long enough for me to sketch one of them. Most of the cast of “Blood-Soaked and Contagious” avoids me when I’m sketching, but this time one of them stuck around long enough. If you read the book, you’ll know who this is. If you haven’t read it… Well, Permuted is on the job, and the revised ebooks will be along shortly.
Without further delay, here’s an old friend of mine:
She stood still long enough
Karl gave me three stars and said the following: “The zombies in this book aren’t like the zombies you’re used to. They can think, they can talk, they move fast, and they feel pain. In other words, they’re almost indistinguishable from humans. Which is a big problem for me, as a fan of zombie books, because if you strip off the label of zombies, this may as well be a book about a battle between two groups of humans. Taken in that context, this becomes just an average book.”
I had to respond to his review. Personally, I’m tired (and have been) with mindless, eating machines. Where is the challenge in an enemy that can be defeated by: force of arms; laying in wait until it is over; or running away to a deserted location? There isn’t any.
The attraction of gore and people being eaten doesn’t hold me for very long.
Now, he does make a valid point. How are my zombies zombies… Well, they died, came back, and are out to get people. Those are two of the major qualifications of zombiehood. Mindlessness? Like I said, it just doesn’t make me want to get out of the chair.
Give me a critter who can think, wants to eat me, and is willing to mess with me in order to make it easier!
Okay. That’s my message from the “front”.
-J
My friend, Heidi, the woman who edited the second edition of Blood-Soaked and Contagious, tweeted me yesterday. Her 13 year-old niece is reading it, and apparently loves it.
I never intended it to be a YA novel… but it seems as though my writing entertains young people, too. I do wonder what will happen when she gets to the sexually-charged material in the last quarter of the novel. Wait, there’s sex-related stuff all over in that book. Shit.
Please, God, I don’t want to be a form of sex education for America’s Troubled Youth!