Booklife

Christopher L. Dinkins & Jeremy L. C. Jones

The living dead.  The restless dead.  The walking dead.  No matter what you call them, zombies make for great stories.  With that in mind, we asked 11 of the contributors to James Lowder’s anthology, The Best of All Flesh, to share their thoughts on the joys of writing zombie fiction.

This and our earlier post on zombies were inspired by Christopher Davis, a student at Shared Worlds 2010, and his love of zombies. 

“Zombies are so versatile for a writer,” Davis said.  “They can be fast, slow, any number of things.  You just have to have multiple zombies.  And then things get really interesting.”

Lowder selected the stories from his previous collections, The Book of All Flesh, The Book of More Flesh, and The Book of Final Flesh, with an eye toward variety and toward showcasing stories that hadn’t been re-printed elsewhere.

Overall, the stories in The Best of All Flesh emphasize, as Michael Jasper said, “the impact [zombies] have on the people in the story.”
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By Christopher L. Dinkins & Jeremy L. C. Jones

Zombie Boy is a student at the Shared Worlds 2010 creative writing camp.  His parents know him as Christopher Davis.  But his love of all things zombie earned him the moniker, Zombie Boy, at Shared Worlds 2009.  The name has stuck and he is proud of it. 

Zombie Boy hails from coastal California.  He is an avid gamer who likes to kick back and shoot zombies in his spare time.  We asked him, “Why are zombies scary?”

“Because they never stop coming for you,” he said.  “And your life just gets harder and harder…”

In honor of Chris’ fondness for the undead, we contacted 11 of the contributors to James Lowder’s anthology, The Best of All Flesh, which gathers stories from Lowder’s out of print classics of zombie literature, The Book of All Flesh, The Book of More Flesh, and The Book of Final Flesh.

Below, in the first of multiple posts, the contributors talk about fear, humor, loss of control, and the break-down of civilization.  In other words, they talk about why they like to read zombie stories.
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“I’m lucky in that I just love what I’m doing,” said novelist James Reasoner.  “Writing has always been fun for me.  It keeps me entertained.  On a practical level, I know that there will be times when it’s not as easy, and I’ve learned not to obsess about them.  I just keep working and do what I can, because I know it’ll get better.” 

Reasoner has published more than 200 novels.  He writes under his own name and nearly three dozen pen and house names, such as Dana Fuller Ross, Brett Halliday, Tabor Evans, Jon Sharpe, Jake Logan, and Gabriel Hunt.  He’s been writing stories since the late 70s and novels since 1980.  Over the years, he’s written Westerns, detective stories, action-adventure, military, fantasy and just about any other type of novel and story.

“The author of the cult classic P.I. novel Texas Wind under his own name, James Reasoner has nevertheless made his living writing books he received no credit for,” said Robert J. Randisi author of The Ham Reporter and, as J. R. Roberts, the Gunsmith series. “But I give him credit. The best thing I can say about him is this:  he’s a helluva Professional.”

Reasoner moves among the genres seemingly with great ease.  Though I suspect a lot of hard work goes into making it look so easy.  From book to book, series to series, Reasoner’s stories seem to follow one pattern – good character, good story, and good fun. 

Below, Reasoner and I talk about entertaining himself first and writing the West. 

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What do you enjoy about writing the West?

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James Reasoner:  Traditionally, Westerns have both strong characters and strong plots, and I enjoy combining those two elements.  Plus, I grew up reading Western novels and watching Western TV series during the Fifties and Sixties, and it’s just great fun being able to follow in the footsteps of creators whose work gave me so much pleasure and entertainment over the years.

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And what is the biggest challenge in writing the West?
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James Reasoner:  Getting all the historical details correct.  Readers will let you know if you get something wrong.  I try to be as accurate as I can in my writing, but mistakes still slip through from time to time. 
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What sort of Westerns do you write, and what are they key elements?
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James Reasoner:  I write traditional Westerns that are not that much different than the ones published in decades past, although I think the characterization in today’s Westerns (not just mine) is usually deeper and better developed than it was during the pulp era.  Of course, there are exceptions to that, since some of the pulp writers were very good at characterization.  I’ve also written quite a few books for several of the so-called Adult Western series, as well as big historical sagas that are more concerned with actual events and characters in Western history. 
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How have your novels and/or your approach to writing them changed over the years?
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James Reasoner:  My style has evolved over the thirty-plus years I’ve been writing, but it’s been a gradual process that’s still going on.  I’m constantly learning new things about how to make my writing more effective.  My approach is still the same, though:  I try to do the best I can on each project and write books that would entertain me as a reader.  If I’m not having fun, the readers won’t, either. 
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You write both under your own name and under pseudonyms and house names.  Do you approach writing “as someone else” differently?  What does it allow you to do that writing “as yourself” doesn’t?
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James Reasoner:  I touched on that in the previous answer.  If I’m writing for a particular series, I’ll definitely try to make my book fit in with the others in that series.  Each series has its own way of doing things.  But as far as my general approach to the work goes, there’s really no difference.  When I sit down in front of the computer to produce my day’s pages, that my book I’m working on.  I have to like it and enjoy it.  When it’s turned in, of course, I’m professional enough to accept that sometimes it’s not mine anymore.  But in my heart, it still kind of is.  That’s why I can look at a book in the store that doesn’t have my name anywhere on it, but if I wrote it, I’m still proud of it.
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You wrote the first novel in the Gabriel Hunt series.  How much freedom did you have in shaping the character and the direction of the series?
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James Reasoner:  Charles Ardai, the creator and editor of the series, wrote a fantastic bible for it, one of the best series bibles I’ve ever seen.  So he had developed the character of Gabriel Hunt pretty extensively before I wrote my book.  However, I was able to add some touches of my own that Charles adopted for the rest of the series.  Writing that book was a very enjoyable experience.
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What are you working on now, and what’s next?

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James Reasoner:  I’m writing a traditional Western novel that will be out under my name next year, plus developing an outline for a house-name book also scheduled for next year.  The next manuscript in the schedule after the current one will be a house-name Western.  I have quite a bit of work lined up, and that’s the way I like it.

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What can a writer who doesn’t usually read Westerns learn from reading within the genre? 

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 James Reasoner:  How to balance plotting and characterization, and how to get the details right.  Plus a lot of Western authors are just really good storytellers and know how to pace a book so that the reader wants to keep turning the pages. 
 

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006. 

“The West is vast and varied,” said Western writer Jane Candia Coleman.  “It has mountains, desserts, great rivers and small ones, endless sky, pine forests and cactus, cliffs and canyons that beg to be captured in words.  (I am a frustrated painter, so I do it in words.)  In my books the land is always present, as much a characters as the human protagonists.  In short, I love this country and all in it and find it endlessly captivating.”

Jane Candia Coleman writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.  She is the author of such books as The Silver Queen, Bandit Queen, and the forthcoming Range Queen.  Five of her 21 books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and three have won the Western Heritage Awards given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.  When not writing, she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Carlow University.

“I first discovered Jane Candia Coleman in Louis L’Amour Western Magazine,” said Johnny D. Boggs, author of Whiskey Kills and other Killstraight stories, “first with her short story ‘Lou,’ which I thought was brilliant, then a few years later with another short story, ‘Are You Coming Back, Phin Montana?,’ which also blew me away. She’s an absolutely amazing writer — whether she’s writing short fiction or historical novels — with a strong sense of place, and wonderful characters. Her prose often reads like pure poetry. No surprise there. She’s also an incredible poet.”
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The first year of Shared Worlds game designer Will Hindmarch drove from Atlanta to Spartanburg, hopped out of his car, and taught a four-hour, impromptu class on game design and world-building.  Will was supposed to grab a bite to eat, get settled in his room, and rest up for the next day.  Instead, he gathered the students and went wild.

Jeff VanderMeer and I weren’t the only ones blown away by Will’s dynamic, story-based teaching style.  The students loved it, too.  Will has an uncanny ability to see the big picture and the small, to gather large amounts of information and identify the patterns, to hear what everyone in the room is saying and sort through the chaos for the golden nuggets… and to dazzle everyone with great stories.

When Jeff and I were developing the Shared Worlds curriculum, we wanted someone who could connect the worlds of game design and fiction writing.  As the developer for 2004-2007 of the World of Darkness Storytelling Game, Vampire: The Requiem for White Wolf and as a fiction writer, Will seemed like a good fit with the approach we use at Shared Worlds.  He turned out to be a perfect fit for the program.

 “Will Hindmarch has an innate understanding of the interplay between narrative structure and gameplay,” said novelist and designer Matt Forbeck.  “Many designers just make things up as we go, trusting our skills and instincts to bring us through. Will takes the time to examine those skills, to study those instincts, and to formulate and test theories about how and why they work. He’s the next generation of designer, and with time and luck he’ll outshine us all.”
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An Introduction to the Shared Worlds Camp

For the next two weeks I will be posting material related to Shared Worlds, which is a creative writing and world-building camp that Jeff VanderMeer and I developed with a handful of my forward-thinking colleagues at Wofford College.  The idea for the camp (as I explain below) grew out of a classroom experiment while I was teaching at a high school in Kentucky.

My goal for Booklifenow for the next few weeks – it’s hard to type with my fingers crossed, by the way – is also to post articles that are not related to Shared Worlds.  I will finish up the Writing the West series, start a Writing and the Martial Arts series, and continue the Music and Writing series.  But I do think the Shared Worlds material will be of general interest, too.

Meanwhile, for those of you who don’t know about Shared Worlds I recommend that you swing by our website.  Also, below, Jeff asks me a few questions about the origin of Shared Worlds.

Jeff VanderMeer:  What served as the spark for Shared Worlds? Do you remember when the idea hit you, and why?

Jeremy L. C. Jones:  About eight or nine years ago a student handed me a novel set in a shared world.  The student had to explain the concept of a shared world to me.  Basically, he said, you have one setting and a lot of different writers.  Something about that idea just really blew my mind.

The novel that student gave me was Homeland.  The novel is written by R. A. Salvatore, but it is set in The Forgotten Realms, which was created by Ed Greenwood as a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D).  I loved the novel—great characters, plenty of action, lots of heart. 

And I was totally captivated by how the book was made. 
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“History is messy and sexy and smelly,” writes novelist Lucia St. Clair Robson in the essay Predicting the Past.  “It has odd angles and sharp edges.  It’s not easy to wrap up in neat packages with pretty paper and ribbon.  To try to imbue the past with present-day sensibilities is bone-headed…”

Robson is the author of such novels as Last Train from Cuernavaca, Ghost Warrior, and Light a Distant Fire.  Her first novel, Ride the Wind, was a New York Times best-seller and won the Golden Spur Award for historical fiction given by the Western Writers of America.

“Lucia St. Clair Robson casts spells with words that pluck us from our armchairs and plop us instantly into the place and time of her choice,” blurbed Loren D. Estleman, one of the living masters of both the Western novel and the Private Eye novel.  “In her hands, the characters she spun from whole cloth breathe and speak and sweat with the force of those who lived and who live once again here as never before.”

More than anything, Robson’s characters work a spell on us — characters like Cynthia Ann Parker, Sarah Bowman, and Lozen. And Robson writes landscapes — the Everglades, Maryland, more traditional Western settings such as Texas — like a shaman invoking spirits, guiding us through lives, bridging worlds.

Though I’ve never met Robson, I feel a strange kinship with her. 

Robson grew up in Palm Beach, FL, about 45 minutes north of where I grew up.  She graduated from University of Florida, a university I dropped out of to work on a newspaper.   At one time, Robson lived in Columbia, SC, which is right down the road from where I live now. 

“I have a couple tattoos and a machete scar,” Robson writes in her alternate bio (the one not found on her book jackets).  “I had the second tattoo done so my eighty-two-year-old mother wouldn’t have to get her first one by herself.  A nun gave me the machete scar in the jungle of the Orinoco delta.  She was wearing chinos under her habit and a straw cowboy hat perched on top of her wimple.”

I have neither a tattoo nor a machete scar, but I sure do wish I’d written (or even thought of) those four sentences.

Below, Robson and I talk about authority, research, and ….

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How does a Floridian come to write about the West?  Are there any similarities between Florida and the West? 

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Lucia St. Clair Robson:  They used to say of Texas that everything there sticks, stinks or stings, and the same is true of Florida.  There is also the common factor of heat, which may be why I’ve been drawn to write about the southwest… Texas, Okahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.  I prefer hot weather to cold.  The bigger reason is that the mystique of the wide open spaces and the people who roamed freely there reached as far as my street, a couple miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

I like exploring the wildness of the western landscape.  I admire the people, both native and newcomers, who learned to adapt to its hardships and thrive on its bounty.

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And what is the biggest challenge in writing the West?
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Lucia St. Clair Robson:  I lived in Southern Arizona for a year, and have traveled all over the southwest, but growing up in Florida, I feel I’m not qualified to write with authority about the West.  And being Anglo I feel presumptuous writing about people of other cultures and backgrounds.
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What sort of Westerns do you write, and what are their key elements?

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Lucia St. Clair Robson:  Four of my books are about American Indians, a fifth is set during the War with Mexico which began in Corpus Christi.  The latest one, Last Train from Cuernavaca, is about the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, and contains a couple Texans as characters.  Many Americans, especially from the southwest, were involved with Mexico and participated in their Revolution on one side or the others.  (And after all, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the great American Westerns.
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How’d you come to write your first novel, Ride the Wind?  Have your novels and/or your approach to writing them changed over the years?

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Lucia St. Clair Robson:  A thumbnail sketch about Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah in Time/Life’s book, The Great Chiefs, happened to catch my eye.  I mentioned it to an editor I chanced to meet and he encouraged me to write about them and their people.  Ballantine Books gave me a contract based on the first six chapters. 

 

I was very naive when I started researching the Comanches 30 years ago.  I didn’t realize how many errors can creep into history texts.  I’ve learned to be more careful and to follow up accounts that seem exaggerated.  I also use fewer adjectives and adverbs these days.  (Still, that first amateurish effort, Ride the Wind, won the Golden Spur, has been in print 28 years, and has prompted more reader mail than all the others put together.  Go figure.)
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What does writing in the past let you do that writing in a contemporary setting wouldn’t?
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Lucia St. Clair Robson:  Historical fiction adds the dimension of time-tripping that’s way more interesting than writing about the familiar world I inhabit.  And because conditions were far less forgiving than the sheltered existence we enjoy now, there’s a lot more drama.  Writing about the past entertains me, and if I can’t entertain myself, I can’t entertain anyone else.
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What can a writer who doesn’t usually read Westerns learn from reading within the genre? 

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Lucia St. Clair Robson:  Reading about the past widens people’s world view as much as foreign travel does.  And insight into the courage, resilience, and humor of Westerners puts our own lives into perspective.  I believe that reading about the past, reading about the West, and reading about the past in the west make us better human beings.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006. 

“I enjoy writing Westerns that make people think, which often leads them to be pissed off,” said novelist Max McCoy.

When McCoy’s novel I, Quantrill  came out a couple of years ago, I wanted to write about it for my weekly newspaper column.  Figuring that the column and McCoy’s book would appeal Civil War buffs, I wanted to be extra-sure to be historically accurate in my discussion of William Clarke Quantrill.  To my surprise, my usually talkative sources in the Wofford College history department pretty much just said, “Quantrill was a monster.” 

And that was it.  The man was a monster.  He led a massacre in Lawrence, KS in 1863.  End of story.  Not even historians (at least the ones I knew at the time) wanted to talk about him!  How horrible must a man be, I wondered, for historians to avoid talking about him?  And how do you write a novel about a guy so universally reviled?
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“In a lot of ways, Westerns are the most American of stories,” said novelist and editor Russell Davis, “but I think what any writer might gain in reading good westerns is a sense of landscape and how important, even critical, landscape can be to a story.”

And in Westerns, that landscape is often presented on an epic scale, regardless of how short or long the novels is.

Russell Davis writes across the genres under his own name and a variety of house names.  I first encountered his fiction with Fire Zone, an action-adventure novel in Don Pendleton’s Executioner series.  A new writer to a long-running series, Davis brought a Western feel, including richly descriptive prose, hard-hitting action, and a sureness, to a series that can be a little uneven from month-to-month. 

After I read Fire Zone, I looked up Russell Davis.  And that’s when things got interesting…
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Raised in the Arizona desert, Thomas Cobb now lives “back East” where writes anti-romantic stories set in the West.  He is the author of the short story collection Acts of Contrition and the novels Crazy Heart and Shavetail. 

There is a twenty-plus year gap between his first and second novels.  The sharp edges of his prose reflect great care and precision. There’s also a certain stubbornness throughout his work – a stubbornness in his characters and in his desire to get the prose just right. 

The recent Shavetail tells the story of an under-aged teenager, Ned Thorne, who has lied his way into the army in order to escape his past and finds himself on a suicide mission of revenge, rescue, and misguided atonement. 

The novel’s title refers to Thorne.  A shavetail is the not entirely complimentary army slang for “a willful, untrained mule.”
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