Undead Anonymous

Seth from the Gmail province of Google Land asks:

I’m doing an informative speech in my class about “What to do when you wake up dead” and I wanted to share and teach the class some wonderful Breather recipes. Are there any really good ones I can offer?

Well Seth, all Breather recipes are good, unless you over-cook or over-season your Breather or serve it with a wine that doesn’t really complement the dish. But the following are three of my favorites. You’ll find the recipe for Breather Casserole in my memoirs.

Bon appetit!

Breather & Potato Pancakes
For Breather and potato pancakes, mix together 2 cups mashed potatoes, 1½ cups coarsely ground cooked Breather, 1 lightly beaten egg, 1 tablespoon grated onion, and salt and pepper to taste. Shape into patties, dust lightly with flour, and brown in butter 2-3 minutes on each side over moderate heat. Serve with sour cream or a nice dill sauce.

Marinated Breather Filets
An easy way to dress up Breather filets is to marinate the steaks in a good homemade French or herb dressing and refrigerate for eight hours, then let stand at room temperature for one hour before wrapping in bacon and broiling. Serve with asparagus, rice pilaf, and a good Napa Chardonnay.

Breather Casserole
One good way to use leftover Breather is to mix together ½ pound boiled, drained macaroni, 1½ pints canned tomato sauce, 2-3 cups diced cooked Breather, 1/4 pound sautéed sliced mushrooms, some minced garlic, salt and pepper. Spoon mixture into a greased 2½-quart casserole dish, top with grated cheese, and bake, uncovered, about 30 minutes at 375 degrees F until bubbly. Makes about six servings.

We’re back, with another episode of Ask Andy, where you get to ask the resident zombie relevant or irrelevant questions.

This week’s query comes from Harley, who asks:

What was your favorite food when you were alive, per say, aside from cinnamon rolls?

Well, according to experts (who I won’t bother to quote because I have no research to base this on), cinnamon rolls are the most alluring scent for men, zombies and Breathers alike.  Not that women should go around smelling like cinnamon rolls, but when a man, especially a zombie, walks into a shopping mall and catches a scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, he won’t be distracted by the temptation of human flesh.  Come to think of it, a lot of human males are the same way.

But to get to the question of my favorite food when I was alive, the answer, coincidentally, is the same as the author of my memoirs:

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.  Chunky Monkey.  Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.
Americone Dream. Phish Food. Triple Caramel Chunk.

Mmmmmmmmmm.

My favorite was Chubby Hubby, which is aptly named.  I didn’t really much care for Cherry Garcia, partly because I don’t like cherry ice cream and partly because I was never really a fan of the Dead.  Which is kind of ironic, now that I think about it.

It’s one of the few food items that made me groan with pleasure.  Of course now, I groan for other reasons, but just the memory of Ben & Jerry’s is enough to bring a smile to my ruined face.

Thanks for the question!

Some people are under the impression that I’m comfortable around dead bodies because I wrote a book about zombies with a lot of detail about what happens to the human body when it decomposes.  That if I ever came upon a fresh corpse, I’d study it for research.  Well, here’s a little story.

A couple of years back, when I was doing property management for some apartment buildings here in San Francisco, I was performing apartment inspections and discovered that the tenant in one unit, a big, friendly guy in his 50s, had been dead for several days. After walking out of the bedroom and seeking the safety of the kitchen, I called the landlord.  Then I called 911. This is pretty much how the conversation went.

“911. What is your emergency?”
“I’d like to report a dead body in my apartment building.”
(I then provide my name and the address.)
“How do you know the body is dead, sir?”
“Well, he’s on his back and he’s not breathing and his eyes are wide open.”
“Are you sure he’s not breathing?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Is the body cold?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t touch him.”
“Can you check to see if the body is cold, sir?”
“You want me to touch him?”
“Yes sir.”
“Do I have to touch him?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
(After a pause.) “Okay, fine. Hold on a second.”
(I walk back into the bedroom, bend down, then reach out a single index finger and poke him in the shoulder.)
“Yes, he’s cold.”
“Do you have a defibrillator?”
(A defibrillator? No, I don’t have a defibrillator. Who the hell carries around a defibrillator?)
“No. I don’t have a defibrillator. And I don’t know CPR, either, so if you want someone to try to resuscitate him, then I’m not the man for the job.”
“Are you alone, sir?”
“Yes. So if you could you please send someone over here who deals with dead bodies I’d appreciate it, because this isn’t really my forte.”
“We’ll send someone right over.”

Welcome back to another installment of Ask Andy, where you ask a zombie what’s it like, well, to be a zombie. And hopefully, I can answer it.

This week’s question comes from Colleen, who asks:

What was it like to turn into a zombie?

Well, as you might imagine, there was a lot of initial shock and denial, not to mention discomfort.  Waking up to discover that you’re a zombie takes a lot of getting used to on its own.  It doesn’t help when you’re wearing a skin-tight plastic body suit and your body cavities are packed to prevent leakage.  Sure, it helps to keep things from getting messy, but only if you stay dead.  You ever tried to evacuate autopsy gel?  It’s not something you ever want to see on YouTube.

Physically, I didn’t notice anything right away.  I still thought I was alive.  I still felt like me.  You take breathing and having a pulse for granted, so they’re not something you miss right away because you’re not looking for them.  You just expect them to be there.  But once you notice they’re gone, you tend to dwell on the fact that they’re never coming back.

Emotionally…well, you can never really prepare for reanimating as a living corpse.  Living.  What does that even mean to a zombie?  The life you once knew is all around you.  You can see it and hear it and smell it.  If you’re lucky you can even taste it and touch it.  But that doesn’t mean you can participate in it.  Like your breath and your heatbeat, that’s gone for good, too.

I’m getting melancholy again…

I’m going to go watch The Daily Show, now.

With a couple of airplane flights and several hours waiting in the airport and time spent relaxing in a hammock beneath palm trees or on the beach or at the hotel pool, I had plenty of time to read over the past couple of weeks. Of course, I also spent some of that time doing nothing but existing in a Zen like tranquility, but I did manage to get through most of three books, all of them markedly different.  Although I’m still working on Book #3, I thought I’d share what I’ve read and a few thoughts.

Pressure by Jeff Strand

I picked up this book last June at the HWA Stoker Award’s weekend in Los Angeles during a mass book signing, having met Jeff previously at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City.  Admittedly, I was dubious about whether or not I would enjoy it, as it wasn’t what I was in the mood for, but I soon found myself caught up in the tension and frustration of a prep school friendship that turns terrifyingly bad and haunts the main character into college and beyond.  Jeff manages to create an empathy for the main character and a growing frustration and terror at his helplessness as the story spans across several time frames.  A good, pressure-packed thriller that doesn’t hold anything back.

The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay

I wanted to read this novel because it was one of the other three nominees for this year’s HWA Bram Stoker Awards for Best First Novel.  I was further intrigued when I came across his second novel, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and read the back cover copy. It’s a darkly comic detective novel in the spirit of Raymond Chandler about a narcoleptic detective who struggles with sleep, hallucinations, and his relationship with his landlord mother. Although I wasn’t as emotionally invested in the main character as I would like to have been, I found the writing style and the humor engaging and entertaining.  I had a hard time putting it down and looked forward to picking it back up.

City of Thieves by Paul Benioff

This novel by the author of The 25th Hour (I saw the film starring Edward Norton but never read the book) was recommended to me by Bill, one of the staff at my local Books Inc.  I intend on going back to the store and thanking Bill for the recommendation, as this was one of my favorite reads of the past year.  I finished it on the flight back to San Francisco and couldn’t put it down.  It’s one of those books that makes you appreciate the joy of the written word and how much of a pleasure it is when you come across an author who can string together words to create a memorable, affecting story.

That’s it.  That’s all I’ve got.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  This is just my opinion, so if you pick up one of these books and don’t enjoy it, don’t blame me. But if you do pick up one of these, let me know what you think.

Until next time…

I’m sitting on the balcony of my hotel room on the 20th floor looking south along the beach in Ft. Lauderdale and I hear an alarm going off somewhere on the street below, followed by an authoritative recorded female voice issuing some kind of instructions.  The alarm and voice keep repeating, like an outdoor emergency warning system.

Alarm. Instructions. Repeat.

Either it’s a talking car alarm or else there’s a hurricane on the way and we have to evacuate.

This is my first full day in Ft. Lauderdale, having arrived here Sunday afternoon.  Over the previous four days I’ve been in Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Siesta Key, St. Petersburg again, then back to Ft. Lauderdale.  Tomorrow I’m heading down to South Beach for a couple of days, then to Islamorada in the Florida Keys.

The alarm is still going off, the woman issuing her warning.  The skies look clear to me off the coast and I don’t see crowds of people evacuating on the streets twenty stories below, so I figure I’m okay.

That’s one of the things I noticed driving around Florida for the past few days.  There are Evacuation Route signs posted everywhere.  I don’t know what the process is like, but at least when they issue a hurricane warning, they have an evacuation plan.  In California, we don’t get earthquake warnings, and as far as any kind of evacuation plans, as far as I know, there aren’t any.  So we’re pretty much screwed.

The alarm and the warning have finally ended, which means one of the valet attendants at my hotel is probably trying to make sure he knows how to shut off the alarm next time.

As I sit here writing this, the sun moving across the sky from ocean to downtown Ft. Lauderdale, the palm tree-lined beach stretching south almost to the horizon, I’m thinking I could get used to this.

I like Florida.  I think I’m going to move here.  Maybe to the Keys.  I’ve never been to the Keys, but right now, it sounds like a good idea.

There’s lots of water and boats here.  Sure, there’s lots of water and boats in San Francisco, too, but it’s not 72 degrees in San Francisco on the first day of March.  And the beaches aren’t lined with palm trees.  And the water isn’t clear and blue, reflecting the endless sky.

The alarm has started up again.  Either the valet needs to work on his learning curve or else I was wrong about having to evacuate.

You wake up at 6:00am PST Wednesday morning in San Francisco.  You spend all day running last minute errands and packing for a 10 day trip and trying to get all those bright yellow Post-It notes with reminders off your desk.  You catch the Super Shuttle, which arrives 10 minutes early and deposits you at SFO two-and-a-half hours early, but at least you saved $30 by not taking a cab.

You board your 11:40pm flight and get as comfortable as you can, hoping to catch some sleep during the five hour flight.  But you’re not sitting in first class, so you know that’s not going to happen.  Especially since someone a few rows back thought it was a good idea to bring their two three year old boys on the overnight flight and one of them screams and throws a tantrum every twenty minutes.

You land at Ft. Lauderdale at 8:00am EST, awake now for twenty-three hours, and rent your car from Budget and get on the Florida Turnpike to drive up to Orlando for your book signing later that evening.  As you drive on the Turnpike, you blow through the SunPass lanes, the prepaid/pre-registered lanes that avoid the hassle of having to stop and pay the tolls or dish out exact change.  You do this because the guy at Budget who checked you in told you that was how it worked and the credit card you rented the car with would get charged for the tolls.  As you blow through toll after toll, you read the sign that says $100 per toll violations and wonder if you’re racking up a lot more than toll charges.

You get to Orlando at noon and spend a few hours having lunch and hanging out with Tommy Castillo, zombie artist genius and karaoke god (who sang “The Rainbow Connection” in the voice of Kermit the Frog in Winnipeg) and eventually realize you’re about to pass out, so you crash on his couch but can’t sleep because his two dachshunds have decided they really, really want to climb all over you and lick your face.  So you rest instead.

At 6:00pm, after a shower and a change of clothes, you’ve been awake for thirty-three hours, so you drink the 5-hour energy drink you bought at the airport and head over to Barnes & Noble in Colonial Plaza for your 7:00pm signing.  Geoff and the crew at B&N make you feel welcome and have up great displays and there are actually people waiting there for you and you talk and read and sign and it makes the fact that you haven’t slept in a day-and-a-half worth it.

At 9:00pm, you get on to the I-4 to Tampa because you’re booked at the Hilton in St. Petersburg, courtesy of the editors of Zombie St. Pete, the zombie anthology you wrote the introduction for and the reason you’re in Florida in the first place.  You get on the Interstate and see the EZPass lane and blow through the gate, the same you’ve been doing all day long, only this time under the red light instead of the words DON’T STOP it says WAIT FOR GREEN.  You don’t notice this in time, so you don’t stop.  An alarm sounds behind you and you wonder if you’ve just earned yourself a ticket for running a red light.  But at least you can write it off.

At 10:00pm, you pull off the freeway to use the bathroom at Burger King and because you haven’t eaten in eight hours, you cave in and order a BK Big Fish value meal.  You decide that the BK Big Fish is considerably superior to the Filet of Fish from McDonald’s.  You also realize you’ve just used the word “superior” to describe fast food.

At 11:00pm you check into the Hilton in St. Petersburg and you’ve now been awake for thirty-eight hours.  Before you go to bed, you get on the Internet to post a few comments to Twitter and to check e-mail.  Only the Hilton doesn’t provide free Internet service and because this annoys you, you go downstairs in your jeans and bare feet to sit in the lobby instead.  The next morning, you cave in and pay for the Internet service.

In response to my last entry, Blah Blah Blog, Sarah Malone commented and posed a couple of questions that I thought would be best addressed here, since they’re not just simple yes or no answers.

And if anyone has any other questions, fire away. I’ll do my best to answer them in a timely fashion, even if I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Question #1: Are you critical of your own work and does it ever truly feel finished?
I’m definitely critical of my own work, to the point that as I’m writing, I’m wondering if what’s coming out of me is good enough. But I realize that’s what the editing process is for, to take the initial concept, the shell of the novel, and turn it into what I envisioned.

Think of the first draft as kind of like building a house and putting up the walls and the floor and the ceiling, creating a solid structure on a firm foundation. Something that will hold everything I want to put into it. Each subsequent draft fills the house with furnishings and decorations and all of the details it needs to make it complete.

Of course, sometimes, I realize I need to rearrange the floor plan or add another room or a second level or a basement, but fortunately, it’s just an analogy, so it costs a lot less.

And as far as feeling as if it’s ever finished, yes.  There’s a definite sense of accomplishment when I’ve completed the first draft and then again when I’ve made the final edits.  But I can always find something six months down the road that I think I could have done better.

Question #2: The novels that you wrote before, are you planning on trying to publish them now that your name is out there?
Prior to Breathers, I’d written three novels that were straight supernatural horror, with the first two being told in third person omniscient and the third told in the first person. While there are redeeming qualities on all three, it’s unlikely I’ll pursue trying to publish the first two.

One, they’re very different from what I’ve doing now, both in style and voice. I’ve found that writing dark comedy and social satire with some kind of a supernatural edge resonates with me more than writing straight supernatural horror. And, more importantly, I don’t believe the quality of the writing is up to par with Breathers or Fated. The third novel, however, has promise, though I’d have to rewrite it to make it more darkly comedic.

Thanks for the questions, Sarah!

Okay, I realize it’s been nearly two weeks since my last blog entry, Andy’s comments about breathers notwithstanding.  Chalk it up to projects and trip planning and general distraction and attending to some personal matters like flying up to Portland and helping my mom pack and then driving her down to California, which is what I was doing when I was informed that Breathers had made it on to the final ballot for the 2009 Bram Stoker Awards for Achievement in a First Novel.

Woo hoo!

But that’s another blog post.  Eventually.

This was going somewhere when I started it.  Let me get my map.  Hmm, let’s see…ah yes, there we are!

I’m aware that I seldom discuss what I’m working on, or not working on (which is often the case) because I don’t plot and I’m not really sure where it’s going and I’m easily distracted, so I’d have to be vague and stumble through some fragmented explanation that would try to deflect attention from the fact that I had spent the last three days playing spider solitaire and watching the last season of Weeds.

I do, however, sit my ass down in front of my computer at 8:00am every morning (or mostly every morning) and give myself the next 3-4 hours to compose my 1000 words for the day.  Sometimes I see other authors posting on Twitter that they’ve finished their 2000 words by noon and will write another 2000 words that night.  Or that the average person can write 500 words an hour (which is two, double-spaced pages in 12-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins), and I think, okay you gluttonous bastard, how about giving some of those words to me?

The most words I’ve ever written in one day is 2500, and I powered through 5000 words in two days back in February 2008 just before the Super Bowl when I had a bad cold and was finishing up Fated to give to my writer’s group.  I have to say, I think that was probably some of the best writing I’ve done.  I don’t think I edited much of that portion of the book.  Maybe I should write when I’m sick and under deadline more often.

So that’s why I don’t tend to blog about my writing.  But if anyone’s interested enough in knowing more about my process, I’ll be happy to occasionally blog about it.  But be warned, there will be a lot of plot holes.

I also notice that some authors are perfectly capable of blogging about personal things that happen throughout the course of their existence – health issues, pets dying, interpersonal relationships.  Which always amazes me when men can blog about relationships because we never talk to each other about them in real life.  And yes, I firmly believe that the Internet is an alternate reality.  Kind of like on LOST.  Though I’m not really sure which reality is the real one there.  The island now or the airplane landing in LAX three years earlier?  Come to think of it, maybe I’m not sure about this reality, either.

Where was I?  Ah yes, personal things…

While I’m perfectly happy sharing my love of Ben & Jerry’s and the fact that I have a lingering man crush on Kevin Costner, I’d prefer to leave the more personal details of my life to the tabloids.  Who, fortunately, don’t give a damn about me.

So there you have it.  A rambling discourse on not much of anything.  Thank you for listening.  Now, back to spider solitaire.

Lyndsay from the land of Yahoo! wonders:

Did you ever begin to resent breathers? Have you ever come across any breathers who sympathized with you?

Well, Lyndsay, considering that I killed and ate my parents, I’d have to say that the answer to your first question is a definite YES. Not to mention all of the verbal abuse and the discrimination and all of the times I was pelted with so much rotten food that I felt like a projection screen at a fraternity rush selection meeting.

As for your second question, the breathers who cared for me and my friends at the SPCA seemed to genuinely care about our plight.  Sometimes they would wear particle masks and gloves, which was kind of a passive/aggressive slap in the face, but for the most part they treated us with more respect than your average breather.

Thanks for the question!  Keep ‘em coming!