From the Backlist: Tis the Witching Hour

Warm Bodies - Love with an Emo Zombie  - Salon

Welcome to the Back-list! Today we are featuring Amanda Arista's 2013 post, focusing on the one thing that can send shivers straight up the spine. 

Fear is such a powerful sensation, don't you think? ... so tell us, do you have this one?

Read Amanda's full post HERE! 

Tis the witching hour: The one irrational fear of Amanda Arista

by Amanda Arista

 

As you know, we are a blog dedicated to the sexy things that go bump in the night. So it really shouldn't surprise you that most of us aren't really afraid of the dark. We have demons, vampires, werewolves, and fey running through our heads most of the time. And those are the good guys. Each year, I take months to plan what scary little devil I'm going to be for Halloween.

With this new series that I am still working on, I've discovered that it takes a lot to scare me. If you've read the blog before, I grew up on a steady diet of serial killers and exorcism movies growing up. I'll take a good haunting any day. Doesn't phase me much.

Even it comes to the real world, I'm pretty much the same. No fear of flying. Heights don't bother me. I'm the girl who picks up the bugs in the office and takes them outside. I used to be squeamish around needles, but working in a hospital for eight years got me over that. I love deep water, have no problem with pitch black rooms, and don't mind being in a big crowd.

However, Hollywood has finally revealed to me what I am afraid of:

LARGE HORDES OF FAST-MOVING ZOMBIES

At least I can say it outloud now. 

 

***

About Amanda Arista:

Amanda is the author of the Diaries of an Urban Panther series and The Merci Lanard Files. She is represented by Kimberly Brower of Brower Literary Management.

Along with her BA in English & Psychology and her MA in Education, Amanda is a graduate of the SMU The Writer’s Path and taught other aspiring authors for six years in the program. She has delivered lectures at several writer conferences and loves discussing craft, character, and structure. 

 

* * * 

Thanks for dropping by! We hope you have a spine tingling Witching Hour. 

 

 

Zombie Lovin': What's Up With The Undead? -- More 'From The Backlist' Goodness!

 .
With Halloween clearly on the horizon, what better time to feature a lil Zombie Lovin'? Namely, Terri Garey's microfiction that checks out what's up with the undead?

We loved it the first time around and bet you'll enjoy the fun just as much today. Sure hope so! :D

Terri Garey

Zombie Lovin': What's Up With The Undead? by Terri Garey

When did zombies become the new black? Zombies are everywhere these days, including zombie romance. When I first heard the concept, I was baffled; how could love, sex and romance work if you (or your partner) were one of the undead? What if you kissed and your lips fell off? (Just kidding! Kinda.)

Anyway, one day last year, just for fun, I took a moment to imagine how in the world one could mix love with lividity, and came up with this short little pre-Halloween, tongue-in-cheek tale I'd like to share with you.  I must warn you, if you haven't read my books yet, you're about to find out that I have a slightly weird sense of humor. :-) But if, like me, you don't mind a giggle or two at the expense of the undead, read away, and enjoy:

Zombie Love

LOVE STINKS, AND SO DOES YOUR BREATH by Terri Garey

“Is that a femur in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

Donna snuggled in closer to Derek, brushing the dark hair from his eyes with one hand. Unfortunately, a clump of it remained in her fingers, and she knew this particular boy toy’s time was limited. That was the problem with zombies—their shelf life was much too short, the pesky problem of decomposition being one she hadn’t solved yet.

Even embalming didn’t help, and she didn’t care for waxy buildup on her fingers any more than she did her floors.

“Brought you a present,” Derek murmured, with a lopsided grin, “for our two-week anniversary.” His breath reeked of blood and sausages, which made sense considering his job at the local meat packing plant. With a flourish, he whipped a hand from behind his back, and offered her his prize.

“How sweet,” Donna squealed. “It’s a heart!”

“Yeah, baby,” he answered smugly, blood dripping between his fingers. “A fresh one. Nothing but the best for my girl.”

“Awww,” Donna said, “I got you a present, too.” She let go of him long enough snatch her purse up from the bed. Digging inside, she brought up an object about three inches long. Picking off a piece of lint before handing it to him, she announced, “I usually wait at least a month before giving my boyfriend the finger!”

Derek and Donna both died laughing, which was long overdue, considering Donna had been dead for two centuries, and Derek for two weeks.

She eyed him with regret as she giggled, knowing his laughter would soon be a thing of the past, much like Horatio’s, the guy who’d gotten her into this fix. It had been Horatio’s idea to visit the cemetery in Edinburgh that night two hundred years ago. Bodysnatching had been a good way to earn some quick cash back then, unless your body happened to be the one that got snatched, of course.

Poor Horatio, she’d known him well, until that shovel had come out of nowhere, and smashed his head in. The doctor who’d done it hadn’t hit her hard enough, though, and she’d woken up in his laboratory to find him on top of her. After that, what was a ghoul to do except defend herself? It was only after she’d killed the doc with his own dirt-encrusted shovel that she’d found the secret book lying on his desk, in plain sight, and learned the ancient grimoire’s secrets about how to reanimate the dead.

“Hey, baby,” Derek said, interrupting her musings. “I got a perfectly good boner going to waste here.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her close again. “What say we get naked and put it to good use, hm?”

Donna smiled. She’d learned a few secrets about herself that night, too, including how her brush with death and her newfound ability to reanimate dead flesh left her with a taste for more of it. Immortality had cost her soul, but she was pretty sure she didn’t need it where she was going.

“Absolutely,” she answered, with a smile that revealed her own teeth, pearly white and perfect. Her eyes glowed red as she began to tug his shirt from his pants. “No use letting a good piece of meat go to waste."

...

To read the rest of Terri's post, including a link to the "Thrill the World" event (where people all over the globe join together at the same time to dress in zombie costume and dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller", in an annual attempt to break the Guinness World Record for "largest simultaneous Thriller dance"), click here.

To find out more about Terri Garey, including her fun & fabulous Nicki Styx series, go here.

Why Zombie?

iZombie's Rose McIver

Hi Everyone,

While watching the return of iZombie this week (Method Head, S02E10), it struck me how much these creature have evolved – Zombies, that is, not the CW or TV show runners in general (though maybe them too!).

As I wrote in a 2013 review of Warm Bodies, romance wasn’t the most expected direction the Zombie genre could take.

But maybe social psychologist Sara Sutler-Cohen can make sense of it:

"On-screen zombies have always reflected their era, creating a cultural arc and a ‘mirror image of what’s happening in society at that moment’."

If that's the case, the original attributes of zombies (White Zombie in 1932) including lack of speech or self-awareness, single-minded hunger for human flesh, slow, staggering gait, unstoppable, corpse like physicality controlled by a voodoo master, mirror something of the times. The zombie image didn’t waver much for the next seventy years and might reflect a culture grappling with issues of power, control, freewill and self-determination. Maybe throw in fear of death.

Not until 1985 do we see a change with the first brain-eating zombies (in Return of the Living Dead, directed by Dan O’Bannon). It makes them even more terrifying as the brain (memories, choice, more impulse control) indicates our conscious volition and individuality. Our identity. This might correspond to the the post-modern perception of perpetual incompleteness and deconstructivism where reference to cultural, ideological and moral opinions are reappraised (the death of the author - a zombie ate their brains?)

French TV drama series Les revenants

By the 2000s, we start to see quicker, more dynamic and resourceful zombies. They're becoming a lot more like us. In Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), these iSmart zombies are the results of infection, not magic. The fear is what can 'get into us' from the outside - AIDS, Bird Flu, Ebola . . .

Then came 2010 with Isaac Marion’s archetype shattering novel, WarmBodies were our hero is a zombie who falls in love and turns into a real boy again.  It was followed by the French TV drama series Les revenants, or The Returned (2012), with deceased teenagers returning home years after her death, complete with memories, self-awareness and angst.

Warm Bodies - a Zombie love story

The latest in the tropes in of highly functional zombies is the Olivia Moor character on iZombie. She's a top med-student and fiancé turned zombie. In this new, DC Comic based, Zombie universe, the affliction has it’s perks in the form of memories (where eating the brains for a victim can lead to solving the crime.) Liv Moore not only can love individuals, she's driven to help others as well. Quite the turnaround from 1932s White Zombie.

Does this mean we, as a reading and viewing collective, are opening up to the perceived, monstrous 'others' out there in the world? Are we connecting with our inner dark side and transforming it through love? Definitely a thought I want to explore

And no, my next book is not a zombie romance, (it's an urban fantasy featuring Ava Sykes - a creature of a whole other kind), but I do think we can learn from this collective shift toward monsters with heart.

How about you? A fan of the zombie? New or old? Feel free to share in the comments. xxKimmy

Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, YA and epic science fantasy novels.

You can find out more about Kim at the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter.

She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month and runs Save the Day Writer's Community on Facebook.

Warm Bodies

Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich
in Warm Bodies Feb 2013

Why I thought zombies made rotten lovers . . .

Lao Tzu said character is destiny and it holds true in fiction as well as ‘real’ life. How characters think, what informed their past, what hopes excite them, as well as their physicality, combine to create the next twist or turn in the story. So how can a mindless, flesh eating zombie EVER be a love interest? Paranomal hero can, but zombies NO!

That's what I used to think. I said in interviews that it was impossible to write a ‘zombie romance’. I even stated something along the lines of  You’ll never see a zombie romance! It could never work.

Why?

No matter how brilliant the plot or true the love, characters have to have a potency of their own, and it's got to be driving, charismatic. They must grow, change, exhibit emotions (or repress them), have likes and dislikes, flaws and attributes. Basically, they have to be ‘real’ people that the reader, or the viewer, can relate to. If they don’t feel alive they might as well be, you guessed it, zombies, and that’s not going to make anyone’s’ heart throb, or so I thought.

Then I picked up Warm Bodies.

How in the world does one bring a zombie to life? Isaac Marion has the answer. You give them heart, or at least, a vestige of one. Once that awakens, a whole new world unfolds, where even a zombie can fall in love. Warm Bodies, a paranormal romance/horror/thriller, is the living proof. zombies don’t always make rotten lovers.

Warm Bodies by
Isaac Marion

It might also be proof of a shift in our collective unconscious. I've talked before about vampires and other paranormal ‘monsters’ as 'expression of the collective shadow', and how our shifting relationship to these ‘demons’ in film and literature reflects a shift in our consciousness as we form a new relationship to that ‘shadow.’  (see Evolution of the Vampire Revisited) Falling for a zombie is definitely taking up a lot of new file space in my research. This thesis just keeps expanding! Bottom line, as a species, we are opening up, connecting with our dark side and transforming it through love.

Whether this book and film are new trend in paranormal romance, (is that possible?) or a statement about evolving human consciousness, Warm Bodies is a fun read! It’s a story about R, a young man in a state of existential crisis because he’s not alive, and not really dead. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic USA where R has no memories, until he eats someone's. His growth arc is huge!

When the memories in one of his victim’s brains affect him, he finds himself attracted to, rescuing, befriending and eventually falling in love with the dead boy’s still living-girlfriend. Julie (Australia’s own Teresa Palmer) is a blast of colour in the dreary and grey landscape that is the “life” of the un-living. Their tense, awkward and strangely sweet relationship develops into something that will not only transform R, but his fellow zombies . . .  Warm Bodies the film 2013



It appears love is infectious after all!


Has anyone seen the film? Read the book? Let’s compare notes!


Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, YA and epic science fantasy novels.

You can find out more about Kim at kimfalconer.com or on The 11th House Blog. She posts here at the SuperntrlUnderg on the 16th of every month. Her latest release is Supernatural Underground: Vampires Gone Wild.

Zombie Lovin': What Is Up With The Undead?

When did zombies become the new black? Zombies are everywhere these days, including zombie romance. When I first heard the concept, I was baffled; how could love, sex and romance work if you (or your partner) were one of the undead? What if you kissed and your lips fell off? (Just kidding! Kinda.)

Anyway, one day last year, just for fun, I took a moment to imagine how in the world one could mix love with lividity, and came up with this short little pre-Halloween, tongue-in-cheek tale I'd like to share with you.  I must warn you, if you haven't read my books yet, you're about to find out that I have a slightly weird sense of humor. :-) But if, like me, you don't mind a giggle or two at the expense of the undead, read away, and enjoy:

LOVE STINKS, AND SO DOES YOUR BREATH by Terri Garey

“Is that a femur in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

Donna snuggled in closer to Derek, brushing the dark hair from his eyes with one hand. Unfortunately, a clump of it remained in her fingers, and she knew this particular boy toy’s time was limited. That was the problem with zombies—their shelf life was much too short, the pesky problem of decomposition being one she hadn’t solved yet.

Even embalming didn’t help, and she didn’t care for waxy buildup on her fingers any more than she did her floors.

“Brought you a present,” Derek murmured, with a lopsided grin, “for our two-week anniversary.” His breath reeked of blood and sausages, which made sense considering his job at the local meat packing plant. With a flourish, he whipped a hand from behind his back, and offered her his prize.

“How sweet,” Donna squealed. “It’s a heart!”

“Yeah, baby,” he answered smugly, blood dripping between his fingers. “A fresh one. Nothing but the best for my girl.”

“Awww,” Donna said, “I got you a present, too.” She let go of him long enough snatch her purse up from the bed. Digging inside, she brought up an object about three inches long. Picking off a piece of lint before handing it to him, she announced, “I usually wait at least a month before giving my boyfriend the finger!”

Derek and Donna both died laughing, which was long overdue, considering Donna had been dead for two centuries, and Derek for two weeks.

She eyed him with regret as she giggled, knowing his laughter would soon be a thing of the past, much like Horatio’s, the guy who’d gotten her into this fix. It had been Horatio’s idea to visit the cemetery in Edinburgh that night two hundred years ago. Bodysnatching had been a good way to earn some quick cash back then, unless your body happened to be the one that got snatched, of course.

Poor Horatio, she’d known him well, until that shovel had come out of nowhere, and smashed his head in. The doctor who’d done it hadn’t hit her hard enough, though, and she’d woken up in his laboratory to find him on top of her. After that, what was a ghoul to do except defend herself? It was only after she’d killed the doc with his own dirt-encrusted shovel that she’d found the secret book lying on his desk, in plain sight, and learned the ancient grimoire’s secrets about how to reanimate the dead.

“Hey, baby,” Derek said, interrupting her musings. “I got a perfectly good boner going to waste here.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her close again. “What say we get naked and put it to good use, hm?”

Donna smiled. She’d learned a few secrets about herself that night, too, including how her brush with death and her newfound ability to reanimate dead flesh left her with a taste for more of it. Immortality had cost her soul, but she was pretty sure she didn’t need it where she was going.

“Absolutely,” she answered, with a smile that revealed her own teeth, pearly white and perfect. Her eyes glowed red as she began to tug his shirt from his pants. “No use letting a good piece of meat go to waste."

Lest you think I'm overstating the global resurgence of interest in zombies, I'll leave you with this video of the annual "Thrill the World" event, where people all over the globe join together at the same time to dress in zombie costume and dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller", in an annual attempt to break the Guinness World Record for "largest simultaneous Thriller dance":



In 2009, 22,923 people danced in 278 separated yet coordinated events taking place in 32 different countries, raising over $85,000 USD for 80 charities! This year's event takes place all over the world on October 23rd, 2010.

So what about you? Zombie-lover, or not such a fan? Would you ever participate in an event like "Thrill the World"? Tell me your thoughts for a chance to win a signed copy of my first novel, DEAD GIRLS ARE EASY.