Undead Anonymous

Andy Warner here, main protagonist of Breathers, bringing you my updated version of The Wizard of Oz ditty, “If I Only Had a Brain,” originally sung by Ray Bolger and Judy Garland.  In this instance, however, there’s just the one singer who is, obviously, a zombie.

If I Only Had Some Brains
(lyrics by Andy Warner)

I could gnaw away the hours, delightfully devour
Digesting Johns and Janes.
And my mouth I’d be fillin’
While my hands were busy killin’
If I only had some brains.

I’d faddle and I’d fiddle, fat fry you on the griddle,
Sautéing your remains.
On your flesh I’d be snackin’
And your skull I would be crackin’
If I only had some brains.

Oh, ever since I’ve died
I’ve longed for blood and gore
Just to sit and eat the brains that I adore.
And then I’d sit and eat some more.

I would bake you up in muffins, complete you with some stuffin’,
Or maybe some whole grains.
In a shake made with dairy
I would top you with a cherry,
If I only had some brains.

vanity >noun (pl. vanities)  1) excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.  2) the quality of being worthless or futile.

It’s interesting that the two definitions of vanity should seem to have such extreme opposites, but it’s actually a pretty good description of what it’s like to be a writer.  Not that all writers take excessive pride in their achievements, but there’s definitely ego involved for anyone who sits down to write with the goal of publication in mind.  After all, if you think something you’ve written is good enough to be read by a bunch of strangers who would actually pay to read it, then there’s a pretty good chance you’ve got a healthy ego.  Hopefully not on steroids, but an ego, nonetheless.

Let’s not confuse ego with arrogance, either.  While arrogance and conceit have negative connotations, an ego is a good thing to have.  Losing your ego can have significant consequences.

John Lennon once admitted that he’d done so much acid in an attempt to destroy his ego that he didn’t believe he could do anything.  By the time The Beatles were creating Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he’d given up all control of the band to Paul.  I’d like to think The Beatles would have been even better had Lennon chosen to put more of his mark on their last few albums.  But then, I think Abbey Road is a masterpiece.

Once again, I’m off on a tangent.  Which is why I’m my in-person interviews are always all over the map.

Back to vanity.

Okay, so there’s ego and then there’s pride in one’s achievements.  For the sake of argument here, let’s take the word “excessive” out of the definition and just stick with pride.  Of course writers are proud of their achievements.  You spend six months or two years of your life creating something and when you’re finished, you have a sense of accomplishment.  A sense of pride.  And when that first manuscript actually appears in your mailbox in the form of a published book, with your name on the cover and a blurb from Kirkus on the back, the feeling is even greater.  Almost surrealistic.

But along the way, through the writing and publishing process, the second definition of vanity comes into play, as well.  The feeling that what you’re writing is worthless.  That the hours you’re spending sitting at your computer writing about imaginary places populated by imaginary people is futile.  What the hell did you think you were doing?  Who in their right mind would want to publish this?  Or pay money to read it?

But when that first e-mail arrives from some stranger who read your book and they tell you they loved it and couldn’t put it down and didn’t want it to end, those concerns vanish like John Lennon’s ego.

A friend of mine, who is also a writer, once said that having a book published is like jumping off a cliff.  You have no control over what’s going to happen and you just have to hope that you land in something soft rather than in a dumpster filled with broken bottles.  Or something like that.  I’m paraphrasing, but the point is you’re at the mercy of the world, so you might as well enjoy the fall.

(Next entry: W is for World War Z)

It seems like I’ve had a lot of interview requests lately, which is a good thing.  Hopefully I’m not just regurgitating the same story every time.  Like Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees, who tells the same Shania Twain joke over and over as a way of defining himself before being called on it by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman who wonder if he is himself without the story.

“How am I not myself?”

Where was I?  Oh yes, repetitive responses to interview questions.  It seems like whenever anyone asks me to describe Breathers during a “live” interview, I end up either rambling about social satire and zombie angst or paraphrasing the back cover copy.  Usually at the end of this, I’ll say, “It’s Fight Club meets Shaun of the Dead, only with the zombies as the good guys,” and then wonder why I just didn’t say that in the first place.  Short.  Simple.  And it conveys the basic idea in less than 20 words.

My favorite interviews are the ones in which I get asked odd or playful questions, such as:

What scares you?  (Children. And paraplegic mannequins.)
How do you escape these days? (By hot air balloon.)
Can you describe Breathers using haiku? (It’s like Fight Club meets / Shaun of the Dead only with / Cannibalism)

I actually prefer doing the written interviews by e-mail, which give me a chance to edit my responses and maybe wax a little philosophical or throw in some amusing comments. While I appreciate that people find Breathers as amusing as I do, I’m not nearly as funny in person. I need to be able to edit my thoughts or do research before I come up with a good, snappy response. I would make a poor stand-up comic.

So if you’re interested, you can read my most recent interviews, which include a phone interview for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a written e-mail interview about the marketing of Breathers with Buzz, Balls, and Hype, and an in-person lunch interview with Gothic Angst Magazine.  You can even check out my video interview with Suvudu.com from Comic-Con.

As always, thanks for listening…

Rolling in a little late with the post Comic-Con update, so let’s just hit the high points and get out of here so I can go grab some dinner and watch Adaptation on DVD.

This being my inaugural trip to Comic-Con, it was definitely a unique experience.  The entire convention center looked like Disney vomited up Looney Tunes.

In addition to all of the Predators and Storm Troopers and medieval knight sword skirmishes, I had a great time being graciously hosted by the Random House / Crown Publishing booth, meeting marketing manager Jay Sones on Thursday, who helped to shamelessly plug Breathers with promotional buttons, stickers, bookmarks, and postcards.  He also happened to have an extra copy of Breathers that I signed and personalized to Max Brooks, who was in the house signing advanced preview copies of his upcoming graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.  It was the first chance I’d had to meet Max and it was a pleasure.  Even if he does think zombies are the bad guys.

I also had the good fortune of meeting Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the Jane Austen mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, at his Saturday signing and played fanboy.  We even had a photo taken together.  Unfortunately, it was with his camera, not mine, so I don’t have any proof it happened.  You’ll just have to take my word for it.  And look for Seth and I to double-team the zombie fans at the August 15th outdoor screening of Shaun of the Dead in Los Angeles, as well as at the October 4th West Hollywood Book Fair.  We’ll be on a zombie/vampire panel at 1:30pm, followed by a signing hosted by Dark Delicacies.

Okay, well, most of that had nothing to do with Comic-Con, so back to it.

On Saturday, I shared an enjoyable little panel on zombies, shapeshifters, and other assorted monsters called Monster Mash with Amber Benson, Alice Henderson, Walter Greatshell, Marlene Perez, and Rob Thurman.  The panel was hosted by the incomparable Maryelizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego.  It was my second official panel, so I guess I am now officially no longer a virgin.

Finally, Kyle with Suvudu, also affiliated with Random House, did four short video interviews that showcase just how much I need to cut down on my caffeine.  Either that or I need to tie my hands behind my back.

Overall, it was a great and exhausting experience.  Given the opportunity, I will definitely attend Comic-Con in San Diego in 2010.

First of all, you have to understand that I’m a SportsCenter junkie. I love watching highlights on ESPN during every SportsCenter broadcast. And when the NFL season comes along, you might as well just hook up an IV to my television and leave me on the couch.

Which is why I don’t have a regular cable TV package.  I have what is called Basic Limited Cable at a cost of about $20 per month, which provides me with about 40 channels — including FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Golf Channel, FX, and the Sci-Fi Channel (which is now the SyFy Channel – a separate blog if there ever was a need for one).  But no TNT, TBS, USA, CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, or ESPN.  That’s how I cured my addiction.  I took it away.  Made it impossible for me to get my fix.  Which is probably why I spend all of my time on Facebook and Twitter now.

So I don’t have On Demand movies.  I don’t have HBO or Showtime.  I’ve never seen an episode of Weeds.

I don’t have TiVo.  A DVR.  A Blue Ray.  Or a Wii.

I don’t own an iPhone or a Blackberry.  My cell phone is an LG ENV.  I have texting.  But I don’t have e-mail capabilities.

While I do own an iPod and a laptop and have my entire library of music on iTunes, I still enjoy buying CDs.  I even own a turntable and I love vinyl.  It sounds better than digital music.  Maybe not as convenient, but it’s much richer and warmer.  Go out and get Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or the Beatles’ Abbey Road on 180 gram vinyl and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

While not a complete Luddite, I’m definitely averse to getting sucked into becoming dependent upon all of the modern technological amenities.

Which brings me to Kindle and e-books.

While I understand the convenience and economy of using e-readers and realize, as someone who loves trees, that e-books reduce the need to chop trees down, I still enjoy the tactile feel of a book in my hands.  And, I have to admit, I enjoy seeing my novel sitting on my bookshelf amid all of my favorite authors and books.  It’s the narcissist in me.

My issue with the deletion of the Orwell novels in the recent fiasco involving Amazon and Kindle isn’t so much that the books were removed from the Kindle library.  I understand that.  They were bootlegged copies uploaded using the Kindle stores’ self-publishing system, so the publisher of 1984 and Animal Farm asked for them to be removed.  Fine.  But the customers who had already purchased the novels should have been able to keep them. Yes, I know Amazon admitted it made a mistake by deleting the customers’ copies, but apparently they did the same thing previously with books by Ayn Rand and J.K. Rowling.  So why didn’t they learn their lesson then?

Reaching into your Kindle electronically and replacing your book with a credit is not only unacceptable but it raises questions as to the ownership of electronic book and music collections.  Apparently, because of the Kindle terms of service, you don’t actually have full ownership of the books you purchase.  Amazon can delete anything it wants from your e-reader.  The justification on the basis of intellectual property is beside the point.  The power to be able to do this at all is, while not exactly Big Brother, definitely disconcerting. And another example of why I’d rather have to dog-ear a page to mark my place.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to Van Halen’s first album on my turntable.

Yes, originally I said this post was going to be U is for Undead.  But Z is for Zombies, like that’s a big surprise, and it seemed kind of silly to preempt zombies with the undead, so I tried to come up with something else and, well, this was it.

Why Ulysses?  Because I have a confession to make.  I’ve never read it.  I don’t even know what it’s about.  And I have never understood any of the obscure references Dennis Miller has made about James Joyce in his stand-up routines.

And it’s not just James Joyce.  I’ve never read any Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, W. Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, Henry James, John Milton, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or William Faulkner.  And I hated Crime and Punishment.  Read it in my Western Lit class in high school.  The crime was that the book was ever written and the punishment was that I had to read it.

Oh, and I think Hemingway sucks.  Yes, he sucks.  His writing blows.  I don’t know how the man got published.  Yeah, I know.  His writing style had a significant impact on the development of 20th century fiction and his works are considered classic American literature, blah blah blah.

But A Farewell to Arms?  Absolute crap. It’s filled with run-on sentences, repetitive use of qualifiers (like VERY lame), and frequent stretches of dialogue involving multiple characters with no indication as to who’s speaking. Plus, the death scene at the end, where Catherine is in the hospital and the main character, Frederic, is trying to comfort her?  I don’t have the book in front of me, but I seem to recall the dialogue going something like this:

“I love you,” he said.  “I love you.  I love you.  I love you.”
She smiled weakly. “And I love you.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
“I love you.”

And don’t tell me that’s how they wrote back in the 1920s.  Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, published four years prior to A Farewell to Arms, had beautiful language and believable dialogue.  Hemingway is an overrated hack.

So what is this blog entry actually about and what the hell does it have to do with Breathers or zombies?  Nothing.  Except for the fact that I am obviously not a student of literature and have drawn on none of the famous literary giants in my own writing.  Well, except maybe for Fitzgerald.  Though someone wrote a review of Breathers and mentioned something about channeling Faulkner, which is funny since I’ve never read him, so I have no idea how I channeled the man.

Oh, and I also don’t know what a gerund is.  Though I’m pretty sure I know how to use it.

(Next entry: V is for van Gogh…or maybe Vampires)

On Friday, July 10, San Francisco’s undead rose up to make their groans and voices heard as they protested for equal rights, love, and brains.

Tired of getting shot in the head, randomly dismembered, and tossed into fires, zombies of all races and states of decay shuffled and dragged themselves to the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall to let the living know that they are fed up with the name calling, the discrimination, and the getting pelted with expired food products.

Just because we feel no physical pain doesn’t mean we can’t get our feelings hurt.

While two zombies were chased away from a wedding photo shoot, causing the police to drive by to make sure things didn’t get out of control, there were a number of Breathers present acting as advocates for zombie rights, including S.G. Browne, who was interviewed by an independent film crew on hand to document the protest.

For the most part the protest was peaceful, with more than two dozen zombies on hand to try to push across the point that zombies are people, too.  A photographer with SF Weekly showed up and took a number of photos of the event.

This is Andy the Zombie, reporting the truth as it’s portrayed by the corporate media.

This installment of Ask Andy comes from Anthony, who asks:

Will you be back in another great novel?

Well Anthony, if I had my way I would, but I have to leave that up to the so-called creator of my world, the author of Breathers, who at this point is non-committal about whether or not there’s a sequel.  According to him, if he can come up with something fresh and original, something that doesn’t just seem like a derivative of Breathers, then he’d be willing to consider it.

But from what I’ve heard, he’s just sold his second novel and as far as I know, I’m not in it.  Some other guy named Fabio is the main character and is apparently the immortal personification of Fate.  I guess a reanimated corpse wasn’t good enough anymore.  Whatever.  I guess I’ll just sit around and twiddle my thumb and wait for the phone to ring.

Thanks for the question.

I will be attending Comic-Con this year at the San Diego Convention Center July 23-26 as part of the Random House / Crown Publishing booth.  It will be my first time ever at Comic-Con.

I’ve listed the Random House booth location and my schedule of signings, as well as the location of Mysterious Galaxy Books where you can get a copy of Breathers at the convention.  The Random House booth will not have copies of Breathers for sale but they will have some free buttons, stickers, and bookmarks.  I’ve also included information for the panel I’ll be on Saturday afternoon.

Hope to see you there!

Random House / Crown Publishing: Booth #1128
Mysterious Galaxy Books: Booth #1119

Signing Location and Schedule
(Note: Saturday’s signing is in a different location and follows the Monster Mash Panel)

Thursday  AA29     11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Friday       AA29     11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Saturday   AA1         4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Sunday     AA29      11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Panel Location and Schedule
Saturday   Room 2    3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Monster Mash Panel
Panelists: Amber Benson (Death’s Daughter); Alice Henderson (Voracious);Walter Greatshell (Xombies: Apocalypse Blues); S.G. Browne (Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament); Marlene Perez (Dead Is So Last Year); Rob Thurman (The Cal Leandros Novels); and Samantha Sommersby (Forbidden: The Temptation)

Moderator:  Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy Books

4000 zombies showed up in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, WA, on Friday, July 3rd to break the Guinness Book of World Records.  And yours truly was there to be a part of it.

The event, officially titled the Red, White, & Dead Zombie Party, was put together by Ryan Reiter and his team from the Fremont Outdoor Cinema, who provide “almost” free outdoor movies every summer in Seattle complete with pre-movie entertainment that capitalizes on the theme of that week’s film. An ABBA sing along for Mama Mia.  A styling contest for Edward Scissorhands.  And with Shaun of the Dead being the third film on this year’s schedule, Ryan decided to do up something big and shoot for the largest zombie walk in the record books.

My part in the event kicked off at Fremont Place Books for a reading and signing of Breathers, which was attended by fifteen or so friends, fans, and local authors, including Seattle scribes Mark Henry and Cherie Priest, who were decked out in their zombie finest.   Also attending were surprise guests, Andy and Rita, who stopped by to show their support for zombie rights. 

After the reading, I shambled down the street to the set of parking lots where Ryan and the crew from Fremont Outdoor Cinema were in full countdown mode, taking care of final preparations as the horde of zombies waiting to get in stretched down the street and wrapped around the block.  When 6pm rolled around, the doors opened and the zombies flooded in, bloodied and rotting and sporting screwdrivers and knives that protruded from chest wounds.

Of course, the problem with having several thousand zombies staggering around waiting for direction is that they can tend to get bored and hungry, so to distract them until they were able to begin their walk, they were treated to a Zombie Fashion Show and the musical offerings from Kyle Stevens of Kirby Krackle Music, who sang such hits as “Naked Wii” and “Zombie Apocalypse.”  And for those who wanted to shake their rotting booties, there was a mass “Thriller” tribute dance that was shuffled to by 2000 zombies strong.

There was also a booth set up at the event, courtesy of Fremont Place Books, which sold copies of World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, and Breathers.  Fortunately, quite a number of zombies still have enough brain function to read, so I had the pleasure of meeting some fans and signing their books.  Though I did have a couple of people tell me how much they loved World War Z and wanted me to sign it for them.  I had to explain that unfortunately, Max Brooks wasn’t able to attend the event.

Finally, around 10pm, once the record-breaking zombie walk had taken place through the streets of the Fremont Street neighborhood, all the remaining zombies pulled out their chairs and blankets and sat down for the screening of Shaun of the Dead.  At which point, this zombie went out for a drink with some local friends and then climbed back into my coffin to get some sleep.