Undead Anonymous

Calling all zombies!  Calling all zombies!

Put on your best funeral clothes, apply that liquid latex, stock up on stage blood, and shuffle, shamble, and stagger your way to the Pacific Northwest for a pre-Independence Day party of the undead.

On Friday, July 3, 2009, Fremont Outdoor Movies in Seattle is hosting the Red, White, & Dead Zombie Party – a zombie bash to end all zombie bashes that includes a screening of Shaun of the Dead, a Zombie Fashion Show where you can strut your decomposing self to the delight of your fellow zombies, a group “Thriller” dance for those zombies stuck in the 80s, and a Zombie Walk to break the Guinness World Record.

And to kick everything off, I’ll be reading from and signing copies of Breathers at 4:00PM at Fremont Place Books and then later at the event.  I’ll even have some free zombie schwag that I’ll be giving away, though supplies are limited.

You can find all the details and times and other good zombie info by checking out the official blog for Fremont Outdoor Movies.

Spread the word and the contagion!

And remember, zombies are people, too.

“Rita’s face is a pale moon hovering in the black hood of her sweatshirt. She has on a black turtleneck and black pants. The only color she’s wearing is on her lips, which are Eternal Red.”

This is the first glimpse of Rita, a suicide who slit her wrists on her twenty-third birthday and who consumes formaldehyde in trace amounts by eating lipstick, fingernail polish, and other cosmetic products.  She’s the only character, other than Andy, who made the jump from my short story “A Zombie’s Lament” to Breathers.

Rita is also the love interest for Andy, who becomes increasingly attracted to Rita in spite of his feelings of guilt and loss regarding the death of his wife.  As Andy puts it when dealing with his conflicting feelings about his wife and Rita and describing the differences between the two:

“One who is dead and cold, the other who is undead and hot.”

When I started out writing Breathers, although I had the character of Rita in my head, I didn’t intend for Andy to develop feelings for her and for the two of them to fall in love.  Their relationship just seemed to develop as the story went on and it only made sense for the two of them to start up an undead romance.  I think the first moment when this happened is in Chapter 10, when Andy goes for a walk on a Sunday morning and ends up meeting Rita just at the moment when he’s feeling like he’s made a big mistake.  Which is actually one of my favorite chapters in the book.  I remember finishing the chapter and thinking, “Well, that was fun.”

Obviously Andy is my favorite character in Breathers, and while Jerry holds a very dear spot in my heart as my second favorite, Rita was an absolute pleasure to discover.

(Next entry:  S is for STIFF)

I originally planned on having this post be Q is for Quitting, which would address the voice in the head of the writer that often speaks up and says:  “Why are you doing this to yourself?”  But I wasn’t really happy with the way the post was developing.  Plus it had such negative connotations that I ended up going in another direction.  So instead, I decided to address some of the general questions I’ve received about influences, favorite films, books, music, that sort of thing. I know, not particularly deep but I’m feeling lazy today.

To keep it simple without elaborating too much while at the same time paying homage to High Fidelity (Nick Hornby) and the male instinct for making lists, here are some of my Top 5 Lists.  I stayed away from my Most Memorable Split-Ups and Top Five Dream jobs and instead focused on artists, musicians, and films that inspire or influence my own writing.

Favorite Authors
1) Chuck Palahniuk
2) Christopher Moore
3) Stephen King
4) Kurt Vonnegut
5) Gregory Maguire

Favorite Books
1) The Stand by Stephen King
2) Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
3) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
4) Lamb:The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
5) Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Favorite Bands
1) The Beatles
2) Green Day
3) The Doors
4) Sublime
5) Cake (before they got rid of their horns)
(Honorable mention goes to the Pixies, Weezer, and the Violent Femmes)

Favorite Music to Listen to for Inspiration
1) Green Day
2) Pixies
3) Sublime
4) Morphine
5) AC/DC (before Bon Scott choked on his own vomit)

Favorite Films
1) Fight Club
2) Being John Malkovich
3) The Big Lebowski
4) Unbreakable
5) Donnie Darko

Favorite Soundtrack Moments in Films
1) “Tiny Dancer” (Elton John) – Almost Famous
2) “Build Me Up Buttercup” (The Foundations) – There’s Something About Mary
3) “Down With the Sickness” (Richard Cheese) – Dawn of the Dead (2004)
4) “Where Is My Mind?” (Pixies) – Fight Club
5) “Bullwinkle Part II” (The Centurions) – Pulp Fiction
(If I had a theme song to play whenever I walked into a room, this would be it)

(Next entry: R is for Rita)

“Another thing is no matter how much you think you love someone, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.”
—Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

If you’ve checked out Bio and Q&A on the Founder’s page on my web site or been following Breathers From A to Z (L is for Lullaby), you know that Chuck Palahniuk is one of my major influences and favorite authors.  I’m especially fond of his novels Lullaby, Survivor, and Invisible Monsters.  And Fight Club is at the top of my list of favorite films.

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

But while Chuck gets props for helping me to find a narrative voice that resonates with me, there are other writers, both in fiction and in film, who inspire my own writing and have unknowingly participated in my development as a writer:

Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job / Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal / Fool)
Nick Hornby (About a Boy / High Fidelity)
Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich / Adaptation / Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Wes Anderson (Rushmore / The Royal Tenenbaums / The Darjeeling Limited)
David O. Russell (Flirting With Disaster / I Heart Huckabees)
Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo / The Big Lebowski / Raising Arizona)

As you can see, screenplay writers are as big of an influence on me as fiction authors, though I also appreciate reads by Bret Easton Ellis, Kurt Vonnegut, William Golding, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  And although I don’t tend to read him as much as I used to back in the late 80s and through the 90s when I was devouring a steady diet of Peter Straub, Robert McCammon, and F. Paul Wilson, Stephen King is the reason I wanted to become a writer.

(Next entry:  Q is for Quitting)

So I’ve had some on-line publicity the past week and finally figured I’d get around to putting them all together in one convenient location.  So here you go…

First, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Zombies & Toys, which is actually running a contest for a signed copy of Breathers.  Plus they have some fun zombie schwag.

Second, two new reviews popped up on the zombie radar, one from HorrorScope in Australia and the other from Bookopolis, which is affiliated with the LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program.  Both of the reviews were very kind, with the Bookopolis review mentioning Christopher Moore and Chuck Palahniuk, which I find flattering.

Third, I participated in my virgin Podcast last week courtesy of The Fearshop.com.  I have to admit, I realized about halfway through that I filled the gaps of the interview with “ums” and “ahs,” but I think I managed to mine those out of my vocabulary toward the end.

And finally, though this has nothing to do with interviews, reviews, or podcasts, the image above completes the theme of the title and is my brand, spanking new T-shirt I bought from Noisebot.com.

No, there are no characters in Breathers named Oscar.  And this isn’t about Oscar Wilde or Oscar the Grouch, though I am fond of both of them.  This is about a little bald, gold statue and how the film rights for Breathers got optioned.

Back in February of 2008, not long after I’d garnered a publishing contract with Random House, my agent, Michelle Brower, let me know that Sarah Self of the Gersh Agency was interested in representing the film rights for Breathers.  As it turned out, Sarah was the agent (and still is) for Diablo Cody, who at the time was nominated for an Academy Award for her original screenplay Juno.

After the Academy Awards, my film agent sent a copy of Breathers to both Diablo and to Mason Novick, the producer of Juno.  She thought Breathers would be a perfect fit for them, or vice versa.  Either way, they were both interested and signed on to co-produce.

Due to existing projects (Jennifer’s Body, 500 Days of Summer, The United States of Tara), and several other factors that affected Hollywood, things didn’t really start rolling on finding a studio home for Breathers until early 2009.  That’s when Geoff LaTulippe was attached to write the film adaptation of Breathers.  Geoff had sold his first screenplay, “Going the Distance,” to New Line and came on board in January.  I read the screenplay and loved it, found myself laughing out loud, and was (and am) excited to see what he comes up with.

A month later, in February, my film agent called to let me know that there was an offer on the table from Fox Searchlight Pictures, the makers of Juno, Jennifer’s Body, 500 Days of Summer, Little Miss Sunshine, and Slumdog Millionaire.  The first announcement of the deal appeared in the Daily Variety on Monday, February 23.

While the screenplay still has to be written and actors and a crew attached, it’s possible the film will go into production in 2010, with a release date of 2011.  But no firm date has been set at this point.

When you start writing, you always dream of having your book published and made into a movie.  But to actually have your dreams come true is a bit surreal.  I spent a lot of time the first few days after the deal was announced laughing out loud, often in front of strangers who I passed on the street, most of whom tended to give me a little extra room.

The thing is, I’ve always been a fan of 20th Century Fox (the parent of Fox Searchlight), ever since I saw Star Wars back in 1977 and I always wanted their logo to announce the start of my film.  I still get goosebumps listening to the theme music, which I have on my iTunes:

99-20th-century-fox-title

Finally, on Page 74 of Breathers, there’s a bit of a bizarre, cosmic foreshadowing that takes place.  Andy is talking about how difficult it is for zombies to escape their Hollywood archetype of the mindless, flesh-eating ghouls and change their public image:

“Then again, it’s kind of hard to hire a good publicist when you don’t have a budget to rival Twentieth Century Fox or Random House.”

(I wrote this more than two years before the book was sold to Random House and three years before the movie deal with Fox.  No editing occurred.)

“Half African American, half Japanese, Naomi could still pass for a model if it weren’t for her empty eye socket and the way the right side of her face sags.”

Naomi is one of the regular members of Undead Anonymous, the zombie support group Andy attends twice a week.  Naomi reanimated after dying at the hands of her husband, who came home from a bad day at the golf course and took out his frustrations on Naomi with a Titleist four-iron.

Much like Carl (and to a lesser extent Tom and Helen), Naomi plays a minor supporting role in Breathers, frequently sparring with Carl and calling him out when he disparages Rita or when he caps on Tom for being a vegetarian.  She’s feisty and opinionated and won’t back down from a challenge.  She’s also a smoker who likes to put her cigarette out in her empty eye socket.

I’ve had a couple of readers ask if Naomi’s mixed race heritage was done on purpose to show that discrimination against zombies crossed all lines regardless of sex or race or religion.  While it’s true that Naomi represents the only “minority” in the book (other than zombies), her racial make-up wasn’t attributed on purpose or to promote an agenda.  When I first wrote her name on the page and she came to life as a character, I simply saw her as part African American and part Asian, a woman who’d had her beauty and her life taken from her.  She didn’t symbolize anything specific.

(Next entry: O is for Oscar)

So my undead friends over at Lost Zombies, a community generated zombie documentary, are hosting a contest where the prize is a signed copy of Breathers.

In order to enter the contest, you have to follow these RULES:

Write a letter instructing friends, family, fellow survivors or anyone else what to do in the event that you are bitten by a zombie. Your entry should begin…

“In the event that I am bitten by a zombie…”

There is no restriction on length. It can be as short or long as you like. The winning piece will also be published in the Lost Zombies Scrap Book.

For more info and to see how to post your entry, visit the Official Event Page at Lost Zombies.

*UPDATE: If Straits is closed for renovations, re-shuffle to Rosie McCann’s (behind Blowfish & next to Urban Outfitters)

Come for the pub crawl, stay for the brains…

All you zombies, stagger on down to Santana Row in San Jose on Thursday, May 21st, for a pub crawl and Book Signing Event to help support the rights of reanimated corpses everywhere:

5:00-5:30pm Meet at Straits in Santana Row

6:00pm Stagger to El Jardin in Santana Row (outdoor restaurant at end)

6:30pm Stagger to the Giant Chess Game for a quick Zombies vs Breathers chess match

7:00pm Finish at Borders Santana Row where S.G. Browne will be signing and reading from his dark comedy Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament

“A terrific comedy about the perils and joys of life beyond death…A zombie comedy with brains.”
—Kirkus Reviews

BECAUSE ZOMBIES ARE PEOPLE, TOO

(Breathers and zombies welcome)

It’s not easy being a zombie.

In addition to post-reanimation stress and spontaneous dismemberment, the undead have a host of unique challenges to contend with:

Putrefaction.
Discrimination.
Fraternity pledge scavenger hunts.

We can fight off putrefaction with regular formaldehyde fixes.  We can laugh in the face of a society that no longer considers us human.  We can run away from fraternity pledges or even bite them.  (Which doesn’t turn them into zombies, by the way.  That’s just more Hollywood propaganda.  But it can lead to a nasty infection.)

We can do all of this and more.  But none of it matters if we don’t maintain our personal hygiene.  All it takes is one fly to lay its eggs on an open, festering wound and before you can say George Romero, you’ve got a full-blown maggot infestation.

When a corpse is fresh, it tends to draw flies to it like Republicans to a Democrat sex scandal.  Fortunately, since zombies mimic the living in their movements, flies don’t get a chance to lay their eggs on the various points of entry: eyes, mouth, genitalia.  But exposed flesh wounds are open invitations for a maggot smorgasbord.

Once the eggs have hatched, the maggots eventually eat their way under the skin, feasting on subcutaneous fat.  As I’ve mentioned before, if you get close enough to an infested corpse, you can hear the maggots feeding.  It sounds like Rice Krispies.

There’s nothing more disheartening than coming back from the dead and avoiding random dismemberment and staving off the effects of decomposition, only to let careless hygiene turn you into a walking Rice Krispies treat.  Whereas the average embalmed zombie can expect an undeath expectancy of anywhere from three to seven years depending on the climate, once you’re infested with maggots, you can figure on lasting about as long as a vow of fidelity at a Playboy Bunny orgy.

(Next entry:  N is for Naomi)