogy, the Joe Ledger novels, several great Marvel storylines (my favorite being Marvel Universe vs. The Punisher), and an upcoming zombie novel called Dead of Night.

Joining Jonathan is David Moody, who you may know from his Autumn series (which he originally gave away for free - the new volume, Purification, comes out later this summer! ) or his Hater series (book 3 comes out this Fall - they’ve come a long way since the days of Infected Books!).

Please join me in not only thanking Daniel H. Wilson and Ernest Cline for their stay on Babel Clash, but in also welcoming Jonathan Maberry and David Moody.  This is going to be another great two weeks on Babel Clash!

I can’t believe our time at Babel Clash is already at an end. We’ve had two weeks filled with many things:  laughter, tears, obscenity, fangs and snark. But most of all–love. I’ll always remember it fondly. I know you will too.

Huge thanks to Dane for being such an excellent host and to the readers for putting up with our antics. It’s always a pleasure.

Now for the pimpage portion of this post (warning: exposure to pimpage may cause stress diarrhea, bleeding from the eyes and rashes in sensitive areas).

My latest book, GREEN-EYED DEMON is the third book in my Sabina Kane series. Just in time for Mardi Gras, the book is set in New Orleans and features drag queens, voodoo priestesses, scheming Cajuns and accidental zombies. If you like your urban fantasy dark with complex world building and sharp-edged humor, give it a try.

-end pimpage-

Until next time, Babel Clashians, I bid you adieu.

First off, I wanted to thank Holly and Scott for starting this year off on a great note!  Your conversation was great.  In the true spirit of the debate, I’m not quite sure if I’ve been completely swayed over to Team Unicorn, but I sure am closer that side than ever before. 

Since today is your last day on the blog, please spend it promoting your current, past, or future projects.  We’d love to hear you talk about your work one last time!

Then Babel Clashers, after the unicorn dust settles, and the zombies have been disposed of, we’ll be heading to a galaxy far, far away with three authors from the Star Wars Universe!

First, we’ll have Joe Schreiber, author of Death Troopers and the recently released Red Harvest!  My guess is that he’s on Team Zombie!

Next, we’ll have Troy Denning, who is helping with the Fate of the Jedi series.  His latest book is Vortex.

Finally, we’re joined by Star Wars double threat John Jackson Miller.  While he’s most known for his work on the comic book side of the Star Wars Universe, John Jackson Miller also has a novel coming out soon that ties into a new comic series he’s working on for Dark Horse Comics.  The novel, which hits stores 1/25, is Knight Errant.

Again, please join me in thanking Holly and Scott, while also welcoming the Star Wars posse of Joe, Troy, and John!

What a way to close out 2010, right? Many thanks go out to our friends at Pyr for sending Clay, Susan, and Jasper our way to take Babel Clash 2010 out in style. Thanks so much to all three of you for great posts and topics. It truly was a joy reading everything. While I agree with you all in some parts regarding remakes, I will admit, I did go see True Grit twice and hail it as far superior to the original (and much more faithful to the novel).  I still haven’t been able to force myself to see TRON though - I think one movie with Jeff Bridges is enough for now…

Since this is your last day on the blog Clay, Susan, and Jasper, I thought it would be a good time to use today for a bit of self-promotion.  Feel free to plug anything you’re working on or want our readers to know about.  It’s the least I can offer for such a great stint on the blog! 

The Griffiths and Jasper Kent did a great job closing up the year for us, and I suspect our next two guests will be able to pick up where Jasper and the Griffiths usher us into another exciting year on Babel Clash.

When looking at who to book to start 2011 off, I thought we needed to discuss a debate for the ages.  Because of that I turned to Holly Black and Scott Westerfeld!  They’ll be spending this next week debating the age-old question Zombies vs. Unicorns?

Are you on Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

Aside from taking the lead on Team Unicorn, Holly Black is also known as the bestselling author of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Modern Faerie Tales, and The Curse Workers.

Joining Holly on the blog to defend Team Zombie in this debate is Scott Westerfeld, known for his bestselling Midnighters, Uglies, Peeps, and Leviathan series. 

I’m not going to pick sides in this debate, but based on Orbit’s findings on cover trends, I think Team Unicorn may be in for an uphill battle.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving otherwise known as ‘Black Friday’ and the Babel Clash folks have very graciously allowed me, Michael P. Spradlin author and international raconteur to guest post today. And believe it or not, Black Friday has me thinking about…well, me. And my books. Stick with me on this. Really.

Black Friday makes me think of Pirates. And Pirates remind me of my recently published book PIRATE HAIKU: Bilge-Sucking Poems of Booty, Grog and Wenches for Scurvy Sea Dogs. It’s a ‘memoir’ of the famous, yet ever so slightly incompetent One-Leg Sterling, Captain of the Black Thunder and scourge of the seven seas. And the thing is, this memoir is told in “Haiku”. That’s right. You’ll read all about One-Leg’s Piratin’ ways in seventeen syllable installments and have a good snicker or two while you do. If you’re rushing about your favorite Borders today, I highly recommend you pick yourself up a copy.

Black Friday makes me also think of Zombie Tuesday, which is what I have officially named November 30^th, the release date for my newest zombie inspired mash-up, Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime: A Book of Zombie Love Songs. Following on the heels of It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Zombies: A Book ofZombie Christmas Carols, you’ll find nearly thirty classic love songs zombiefied for your enjoyment. Songs like Chew Me Up, Buttercup, Fifty Ways To Eat Your Lover, You’ve Lost That Livin’ Feeling and Eat Caroline!

Finally, Black Friday brings to mind Friday the 13^th, a day that is considered unlucky. The origin of Friday the 13^th as an unlucky day, comes from the 14^th century when King Philip the IV of France ordered all members of The Knights Templar arrested and thrown in prison. Then he had a lot of fun torturing and condemning them as heretics. And you can learn about the Knights Templar by reading my newest Youngest Templar novel Orphan of Destiny. Also available at Borders!

See, I told you I could pull off this Black Friday connection! And that leads me to my question of the day. Post your answer in the comments section and I will pick a random winner to received signed copies of the aforementioned three books. (And I mean signed by me, not….you know, Jennifer Aniston or anything. Still free is free!)

And the question is: If a Zombie and a Pirate get into a fight, who wins? Discuss! And good luck! And please visit your local Borders and look for one of my books. Or somebody else’s. They have lots of books, I’m reasonably sure you’ll find something you like.

Excelsior!

Michael P. Spradlin

No, Jesse, you’re wrong; it will not all be okay, and the odds are good that the mean ol’ series will kill me in the night.  I will take comfort from knowing that yours is likely to do the same to you.  The series is the monster under my bed and in my closet, and since you probably have both a bed and a closet, one night, when you least expect it, you’re going to realize that you have a ten volume science fiction epic eating your brain.  And then?  Then I will laugh.

I do think that any really lively idea–and yes, this includes zombies, even if the zombies themselves can’t exactly be described as “lively”–is very likely to take over your brain and make you do what it wants.  I think of catching a story as being less like contracting the zombie virus, and more like getting one of those charming parasites that can take over ants and drive them around like little armored cars.  Once it’s in there, you just have to pray that it goes somewhere else before it chews your head entirely off.
 
Yes, I am a lot of fun at the dinner table.

The “where do you get your ideas?” question is common as mud.  The problem is…so are the ideas.  Seriously!  Putting together a good story is a lot like cooking a good meal.  You start with your protein, be it zombies or werewolves or vampires or a travelogue romance.  You add a vegetable–the end of the world, a political campaign, a race around the world, a case of mistaken identity, whatever.  Maybe you should get some starch in there: a love interest, the rumor of a cure, something in the cornfield.  Season to taste, serves four to six people per hundred pages.
 
Ideas are easy.  Combining ideas in a way that seems fresh and new (even if it isn’t) and keeps you interested until you finish writing the first draft, that’s the hard part.  Combining ideas in a way that keeps someone else interested is even harder, which is why so many stories wind up going untold, even in today’s storypalooza of Internet and print media and information everywhere.

Things that have caused me to write a book:

* Jetlag
* The Counting Crows
* Fish
* This interesting blueberry bush near my friend Michael’s house
* Fluke parasitism
* Reading Kenneth Muir’s Horror Movies of the 1980s cover to cover
* A blue sweater
* So You Think You Can Dance

Things that have remained entirely true to the original idea:

* …

…so yeah, there’s that.

Ideas have never been the problem.  Finding the exact right recipe to make those ideas come alive, that’s the hard part.  Sometimes you get it wrong.  Sometimes you’re halfway through the process before you realize that it should have been turnips, not potatoes, and you have to start basically from scratch.  Most of the time, you’ll get a better meal because you did that.  When you don’t, you’ll get a learning experience.  Not as tasty, definitely necessary to your growth as a writer.

And you can’t have my thirty-six hour days, Jesse.  I sold my soul at the crossroads to get them, fair and square, and you’re going to have to get your own.  If you’re really interested, I have a number you can call, and operators are always standing by…