By Christopher L. Dinkins & Jeremy L. C. Jones<\/p>\n
Zombie Boy is a student at the Shared Worlds 2010<\/a> creative writing camp.\u00a0 His parents know him as Christopher Davis.\u00a0 But his love of all things zombie earned him the moniker, Zombie Boy, at Shared Worlds 2009.\u00a0 The name has stuck and he is proud of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Zombie Boy hails from coastal California.\u00a0 He is an avid gamer who likes to kick back and shoot zombies in his spare time.\u00a0 We asked him, \u201cWhy are zombies scary?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause they never stop coming for you<\/em>,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd your life just gets harder and harder\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n In honor of Chris\u2019 fondness for the undead, we contacted 11 of the contributors to James Lowder\u2019s<\/a> anthology, The Best of All Flesh<\/a><\/em>, which gathers stories from Lowder\u2019s out of print classics of zombie literature, The Book of All Flesh<\/em>, The Book of More Flesh<\/em>, and The Book of Final Flesh<\/em>.<\/p>\n Below, in the first of multiple posts, the contributors talk about fear, humor, loss of control, and the break-down of civilization.\u00a0 In other words, they talk about why they like to read zombie stories. *<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Rebecca Brock<\/a> is a librarian and the author The Giving Season<\/span> and Abominations<\/a>.\u00a0 Brock\u2019s short story \u201cNight Shift\u201d appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a> edited by James Lowder<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Rebecca Brock :<\/strong>\u00a0 As a reader (and writer), zombies appeal to me because they are literally our worst fears come alive: death, corruption, helplessness, violence. We can become the monsters at any moment — all it takes is one unpleasant nip and we join the ranks. The thought of seeing friends and loved ones as rotted corpses is deeply unsettling.<\/p>\n With zombies, everybody is on an even playing field because we’re all human and we all have the capacity to turn into a monster upon our deaths … or sometimes before<\/em>. We’re all zombies in the making.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Ed Greenwood<\/a> is the author Falconfar<\/span> and the forthcoming Elminster Must Die<\/span>.\u00a0 Greenwood\u2019s story \u201cOne Last, Little Revenge\u201d appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Ed Greenwood:<\/strong>\u00a0 Zombies appeal to me as mirrors and sounding boards, as mutely vengeful forces and inexorable forces.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Rebecca Brock :<\/strong>\u00a0 Plus, there’s the whole break-down of “civil” civilization to deal with, as well.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Lana Brown is an English teacher and novelist.\u00a0 Her story \u201c<\/em><\/strong>Sifting Out the Hearts of Men\u201d co-written with Warren Brown<\/em><\/strong> appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Lana Brown:<\/strong> \u00a0Zombies are more fun than vampires or other monsters.\u00a0 They appeal to that sense that we all have of a monster inside us, of course, but to my mind they are closer to the mundane world we have to live in.\u00a0 It’s inherently funny<\/em> to imagine a zombie working in an office or retail store, for instance, while vampires or werewolves doing the same thing is more evocative of the horror to come.\u00a0 I like to be scared, but I also like to laugh<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Jasper<\/a> is the author of A Gathering of Doorways<\/span>.\u00a0 Jasper\u2019s story “Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies” appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Jasper:<\/strong>\u00a0 There’s not a lot that can top the fear of being chased by a relentless, shambling pursuer who can’t be killed except at close range. A pursuer who’s losing bits and pieces of himself or herself, intent on grabbing you and eating your brains is inherently funny while being scary as hell. What’s not to love about a villain like that?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Warren Brown is a short story writer.\u00a0 His story \u201c<\/em><\/strong>Sifting Out the Hearts of Men\u201d co-written with Lana Brown<\/em><\/strong> appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Warren Brown: <\/strong>\u00a0As the old line from the Pogo comic strip goes, \u201cWe have met the enemy and they is us.\u201d Who is sitting in the office chair on the other side of your cubicle wall? You think you know, but do you? Dare you look?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Mark McLaughlin<\/a> is the author of Raising Demons for Fun & Profit<\/span> and Slime after Slime<\/span>.\u00a0 McLaughlin\u2019s story \u201cScenes from a Foreign Horror Video, with Zombies and Tasteful Nudity\u201d <\/em><\/strong>appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Mark McLaughlin:<\/strong>\u00a0 As a reader, I find zombies — especially shambling masses of zombies — interesting as a metaphor for city dwellers. Often city dwellers\u00a0may feel like part of a big anonymous herd, treated like cattle by major corporations and the government. Zombies may be a herd of undead cows, so to speak, but they’re damned hard to milk! They won’t settle for being pushed around. They’ll bite back.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Jim C. Hines<\/a> is the author of Goblin\u00a0 Quest<\/span> and Red Hood\u2019s Revenge<\/span>.\u00a0 Hines\u2019 story “Brainburgers and Bile Shakes” appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jim C. Hines:<\/strong>\u00a0 Zombies are all about the loss of control.\u00a0 Any individual zombie can usually be destroyed pretty easily, but the zombie horde never stops.\u00a0 It’s inevitability embodied in shambling, brain-munching corpse form.\u00a0 Even when the living win, it’s often a temporary battle only. But watching how we deal with the inevitable, that’s where you get great stories.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jesse Bullington<\/a> is the author of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 Bullington\u2019s short story <\/em><\/strong>“Charlie’s Hole”<\/em><\/strong> appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Jesse Bullington:<\/strong>\u00a0 To quote Dennis Hopper in the best part of Romero’s Land of the Dead<\/em>, “Zombies, man, they creep me out!” It’s of dubious note that Dennis is picking his nose when he voices this sentiment. Perhaps because we too often do have such a static notion of what a zombie is (stupid, slow, scared of fire, hungry), what I enjoy most about zombies in fiction is seeing how authors can make the stale concept fresh again.\u00a0 Horror so often lies in the unknown and unknowable, and I love being reminded that even the commonplace can be made interesting and creepy in the hands of an accomplished writer.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Myke Cole<\/a> is the author of Latent<\/span>.\u00a0 His story “Shouting Down the Moon” appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Myke Cole:<\/strong>\u00a0 I was never interested in zombies for zombie’s sake. Sure, the walking dead have a certain cool factor to them, but so do superheroes, giant dinosaurs, transforming robots, ninjas, or just about any of the other speculative fiction mainstays us geeks love to get our nerd on. I came to zombies like most folk do, through George Romero flicks, and always thought of them as a motion picture phenomenon. They were fun, but not so fun that I wanted to spend a whole lot of time with them.<\/p>\n You can blame Robert Kirkman’s<\/a> The Walking Dead<\/a><\/em> [series] for turning that around. \u00a0(I know comics are visual, but I still consider them a literary medium). Kirkman’s work doesn’t dwell on the zombies themselves at all but rather on how the zombie apocalypse affects those who are left alive and uninfected.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Jasper:<\/strong>\u00a0 Zombies represent the one thing people understand the least and probably fear the most — death<\/em>.\u00a0 They take our concept of a peaceful afterlife and flip it on its lid. And every author does zombies differently, so the most fun for me as a reader is seeing how the author fiddles with the formula to come up with something fresh and original.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Claude Lalumi\u00e8re<\/a> is the author of Objects of Worship<\/a> and the co-creator of Lost Myths<\/a>.\u00a0 Lalumi\u00e8re\u2019s story “The Ethical Treatment of Meat” appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Myke Cole:\u00a0 <\/strong>The question the best zombie writers ask is, “What do people do when the world goes away?” Any holocaust can set up that petri dish, but zombies have a unique horror, hunger, survivability and eerie resemblance to a sentient enemy who could potentially be negotiated with.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Laimo<\/a> is the author of Atmosphere <\/span>and Deep in the Darkness<\/span>.\u00a0 Laimo\u2019s story <\/em><\/strong>\u201cLast Resort\u201d <\/em><\/strong>appears in The Best of All Flesh<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Laimo:<\/strong>\u00a0 There\u2019s a sense of true realism in the zombie, and this in and of itself appeals to me on many levels. When we lose a loved one, we deeply wish for that loved one to be with us again. If our wish were granted, literally, then we\u2019d find ourselves buried in terror. Then, the simple idea of something dead coming back to life intrigues us, scares us, and then as we discover that the once dead human, now alive, possesses a triggered instinct to feast on warm flesh, it terrifies us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Jasper:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0The real horror is that these undead beasts used to be normal folks who’d never do such terrible things while they were alive…<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Christopher L. Dinkins<\/em><\/strong> is a freelance writer and editor living in Spartanburg, SC.\u00a0 His non-fiction has appeared in <\/em>and Kobold Quarterly<\/a>.\u00a0 His debut short story will be appearing in the cyberpunk anthology, Foreshadows<\/a>.\u00a0 He is an instructor at <\/em>Shared Worlds<\/em><\/a>, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers at Wofford College.<\/em><\/p>\n Jeremy L. C. Jones<\/strong> <\/em><\/a>is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.\u00a0 Jones is a frequent contributor to <\/em>Clarkesworld Magazine<\/em><\/a> and Kobold Quarterly<\/a>.\u00a0 He is also the director of <\/em><\/em>Shared Worlds<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Christopher L. Dinkins & Jeremy L. C. Jones Zombie Boy is a student at the Shared Worlds 2010 creative writing camp.\u00a0 His parents know him as Christopher Davis.\u00a0 But his love of all things zombie earned him the moniker, Zombie Boy, at Shared Worlds 2009.\u00a0 The name has stuck and he is proud of it.\u00a0 Zombie Boy hails from coastal California.\u00a0 He is an avid gamer who likes to kick back and shoot zombies in his spare time.\u00a0 We asked him, \u201cWhy are zombies scary?\u201d \u201cBecause they never stop coming for you,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd your life just gets harder and harder\u2026\u201d In honor of Chris\u2019 fondness for the undead, we contacted 11 of the contributors to James Lowder\u2019s anthology, The Best of All Flesh, which gathers stories from Lowder\u2019s out of print classics of zombie literature, The Book of All Flesh, The Book of More Flesh, and The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nWhat is the appeal of zombies to you as a reader?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nClaude Lalumi\u00e8re:<\/strong>\u00a0 I’m drawn to monsters in general, as I am to most things with a pulpy feel. I appreciate that, unlike vampires and werewolves, zombies have not been romanticized and eroticized. I mean, anyone who’s read my stuff knows that I don’t shy away from sex, but the notion of murderous monsters as romantic objects of desire doesn’t jibe with me.<\/p>\n