ZOMBIE WRITING -- Writing Zombie Stories For Today's Readers

            "I know your sins,” the Minster preached. “The Lord knows your sins. They know your sins.”

         Something crashed upstairs, thumping the ceiling. Several more thumps followed. Leon heard something dragging across the floor in the living room.

         “I say to you now, there is still time to repent. Toss away your earthly burdens and give yourself to the Lord. Hiding in the dark, in the earth, running from his light. Surrender yourself. Give yourself over to the dead. To God’s army.”

—God’s Army by T. Fox Dunham

Published in Tales of the Zombie War

READ ME: GOD's ARMY by T. FOX DUNHAM

(Please Leave a Comment if you liked it.)

Writing about zombies is a hazardous business. So, for my entry, I thought I’d write up some tips about handling the walking, hungry dead. Over the last year, I’ve had several zombie stories published. I write them for fun, to relax. Gods. What does that say about me? I’m stressed out . . . think I’ll write about hordes of shambling corpses seeking to devour the flesh of the living. And that’s an important point to make:

We crave zombie fiction because a zombie apocalypse would relieve the burden of functioning in this artificial human society.

 

Zombie fiction returns us to a world where we are once again a hunter-gatherer society, living by our wits in a land without walls, without income taxes, without resumes and college loans. We are burdened by society. Zombies are freedom and return us to more a natural state. This is true of all apocalypse fiction, but zombies especially resonate with us because the burden of society comes from the masses of people, just as zombies mass as they shamble to devour us. I try to reflect themes in society as part of writing a satire in my zombie work, which is one of the reasons my zombie stories always sell.

Recently, my story God’s War, was published on Tales of the Zombie War, the best online site for zombie fiction. In my story, I use the zombie setting to show a parallel between the ravenous undead and raging human. My character suffers post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Afghanistan, where he became a living version of a zombie. You’ll have to read to find out more:

READ ME: GOD's ARMY by T. FOX DUNHAM

I also have two short stories coming out in the zombie new anthology from Hazardous Press: A Quick Bites of Flesh Anthology edited by Robert Helmbrecht. I’m especially pleased about being in this anthology as many close friends will be joining me: Alyn Day, Rose Blackthorn, Deborah Drake, Tara Fox Hall, Rebecca Brown, Scott M. Goriscak, and many others. Robert Helmbrecht has also asked me to contribute a zombie novella to be published in a series with the anthology, so I am finishing my novella, Death’s Dominion, named after my favorite poem by Dylan Thomas: Death Shall have no Dominion. It was my mantra during chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The anthology will be out in October. Robert has done an amazing job, and working with him has been one of my best writing experiences.

WRITING ZOMBIE FICTION:

First: Make sure you have a secure lock on the cellar door.

Too many times I’ll be writing away, and I’ll look up mid-paragraph to find the door open and a mob of zombies surrounding the couch. Then, it’s swordplay and a lot of dry cleaning. Rancid liver stains never come out.

Second: Zombie stories are about the living.

Zombies are usually a background menace, the element of danger and conflict. The story is really about your characters surviving and learning to adapt to the radical change in their environment. Of course, this may change when your characters are zombies, though the dynamic about surviving in a different world will often be your plot.

Third: At times, the zombies you keep may look serene and may even exhibit behavior that resembles their humanity.

Do Not Pet Your Zombies!

They will bite your hand and feast on your fingers. It’s not much fun typing with only six fingers.

Fourth: Zombies expose your character’s humanity in all its light and darkness.

Who are the monsters really? A zombie is mindless, a hungry animal without malevolence. You can’t blame a zombie for wanting to eat you, but you can blame the living for looting your house and eating your kitten, Mittens. Poor Mittens! (That’s a shout out to my friend Steph. Miss you baby!)

Fifth: Grief will kill you.

A common element in zombie fiction is the inability for the living to adapt to the loss of their loved ones, and in their grief, they often allow themselves to be consumed instead of accepting their new reality. Mothers deny and guard their children from a shotgun blast to destroy the brain only to be eaten by their offspring. I wrote about this in my story, Quality of Life , published in So Long and Thanks for All the Brains edited by Matt Nord:

          This extinction is not arriving as a flying space rock or a fusion bomb laughing in plasma fire. Devious nature turned our beloved into puppets, exploited the bond of family, the need to protect. She did it to immobilize our defenses, our intelligence. Our love is the evolutionary weakness that serves our annihilation. Death comes wearing the face of our loved ones.

--Quality of Life by T. Fox Dunham, 

Published in So Long and Thanks for All the Brains

So Long and Thanks for All the Brains -- Barnes and Nobles

Final: Zombies are the threat but not always the plot.

Usually, there’s a primary plot that is not central to the walking dead. For example, your characters are running out of food. They’re being hunted by raiders. One of them is pregnant and needs a hospital. You need to focus on such problems of survival, of the body and the heart. Zombies just provide the danger.

My Zombie Friend:

Before I close my entry for this fortnight, I wanted to write a personal note about a friend who has suffered because of his true undead identity. Many of you know him, and he has done a lot for horror authors in the creation of The Horror Society. He has carried a secret burden, out of fear of not being accepted, so for his sake, I’m going to out him. Yes. Scott M. Goriscak is a closet zombie. It happened during his time in the military, during secret experimentation with a new kind of talcum powder of evil-makeup-death. The photos you see of him were taken from before he decomposed. It’s been hard on Scott, not being accepted into the mainstream of living society, of dealing with his cravings for warm human flesh, and there just aren’t enough stray dogs around to satiate it. So, when you see Scott, please leave him a note of support. Tell him it’s okay he’s a zombie and we accept and love him. He’s an amazing author, organizer, and one of the rising stars of the horror community. Scott . . . hold on a second. I’ll get you some fresh cat. Wait Scott. I need that arm. Don’t make me get the shotgun!

SUMMER OF ZOMBIE BLOG TOUR:

In addition, let me mention the Summer of Zombie Blog Tour from May December Press. They’ve produced some of the best zombie fiction available. A free eBook copy of the Summer of Zombie Anthology is currently available at the link below. Six amazing authors wrote this anthology: Armand Rosamilia, Mark Tufo, Ian Woodhead, Todd Brown, John O'Brien, and Dave Jeffery.

Link to Free eBook:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/168619 

Blog Information:

https://www.facebook.com/events/365308606862030/

I thank you all for reading this fortnight’s entry of my blog. Some exciting things happening for me. I’ve been asked to write regionally for Team Obama, and I’m worried I’m going to mix things up and write an article about zombies for better universal health care

Writing True Love is Writing Agony

“A chill in here tonight,” I said.

“My body burns when it snows,” she said. “I go out into the street without a stitch. I love the way my nipples get hard.”

“It’s snowing ash,” I said.

She took my hand, leading me to the rubber mat. We slow danced, first ones on the floor that night. None of the other lot looked up from their tables, from the wells of their chipped teacups.

—Dancing at Albies at the End of the World by T. Fox Dunham

Published in Torrid Literature Volume II

When I write of agony, I write of love. And all my works are about love, even if they’re about zombies or human-eating lions. It’s the most elusive force that humans seek, and when they finally take love, it burns in their hands as if they were holding embers. All the great holy books are really about love—and its inverse, hate. Authors write of nothing but death and love, and usually death is a component of love. I refer you to the collective works of one of the greatest authors of love, Ernest Hemingway.

In my experience—and the only way you can really understand love is if it pierces you through the chest and leaves you bleeding—love is not a path to happiness. That’s how most humans I know define it. Love is about being happy. It’s function is to make us joyful, content and alive. Yet, it does anything but. Love is the path to devastation, because it will always be lost. This is the truth of love. It’s the loss that makes it real. This is Hemingway’s gospel. Now here’s mine:

Love is its own emotional need to be fulfilled, not the path to fulfill happiness.

I write of this because my story, Dancing at Albies at the End of the World, was recently published in volume two of Torrid Literature, an excellent magazine of articles, poetry and stories. It can be found for purchase online or hard copy at the web address I will post at the end of this entry. In the story, my character has lost his name when he lost his wife, killed in the London Blitz during World War II. He wanders as a soulless man looking for a bomb to fall on him, and he discovers a makeshift pub built under a bombed-out factory full of the living soulless like himself. There, he inflicts on himself a passionate affair with a soulless woman. She tastes his pain. She drinks his tears. And he reaches back from the darkness. He may actually come home.

Fiction authors write of conflict. Our sustenance, our fuel is the relationship gone wrong, the bad marriage, the lost love never to be realized. Our protagonists either repair their love affairs or they make a daring escape to a better place. We thrive on this conflict, making our plots compelling; thus, we are articulate in the execution of pain. I believe these heart-grinding tales to be the best of human stories—tales of love and glory. So if you’re going to write a love story, and really that’s all we ever write, don’t base your plot on their love:

Base your plot on their fear, on the forces conspiring to keep them apart.

That’s the glory of love, two people fighting all odds to fulfill that need in their souls. All souls come with pieces missing.

Love shows best in writing when it is based on a setting of fear, of loss, like silver clouds painted on black canvas. Your job as an author is to make lovers suffer, to do everything you can to keep your lovers apart, to attack, to create insurmountable odds. You are the fiend, the force of forlorn fate that fights to destroy their love. Hurt them like you’ve been hurt. Defy them like you’ve been defied and denied. Break their hearts and your readers will weep to the very last word.

Also, if you wish to write truly of the human experience, then most of the endings to your love stories will be loss. We carry with us a chain of broken chains. In literature, the most perfect loves are the loves lost. The pain keeps them alive. We don’t forget, and neither will your readers. They will relate. They will feel a direct link to the characters, switch places with them, and you can’t succeed more than that as an author.

I’m not a cruel man by nature. I’m an author. I’m writing stories about the human condition, the emotional self. Fiction must reflect core reality, though we dress it up, set it to logical composition, and paint its nose blue. The true love of your characters will come from their trials. This is so even if that love is lost.

And so I invite you to read Dancing at Albies at the End of World, published in Torrid Literature volume II.

 http://www.torridliterature.com/

And cheers to all my mates who will be published with me in the Quick Bites of Flesh Anthology, a collection of flash zombie stories to be printed by Hazardous Press.

Unleashing The Good Doctor Sullivan -- Writing Characters

“If you come with me, The Good Doctor Sullivan will see you. He has promised to take me to see elephants, and then he will put their eyes into his pocket. You must not follow. He will put your eyes in his jacket pocket too.”

--The Siren Lucinda by T. Fox Dunham.

Published by Scarlet Literary Magazine

The Good Doctor skulked his way into my narrative. I was oblivious to him at the time. He manifested as a happy accident, the way the creative soul throws in a new element, a frisson of inspiration like spotting the glimmer of a star on the night—or the death throes of a star sucked into a singularity vortex. Writers can’t plan for these moments. When it happens, run with it. It quakes worlds.

Doctors have been the great saviors and nemeses of my life. They’ve brought healing and suffering—burning, piercing, violating, cutting, injecting, mutilating my body. They were always kind. The Good Doctor Sullivan is kind. When my young life turned into a war with cancer, his birth was inevitable. From this, I draw much of my work. Its fire always finds fuel, and I channel much of the energy into my horror and dark fiction. The Good Doctor Sullivan is the vessel of this anguish, this desperation.

He first manifested in my short story, The Siren Lucinda, published by Scarlet Literary Magazine for their Siren issue. I thank you, Editor Janice Roberts. Link below. He never appears in the story, only spoken about in hushed whispers by his wife Lucinda, her eyes darting to make sure he is not near. With the manuscript closed, I thought him done. Then, he appeared again and again, spoken about, referred to by other names, sometimes just a quick mention. He seeded himself into my narrative, growing flesh with each new story, accumulating into this world.

His most recent conquest was the Dangers Untold Anthology, an Anthology with contributors from The Horror Society. He is the unseen hospital manager in my story, House of Decay. I was honored to be chosen from this collective of the best horror authors, artists and filmmakers. But I must warn you: He’s using us, building a body, carving himself into our consciousness. I cannot defy him. I do not wish to. He’s offered me peace if I serve all of you up to him. He is so very kind.

             

Authors do more than generate stories. We create worlds. It’s the prerequisite to good writing. Readers only see flashes, moments in the lives of characters who are born, live and die in our heads. Their entire continuum grows a landscape in our creative visions, and we return to these worlds to freeze quantum moments in narrative then stamp them out on metal sheets for readers to glimpse. We harbor these inchoate entities, sharing our perceptions, falling in love, running in terror. Character continuums stay with us.

            

Good characters don’t come directly from life. Indeed, people in common reality are the source for these animated vessels, but we never pluck a person and drop them into a narrative. Effective characters are composites, usually blended from the choir of persons who pass through our lives. The masses become our palettes. We grab his phrase, her dress, the old man’s anger, the ex-girlfriend’s fear of ants. Authors generate new souls this way, reworking stale reality into realized paradigm. That’s another vital point:

Stories are hyper realities, dramatized, and a good story is never a copy of boring, random reality sans a compelling plot.

Very seldom does life happen like a story. Humans love fiction to build, to follow a culturally developed order. Our fiction begins with a conflict, builds as our protagonist fights to resolve this conflict, then the story ends with its resolution. Life is out of order, random. That’s why biographical movies often reorder events. Don’t blame the screenwriters. It’s a movie.

Thus, The Good Doctor Sullivan manifests himself into my work. I don’t know what makes him or the Gods he worships. I’ve not yet found out or been let in on the joke. As I told Eric J. Guignard, I’m chasing something. You’ll be the first to know when I find out.

*          *            *

Also please check out my new stories featured on Philly Flash Inferno. Acedia: In The World of Tommy Aquinas is about apathy, the son of a B-52 pilot who flew missions to the edge of the Soviet Union, prepared to kill millions of humans. He was a good man. And The Van Messiah, a drug addicted wretch kept alive by the soulless who demand a savior. Links below.

I thank you for reading my first blog entry. This sort of personal commentary doesn’t come easily. I let my stories speak for me, throwing them into the sky for sunshine or storm. I prefer tempests. Return here in future for writing wisdom, updates about my work, and observations on the writing industry. I will be of use to you. 

LINKS:

The Siren Lucinda by T. Fox Dunham -- Published in The Scarlet Literary Review:

http://scarletzine.wordpress.com/t-fox-dunham/ 

Acedia & The Van Messiah by T. Fox Dunham -- Published in Philly Flash Inferno:

http://www.phillyflashinferno.com/