Undead Anonymous

Thanks to everyone who helped to spread the word about Breathers in your blogs and on your profile pages.  While I’d like to be able to give an ARC to everyone, I only have a couple left and I promised one of them to my mom.

So without further delay, the winners by random generated drawing are:

Liviana, who wins the signed ARC of Breathers, and Dave Kasama and Erin Van Schaack, who both win a mass market paperback of their choice.

Thanks again for playing!

I don’t think I’ve introduced the other members of the group who share the Soquel Community Center space with me twice a week.

The group moderator is Helen, a fifty-two-year-old woman who was killed when she ended up on the wrong end of a 12 gauge, pump-action Mossberg.  Apparently, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There’s Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car crash victim who wears his hat crooked and pants halfway down his ass and says “Dude” all the time.  He also has a permanent erection that he talks about at every meeting.

Carl is a bit of a curmudgeon who used to hob-nob with the social elite of Santa Cruz County until a couple of punks stabbed him to death and used his credit cards to buy several hundred dollars worth of on-line pornography.

Naomi could still pass for a model if it wasn’t for the way the right side of her face sags beneath her empty eye socket.  She got that beauty mark courtesy of her husband, who came home after a bad round of golf and took out his frustrations on Naomi with a four iron.

Tom is a thirty-eight-year-old dog trainer who was living at home with his mom even before a pair of Presa Canarios nearly took off his right arm, along with most of his face.  He’s a bit of a Magoo but he’s working on his self-confidence.

Last but not least is Rita, who slit her wrists and her throat on her twenty-third birthday.  Rita is the most recent addition to the group, so she smells nice, even for a zombie.  She doesn’t talk much, but she seems to have a lipstick fetish.

Including me, that makes seven of us.  Except when the Breather liasion attends the meeting to check up on us.  But he doesn’t tend to stick around long.  I think it’s the way Carl constantly picks at the stab wounds in his face.

Seeker asks:

What have you learned from being undead that might help a breather whose life hasn’t been going so well?

Well, Seeker, I guess the main thing I’ve learned is that no matter how bad you think you have it, there’s always someone who’s worse off than you.

While my left arm is mangled and more or less useless, at least I have all of my appendages, unlike Tom, who had his right arm stolen by a bunch of fraternity pledges.  It’s hard enough being a card-carrying member of the undead, decomposing and having to fend off maggots and wasps and carrion beetles, but to have to deal with the embarrassment of having your arm stolen and the visual reminder of your empty arm socket, well, that’s just adding insult to injury.  Plus it makes it hard to keep your balance.

But if taking solace in the misfortune of others doesn’t work for you, then repeat the following affirmations:Never Give Up, Believe In Yourself, and Hope Is Not A Four-Letter Word.

Thanks for the question, Seeker.  I hope things start looking up for you soon.

I just recevied my first official review from Kirkus Reviews, which is slated to appear in their January 15, 2009 issue.  I have to say, it’s a good way to start off the New Year:

BREATHERS: A Zombie’s Lament

The dead shall walk the earth, and they’re hungry for…love?

Debut novelist Browne branches out from his mostly horror-related short stories and delivers a rousing entry in the Rom-Zom-Com genre.

Based on his short story “A Zombie’s Lament,” Browne’s mortality tale begins rather grimly but almost immediately picks up speed and humor to evolve into a terrific comedy about the perils and joys of life beyond death.

Browne’s hero is Andy Warner, who survived, so to speak, the car crash that killed his wife but lost his vocal chords along with his life. Reduced to a pathetic existence consisting mostly of downing his father’s wine collection, suffering Glade spray-downs from his mother and attending the occasional Undead Anonymous meeting, old Andy is in pretty wretched shape.

His afterlife takes a turn for the better when he meets Rita, a pale but lovely girl who slit her own throat, and Ray, a feisty undead hunter.  Before long, Andy is fighting against zombie discrimination, mutilation and other forms of abuse by those unenlightened “breathers”:

“After all, what do I have to lose by standing up for myself? If being a rotting corpse with no rights and no future isn’t the worst thing that can happen to me, it can’t be that much further to rock bottom.”

The book has its share of gruesomeness, but it also offers astute observations on the world in which we live.

A zombie comedy with brains.

To celebrate the upcoming publication of Breathers less than two months away, I’m throwing a contest in which I’ll be giving away a personally autographed Advanced Reader’s Copy of Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by yours truly as first prize.

In addition, I’m offering a mass market paperback of the winner’s choice for the first and second runners-up.  Kind of like Miss America, only without the flowers and the tiara.

To enter, all you have to do is promote this contest and this web site and comment to this post with a link to the site or the blog or the group where you plugged Breathers and you’ll be entered to win.  Yeah, it’s that easy.

Winners will be selected by a random drawing of all entries.

The contest is open in all time zones and closes Sunday, January 18th at 11:59 PM, PST.

Good luck and thanks for the support!

The first question of the new year comes from a Breather with the handle of Really Morbidly Curious, who asks:

I see that (for zombies) believing in God is kinda a no-brainer, but what about Buddhism?  Can zombies benefit from the Buddhist mindfulness practices?

Well, on the one hand, the undead have a lot of time to sit around, so I suppose we don’t really have any excuse for not meditating and thinking about our existence and what it all means.  To try to free ourselves from the desire to be human again, from the desire to regain the lives that we lost.  But it’s kind of tough to meditate when you’re being pelted with rotten tomatoes or dragged off to the SPCA.  Or when you can hear your parents constantly arguing about whether or not you should be sold off to a research facility.

But meditation aside, as far as the whole Karma thing goes, I definitely didn’t create enough bad karma in my former life to come back as a member of the living dead.  The whole cycle of suffering and rebirth?  My existence is suffering.  And the biggest problem with the concept of rebirth, of going through a succession of lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, is that I don’t think Buddhism had the living dead in mind as one of the forms.  Technically, we’re the end of the line.  We’ve died.  We’re supposed to have moved on.  Instead, we’re trapped in these decaying, mutilated shells of flesh, wondering if we’ll meet our end either by dismemberment, disintegration, or decapitation.

As for the Buddhist principle that all suffering is caused by attachment and desire…I still have an attachment to my prior existence and a desire to not have to worry about whether or not someone’s going to set me on fire as part of a fraternity scavenger hunt.  So I guess I’m not quite enlightened yet.

But I’d like to meet the Dalai Lama.

so, for christmas, my parents bought me a book.

monsters: a field guide to blood-thirsty beasts, by dave elliott

i’m not really sure what mom and dad were thinking.  maybe they thought this would be good research material for me on my own nature, a feel-good book to compare and contrast me with the other living damned and their cousins.  whatever their reason, the author of the book has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to zombies.

first of all, he differentiates between zombies and the living dead, saying that with zombies, the transformation is reversible.  nothing against the whole voodoo thing and i don’t want to piss of the haitians, but i’m a zombie and there’s nothing reversible about it.  undead.  living dead.  zombie. it’s just semantics.

he goes on to say that we can’t think for ourselves, that we lack conversation skills, and that we feel no physical pain or have feelings of any kind.

well, he’s right on the physical pain.  mostly there’s just an unpleasant sense of dead weight, which i think comes from the body fluids settling.  and even though our tear ducts have stopped working and we can’t physically cry, we can still get our feelings hurt.

most zombies reanimate immediately after the accident or murder or heart attack, while others wake up on the mortician’s table as they’re being embalmed or autopsied.  occasionally, there are those who reanimate during the funeral.  on rare occasions, there are undead who reanimate after they’re buried or entombed.

sometimes, when i’m out at the cemetery at night before curfew, i listen to see if any of those newly laid to rest might not be resting so peacefully.  telltale signs include pounding, screaming, crying, and hysterical laughter.  i can’t imagine what that would be like, to wake up inside your coffin, encased in mahogany and velvet, screaming and pounding, wondering how anyone could have buried you alive.

i wonder how long it takes for them to figure out what happened or if they think the gradual decaying of their bodies is normal.

in a coffin, with no insects or animals to destroy the body, hair, nails, and teeth become detached within a few weeks.  after a month or two, the tissues liquefy.  not long after that, the main body cavities burst open.

my guess is, if you’re still thinking and talking to yourself at this point, you’ve probably realized that something’s not quite normal.

getting dismembered isn’t as much fun as it sounds.

first of all, it’s tough enough being a zombie without having to shuffle around on one leg or to try to tie your shoes with just one hand.  a lot of zombies end up having to wear shoes with velcro straps.  plus there’s the shame of having one of your legs or arms stolen.

but the worst part about being dismembered, other than the humiliation and the loss of self-esteem, is having to watch the breathers who stole your appendages use them for entertainment in zombie-appendage sports.

stolen zombie arms are frequently used for zombie handball games, wielded as bats in zombie wiffle ball games, and stuck in the ground at beaches or playing fields to denote out of bounds markers.  while they don’t have as many uses and are typically more difficult to remove, stolen zombie legs are used for zombie kickball games and occasionally end up in the zombie punt, pass, and kick competitions.

and in more extreme zombie-appendage sports, it’s not uncommon to see school children kicking around the head of a recently decapitated zombie.

apologies for taking a while to post.  i was incarcerated at the spca for taking a walk on sunday in front of a church, which was not only breaking one of the undead commandments but offensive to the pious breathers in attendance.

which brings us to this week’s question from hippigoth, who asks:

do you keep in touch with your former (living) friends/relatives?  and if so, how have those relationships changed?  difficulty making conversation around the table over the holidays?

my breather friends have all developed a convenient case of amnesia that wiped away all traces of the friendships we shared before my reanimation.  occasionally i see them when i’m out shuffling along the street to one of the undead anonymous meetings and when i do, they always look away or cross to the other side of the street.  but at least they never shout out slurs or throw expired food products at me.

relatives?  i live with mom and dad in their wine cellar, which i guess proves that you never stop being a parent, even when your son comes back from the dead.  though i can’t say there’s a whole lot of parental affection.  dad constantly complains about the stench of my rotting flesh while mom screams and sprays me with lysol whenever i get too close, which never happened when i was alive.  so yeah, i guess you could say things have changed.

and as for difficulty making conversation around the table over holidays…you have no idea.  first of all, it’s tough to make conversation when your vocal cords are damaged beyond repair and you have to wear a dry erase board around your neck to communicate.  as for the thanksgiving dinner, as the meal went on and the turkey began to look alot like me, well let’s just say mom and dad kind of lost their appetites.

keep the questions coming.  until next time, this is andy warner, recently reanimated corpse, signing off.