Zombie!
Some interwebs foofaraw occurred a few weeks ago when Living of the Living Dead Press abandoned plans to publish a queer-content antho of zombie short fiction. But then it seems that the controversy abated and the book was put back on the schedule. So I was thinking about actually trying to write a story to submit to it, as a sort of creative challenge to myself. I don't think I have written any full-blown zombie fic at all in my life, and I haven't attempted very much horror of any kind in recent years. But my sf novel-in-progress does include a phenomenon that has some small similarities to a zombie situation, and my NaNoWriMo novel brushed up against an idea that could have gone full-tilt-zombie if I had let it.
So the other day, when I was wondering if I could come up with a zombie story that would be both sufficiently zombified and also somehow LGBT, I thought about the NaNo story and wondered what might have been had I taken it in a different direction. That story opens with one of the main characters dying of a mysterious disease called the "Waste" that rapidly deteriorates physical and mental functions. I think, somewhere deep down, I was really writing about Alzheimer's and what we've done to the way people die, but I inserted a few creepy details suggesting that the body goes on living and moving for awhile after brain death. In the first section of the NaNo novel, this character successfully (with the aid of his boyfriend) commits suicide before the disease progresses too far. He successfully opts for what he sees as a death with dignity on his own terms.
But if what if that hadn't quite worked out as planned? What if he survived the suicide attempt, and what if the disease was actually more like a full-blown zombie plague when it went into its terminal stage? That worked as a prompt , and I have spent much of the evening drafting it. It's kind of creeping me out, but maybe that will keep me interested in it long enough to finish it. I'm going with Romero-type shamblers as the zombies, too. Classic.
So the other day, when I was wondering if I could come up with a zombie story that would be both sufficiently zombified and also somehow LGBT, I thought about the NaNo story and wondered what might have been had I taken it in a different direction. That story opens with one of the main characters dying of a mysterious disease called the "Waste" that rapidly deteriorates physical and mental functions. I think, somewhere deep down, I was really writing about Alzheimer's and what we've done to the way people die, but I inserted a few creepy details suggesting that the body goes on living and moving for awhile after brain death. In the first section of the NaNo novel, this character successfully (with the aid of his boyfriend) commits suicide before the disease progresses too far. He successfully opts for what he sees as a death with dignity on his own terms.
But if what if that hadn't quite worked out as planned? What if he survived the suicide attempt, and what if the disease was actually more like a full-blown zombie plague when it went into its terminal stage? That worked as a prompt , and I have spent much of the evening drafting it. It's kind of creeping me out, but maybe that will keep me interested in it long enough to finish it. I'm going with Romero-type shamblers as the zombies, too. Classic.