Tag Archives: Sam and Adrian

by

the character you’ve been waiting for–and the cover reveal!

Hi everyone, thanks for sticking with me through this month-long tour of the characters of Sam’s Town, my zombie apocalypse novel releasing…any day now! My fantastic cover artist, Mike Nair, has finished his work, and it looks great! I’m going to show it to you at the end of the post, but if you’re too excited to wait, go ahead and scroll down now (Sam and I would just appreciate if you came back here and read the rest afterward).

Today I want to tell you about Sam, who is both the protagonist of my novel and, to a great extent, my concept of what a good (though flawed) man looks like. Forgive me while I get sappy for a second: I was telling a friend the other day that all this character development I did over the past couple of years–for Adrian, Joe, and Frankie too, but mainly for Sam–helped me to figure out what I was looking for in a man I would want to marry. And right around the time I finished writing my novel this past summer, I met a man like that in real life. My boyfriend, Jordan (who I hope is reading this), has many of Sam’s best qualities–his loyalty, his intelligence, and most of all, his gentleness.

But enough about my personal life. What can I tell you about Sam Larson without taxing your patience with an unusually long post? He’s the writer and illustrator of a web comic called The Adventures of Sparky the Sidekick. He loves movies and will watch just about anything, but some of his favorites are the Godfather trilogy and George Romero’s zombie classics (the latter of which serves him well now that he’s living in a world where zombies actually exist). He’s a good cook who specializes in Italian food, though he doesn’t show off that skill very often. He hates conflict. He likes to feel useful. He struggles with depression. He’s smart and persistent, which makes him good at problem-solving. (In the novel, he tinkers with a vending machine until he figures out how to open it without a key. Which reminds me of another fact about Sam–he loves Coca-Cola.) He has a gift for making other people feel calm, which makes him the perfect counterpart to his frenzied best friend Adrian. He has these enormous pale blue eyes (just like his mother’s) that are always making people ask him if he’s okay, which he finds incredibly frustrating. He constantly underrates himself. He’s stronger than he thinks, physically and mentally, as the circumstances of the novel force him to discover.

Here are some fun facts about Sam:

  • I imagined a version of this character years ago, when I was in high school. His name was Sparky (like the aforementioned sidekick). You can read about the evolution of Sam in this post.
  • I once wrote a post about Mr. (Fred) Rogers in the voice of Sam.
  • Just like I gave some of my random quirks to Adrian and Ramona, I endowed Sam with this (understandable, I think) phobia that I have: He hates to watch people using intravenous needles in movies or TV. Stabbing a zombie in the head, fine. Shooting up heroin or getting an IV, no thank you. He has to look away.

And here are the first two paragraphs of my novel, in which we meet the title character:

You could tell by his apartment that Sam Larson lived alone. There were always a few dishes in the sink and a few pencils and sketchpads sitting around, and there was a sag in the middle of the couch where he usually sat. Sam worked from home, mostly. He taught an occasional art class or appeared at a comic book convention (his name was never high on the billing), but mostly he sat in his apartment and made comics. That was how he liked it.

On the last Friday night in July, Sam made spaghetti carbonara and ate a plate of it.  Then he turned on his epic movie scores station on Pandora and started drawing.  He was working on an installment of The Adventures of Sparky the Sidekick, his superhero web comic that capitalized on the ironic potential of foregrounding the affable best friend and downplaying the character who would normally be the hero.  Sam’s fans—they were few but loyal and willing to express their loyalty with their money—loved Sparky because he was witty and long-suffering and always came out okay in the end, despite all the crap he deflected away from his rather useless best friend.  But none of his fans knew that Sam drew Sparky as a version of himself—a short, round guy with straw-yellow hair and big washed-out-blue eyes that were always making people ask if he was okay.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for: Here’s the cover of Sam’s Town! What’s your favorite part about it? I’ll pass your feedback along to the artist!

cover

Stay tuned for the official release announcement!

by

#Samona, part one

In these final weeks before the release of Sam’s Town, I want to introduce you to two more characters. Next week we’ll finally meet Sam, but today we’re focusing on Ramona Bates (her last name never appears in the novel), a former English professor from “the hillbilly part of Ohio” (her words) who, unlike Sam and Adrian, has never watched a zombie movie or TV show, yet takes to this post-apocalyptic world quite naturally, discovering survival and weapons skills she never knew she had. And oh yes, she falls in love with Sam, though she ends the novel still undecided on whether she would truly describe herself as “in love”—Ramona is an overthinker (and this, along with the English professor part, is directly autobiographical). Although, as I stated last week, Sam and Adrian’s friendship is the cornerstone relationship of the novel, Ramona and Sam’s awkward, by-fits-and-starts romantic relationship plays a key role in both characters’ development. It’s also a favorite storyline of the friends and fellow writers who have read and given feedback on my novel, as evidenced by the celebrity couple hashtag that one of them coined, #Samona.

With Ramona, I hope I have successfully portrayed a realistic female lead character: neither a damsel in distress nor a one-dimensional tough girl. When Sam and Adrian first meet Ramona, who is hitchhiking along a deserted highway in Michigan, she impresses them as strong, smart, and a bit intimidating. (Before taking a nap in the backseat, she threatens to kill anyone who touches her.) But after some late-night, emotionally vulnerable conversations, Sam learns that Ramona is just as insecure as he is. They are drawn together by their mutual kindness and respect, even after they have learned each other’s insecurities. I have learned in my own life that honesty can be kind of sexy. Not coincidentally, it is after Sam opens up to Ramona about his mental health struggles that she first kisses him.

Here are some fun facts about Ramona:

  • In Sam’s Town, we learn that Ramona has a sister that she believes is still living in their hometown. In the sequel, Sam’s Home (which I plan to work on next month during NaNoWriMo!), we learn that the sister is indeed still alive and is named Melissa, that Ramona is the older sister, and that Melissa has an ex-husband named Mike with whom she is back together (and who might turn out to be a bad guy—I haven’t gotten that far in my plotting yet).
  • This is the first time I’ve used the name “Ramona” in a story, but I’ve been tossing it around in my head ever since I heard Bob Dylan’s song “To Ramona” when I was in college. Though I never state this in the novel, I like to think that Ramona’s parents were Dylan fans and that this is perhaps why Ramona so readily recognizes the name of the town where Sam and Adrian are headed: Hibbing, Minnesota (Bob Dylan’s hometown—and Sam’s).

Here’s a 100% autobiographical, totally self-indulgent scene about Ramona’s past as a college professor. It begins with Sam asking her to define a term she has just used, “FERPA” (you’ll have to read the novel to find out how that came up in conversation!).

“It stands for Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It means I don’t have to talk to parents unless my students give their permission, because…” She stopped walking and turned to face him but held onto his hand. “Because my students are legally adults. Sam, I’m a college professor.” She looked down at her feet.

“Oh!” he exclaimed as it all clicked into place. “Sorry, I’m slow. But wait—why do you seem embarrassed about that?”

She sighed, lifting her shoulders exaggeratedly like a little kid. “Because people always treat me differently when they find out. Especially guys. They act like I’m from another planet when they find out—“ she lowered her voice to a whisper—“I have a Ph.D.”

“You have a Ph.D.?!” Sam practically yelled.

“See? Exactly like that,” Ramona huffed.

“Sorry,” he said, laughing a little. “Well, I won’t lie; I’m impressed. But you still seem to be from this planet.” He smiled and tried to make eye contact with her, but she kept looking down.

She absently swung their hands back and forth. “I feel like such a pretentious—person.” She cleared her throat. “And I don’t know; I still feel like a poser when I say I’m a college professor. Like people are thinking I’m too young. Or too—too something. Or not something enough. Sorry.” She finally looked up. “Clearly I’m very insecure.”

“Well, hey! So am I,” Sam said with a fake heartiness, fighting a grin.

Ramona snorted. “Glad we got that off our chests.”

This scene also gave you a little preview of the guy you’ve all been waiting to meet—Sam Larson. Come back next week to learn about my protagonist, whom I love (and I hope you will too!).

by

meet Adrian Fallon, who does not suck as a friend

Hi, everyone! I hope you’re enjoying getting to know the characters of my novel Sam’s Town, which is getting so close to being released. I saw a mock-up of the cover last week, and it looks awesome. I can’t wait for you all to see it.

Today, I’d like you to meet Sam’s best friend, Adrian Fallon. At one time, Adrian was basically a second protagonist. I had been written stories about Sam and Adrian for a few years before I decided to throw them into the zombie apocalypse and make a whole novel out of their adventures. Eventually, Sam came to be the main character, but Adrian still has some crucial point-of-view scenes, and I would argue that his friendship with Sam is the central relationship of the novel, even more so than the romantic connection, which I’ll talk about next week. Adrian and Sam have known each other for fourteen years–since their sophomore year of college. They’ve been through hard times together, eaten many pizzas, had many convoluted all-night conversations on various finer points of geekdom, and watched Night of the Living Dead too many times to count. Their personalities contrast, but they share some crucial hopes and fears, and they understand each other better than nearly anyone else in the world. They look out for each other, like brothers.

I mentioned last week that Adrian is more like me than any of my other characters (though Ramona, whom you’ll meet next week, is a close second). Like me, Adrian is a tense person who gets easily frustrated when he himself, other people, and the world don’t meet his high standards. (As you can imagine, the zombie apocalypse poses a problem for him.) Adrian worries–among other worries–that he isn’t the good friend that Sam needs and deserves, but he’s wrong about that. He’s empathetic and fiercely loyal, and if he says something hurtful in his irrational anger, as occasionally happens, he won’t rest until he’s apologized and done all he can to restore the relationship. All of these, I think, are qualities that Adrian and I share.

Here are a couple of fun facts about Adrian:

  • Speaking of things we have in common: Probably my worst physical habit is picking at my cuticles–especially those of my thumbs–when I’m nervous, sometimes to the point of making them bleed. I gave this habit to Adrian as well.
  • Adrian is from Boston, and I wanted to make him Irish-American but not to hit readers over the head with this. So I added a couple of subtle hints, one of which is that his mother, Eileen, used to make and sell “Celtic” clothing and accessories. I also gave him the last name Fallon, which is Irish but not to the point of caricature…
  • …and is also the last name of a musician whose work I enjoy, Brian Fallon, formerly of The Gaslight Anthem. Like Adrian, Brian Fallon has always seemed to me like a deep thinker and a frustrated person who wants to do what’s right. And Adrian is a musician too, a former high school music teacher who can pick up and play nearly any instrument, and who ends up using a broken guitar as a zombie-slaying weapon.

Here’s a scene about Adrian being frustrated:

It was thirty minutes since Adrian had left the restaurant. He knew this because he always wore a watch. He sat down on the edge of the mine nearest to the town and felt the blood and adrenaline coursing through his body.

The Hull-Rust-Mahoning Mine was nearly three miles long. Most of the zombies had been contained at the opposite end, but one had strayed down to this end—or, more likely, had fallen in from above, and was clawing uselessly at the steep, smooth wall of the pit. It hissed monotonously. Adrian concentrated all his anger on the zombie. He wanted to throw a rock at this idiotic creature that was too stupid to give up. He looked around in the moonlight for a rock he could throw. Although he was sitting on the edge of an enormous quarry, he didn’t see any rocks, which made him angrier.

Adrian lay on his back and looked at the pale, round, mild, stupid face of the moon. He put his forearm over his eyes to block the light. He tried to take deep breaths, but his lungs felt like somebody’s knees were pushing down on them. With a strangled cry, he scrambled to his feet and looked around. Nobody was there, of course. Adrian started running toward the far end of the mine.

Okay, so be honest (even though Adrian is like me, he isn’t, actually, me)–do you like Adrian? Do you think you’d want a guy like him around during the zombie apocalypse?

Stay tuned for next week, when we’ll meet the woman who loves the man that the novel is named after.

by

update on Sam’s Town and Sam’s Home

I haven’t been blogging much this month because I’ve dedicated most of my writing time to editing my zombie apocalypse novel, Sam’s Town, and drafting its sequel, Sam’s Home. Today, I want to give you an update on how all that is going.

My editing of Sam’s Town is nearly complete. I am working through the wonderful comments given to me by a fellow author whose zombie knowledge, eye for sentence structure, and life experience as a young man (something I have never personally experienced!) have been invaluable. I have just a few chapters to go, so I may even finish up within the next few days. From there, my next steps will be to look at self-publishing options, procure a cover illustration (I’m hoping to commission an original work of art), and convert the manuscript from its current format into one that will work for publication. I am planning to release the novel as both an e-book, which I know some of my potential readers will prefer as more cost- and space-effective than a hard copy, and a paperback, because I don’t want to alienate those who don’t own e-readers.

Meanwhile, I have begun working on Sam’s Home, the sequel. Some have asked why I am not planning to combine the relatively short Sam’s Town (just over 50,000 words) and its sequel (which will probably be about the same length) into one novel. The main reason is that I have always thought of the pacing of my novels in terms of a movie. I think that if Sam’s Town were adapted into a film, not much editing would need to be done in order to make it a typical-length feature. I’m not saying this will happen, but it’s easy for me to wrap my mind around a film-like structure. Another, perhaps more important reason is that the ending of Sam’s Town brings Sam’s story to a place of equilibrium. His problems aren’t all solved, but he’s learned a major lesson, and there’s a moment of rest–a deep breath, if you will–before the events of the sequel.

Although Sam’s Home will continue with the themes (which I’ll discuss in a moment) and the style of Sam’s Town, there are a few differences. In the sequel, as in many sequels, the world gets bigger. In the first book, there were basically only six characters. In the sequel, while these six are still the focus, we meet a number of others who aren’t just background characters. Some of them are ill-intentioned, and this is another difference. Whereas in Sam’s Town, the antagonists were zombies and depression, Sam’s Home has some actual bad guys, which I think makes sense because we’re no longer in the opening days of the apocalypse. Bad guys have had time to organize. Another difference is that there are two concurrent plots. While Sam is still the main point-of-view character of one plot, for the other, we are inside the mind of Ramona, who has gone to Ohio to find her sister. It’s been fun for me to write from Ramona’s perspective because I didn’t do that at all in book one. Ramona has a number of superficial resemblances to me, but I’m finding out that we really aren’t that much alike (or maybe we are, and I’m in denial!).

Finally, for those of you who haven’t read or heard any of my novels or talked with me about them at length, I want to give you a little pitch for them, especially for you non-zombie fans. My novels really aren’t about zombies, though I hope that my obvious moments of homage to George Romero’s films and The Walking Dead will satisfy fans of the genre. My novels are about friendship, family, and mental health. I wanted to write about people who are woefully ill-prepared for the zombie apocalypse and show how, despite their clear deficiencies, they survive by taking care of one another. I see my novels as aspirational—not about the ugliness of human evil (though those books are important too), but rather about how we could treat each other if we valued each other. Value, or worth, is a major theme—Sam has to learn that he isn’t just a waste of space, but his life has meaning and is worth saving, even when he feels like there’s nothing he can contribute to the world. If that sounds like an important theme to you, I hope you’ll stay tuned. Sam’s Town is coming soon!

by

rebranding the blog–Let’s try this again.

In spring 2018, I talked a lot about rebranding my blog as a Hufflepuff leadership blog–i.e., a leadership blog for people who are emotionally intelligent and perceptive but don’t feel like natural leaders and maybe don’t feel comfortable in the spotlight at all. I went so far as to come up with a new logo, a badger in a business suit (how cute is that?). I wrote a number of posts related to the proposed focus, which you can read if you look back at February through May 2018, or just search “Hufflepuff leadership.” But right before I was going to make the transition, I left my job, in which I had a leadership role, and took a new position that does not involve leadership except insofar as teachers are leaders in their classrooms. So I didn’t see the point of going through with the rebranding.

Now, I’m once again considering the possibility of giving my blog a facelift and a narrower focus. This time, I am thinking of using the blog as part of my strategy for marketing my zombie apocalypse novel, Sam’s Town, which I would like to release later this year. The rebranding would probably mean a new name and address and a new look, but it would probably not mean that I would only ever post about my novel and/or about zombies–just that these topics would appear more often. I don’t want to alienate readers who aren’t interested in zombies, and I certainly don’t want this blog to become nothing more than a self-promotion instrument (that would be boring for me, too), but I do think it’s smart to “leverage my platform” (did I just write that?) so that my blog can help promote my book, and vice versa.

I’d love to hear your feedback. As always, thank you for reading!

by

What am I going to do this summer?

I just walked home from meeting with my supervisor to go over my first annual evaluation in my new job. This should be the last time I have to go on campus until August–not that I don’t want to be there. It’s just that this is my first summer since starting college that I haven’t been working a job that has regular hours. I’ll be teaching online throughout the summer, which is real work, but it’s work that I can do anywhere (such as looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, which I may do while at Myrtle Beach next week) and anytime (including on BST, British Summer Time, which I’ll be observing while in the UK the following week). So I’m determined not to set foot in my office until my contractual obligations begin again in August.

My summer is almost comically full. For most of June and July, I will be making periodic stops at home just long enough to repack my suitcase, mow my lawn so that it doesn’t look like a jungle, and get the chiropractic adjustments I’ll need after all the flying and driving I’m going to do. Oh, and somewhere in there, I’m getting a haircut. Besides the trips mentioned in the previous paragraph, I will be visiting family in Pennsylvania and friends in Virginia. I also have tentative plans to visit the famed Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the short sliver of the year in which it’s not covered in snow, and I may combine this with a pilgrimage/research trip to northern Minnesota to see the town (Hibbing) in which I set my zombie apocalypse novel but which I’ve never visited. I’m a little nervous to see the real Hibbing, but if I find that my portrayal is wildly inaccurate, I can always change the name to Unspecified Northern Midwestern Town–or chalk the differences up to zombies.

I almost just typed the sentence, “But I don’t want to waste this summer,” and then the smarter and kinder part of my brain was like, “You know that resting, spending time with the people you love, and seeing more of this beautiful world is not ‘wasting’ the summer.” This is true. However, there are a few things I’d like to accomplish besides traveling and teaching online. One is to continue the dent I am making in my reading list. Last fall, I took inventory of the books I had been buying over the past few years and realized that my to-read list was out of control. So I divided the books into categories and have been making my way through a selection of them each month. In my suitcase for the beach trip, I have packed Roald Dahl’s The BFG, which, in the form of a small mass-market paperback, even looks like a light beach read. But I’m also probably going to bring along the massive hardcover biography of Thomas Hardy that might take me into July.

In addition to reading, I would like to start writing the sequel to my zombie novel. I’m still trying to decide what to do with the first one, Sam’s Town (yes, that’s an intentional reference to The Killers’ album), though I’m leaning toward self-publishing it as an e-book. (My reasoning, in short: I want some people to read it, but I don’t have any expectation, need, or desire to make an income from it, so I might as well send it out into the world in the quickest and most straightforward way possible so that the few people who are going to read it can get started on it.) And I plan to make some more revisions to it after my beta readers are finished with it. But in the meantime, I want to start working on the sequel, Sam’s Home. (It’s a pun! “The home of Sam” or “Sam is home.”) I wrote a 200-word scene last week, and I want to keep going while I have the momentum. I know it will involve another road trip, some romance, and probably the death of one of the main characters. But more on that later.

So that’s what I’m going to do this summer. I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll be doing, but I won’t go completely off the radar. Do you have any big plans for the summer?

by

exploring my characters’ pasts

This is going to be an arcane and self-indulgent post that probably only one or two people who read my blog will actually care about. There, you’ve been warned. I may share this in my writing group, though, since some of them might care about it. I have decided to use this post to explore an idea I had the other day regarding my fictional work in progress, “Sam’s Town”–the zombie apocalypse story I have mentioned a number of times on my blog. Originally, Sam was going to be this lonely soul who never got a girlfriend and died at the end of the story. Now, not only does Sam survive, but there’s also Ramona, this “brilliant and startling” (his words) woman who is into him, which he doesn’t understand because he thinks he’s an affable sidekick at best. And now, after this thing I’m about to share, it seems that he may have a history of seemingly out-of-his-league women falling in love with him. It sounds wildly improbable, and it also sounds like a cliche. But as I’m finding that people who read about Sam usually come to love him, it makes sense to me that he would also be lovable (and not just to his parents and friends) within the world of the story.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Here’s what happened: In one of the Facebook writing groups I’m in, an administrator shared a picture of a pretty young woman with stylish hair and clothes, sitting in front of wallpaper with a tortuous yellow pattern on it (this so distracted me with thoughts of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s haunting short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” that for a while I couldn’t think of anything original to write), and lobbed some character development questions at us. This is what I finally wrote in response:

You guys are all so good at politically complex fantasy, dystopian, and historical stories. I’m going with plain old contemporary realism.

This is Charlotte (a nod to the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” 😁). She is the most popular girl in school, but not a mean queen bee—everyone likes her, even teachers. She is smart, poised, and articulate, and she knows what she wants out of life. Well, that last part isn’t true. She has no idea what she wants—only what others expect of her.

She is hiding the fact that she really hates herself most of the time. She hates that she always has to perform. She hates her body, and she is bulimic. This is an open secret among her group of friends—most of them are bulimic too—but she’s hiding the fact that she doesn’t want to do that to herself anymore. (So are all of her friends, actually.)

She is also hiding the fact that she likes the boy who sits in front of her in English. He is quiet and terribly awkward, and his goal in life seems to be to disappear. But Charlotte sees him. She hasn’t told her friends because they wouldn’t understand. They call him Ghost Boy. (And no, he’s not an actual ghost—contemporary realism, you guys. His real name is Peter, by the way.) And she can’t tell him because he would think she was just making fun of him. So she just keeps playing her role. THE END (for now)

Almost immediately after I wrote that–actually, maybe while I was still writing it–it occurred to me that this Peter fellow sounds an awful lot like my character Sam (now in his early 30s) as he describes his teenage self. The disappointing interpretation of this is that I only know how to write one male character, over and over, with slight variations. The more cheerful interpretation is that this is Sam and I need to incorporate this into his backstory. I had already come up with a vaguely outlined character named Becky Olson, whom Sam had liked in high school and who might show up again (not as a zombie) in my vaguely planned sequel, but this so-called Charlotte is quite a bit different from Becky, who was supposed to be sweet and quiet and sort of a background type like Sam.

It would be interesting and perhaps vindicating for my Sam fans if the adult Charlotte (also not a zombie) confessed her teenage feelings for Sam, but would it be realistic? Even if she did like Sam back then, would she remember all these years later? Is it a bit corny and idealistic for all these attractive, put-together women to be falling in love with shlubby, semi-reclusive Sam? I think the answers to those questions are probably no, no, and yes, and yet–I can’t help imagining a flashback scene in which Charlotte goes (with her parents, or some friends, or a date) to Clemenza’s, the restaurant where Sam works, and they strike up this awkward, “oh, you’re in my English class” conversation (even though each knows perfectly well who the other is), and even though Sam is just a busboy, he gets her some cannoli in a takeout box, and he rambles on to her about all the ingredients and how good the cannoli is at Clemenza’s and how he’s been practicing at home and he can almost make it like the chefs here do. And she still remembers all these years later.

I’m almost equally torn between gushing and gagging at what I just wrote. If you’ve read this far, let me know what you think.

by

planes, trains, and radical hospitality

This past weekend, my family watched the John Hughes comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) like we do every Thanksgiving. This movie works so well because the two main characters, played by Steve Martin and John Candy, subvert stereotypes that are often present in run-of-the-mill comedies. Martin’s character, Neal Page, is a twist on the workaholic dad character so common in 1980s and 90s family comedies. Unlike most of those characters, Neal desperately wants to get home to his family, but can’t because of a relentless series of logistical mishaps. He also embodies the tightly-wound neurotic character type, but whereas that type often appears as an antagonist or as merely the butt of unkind humor, Neal, as the point of view character of the film, is utterly sympathetic. Candy’s character, Del Griffith, (SPOILER ALERT–but seriously, you’ve had 31 years to see this movie) is a homeless widower, a character who might be a tiresomely pathetic victim in a lesser movie, but he’s also that annoying guy who sits next to you on an airplane and talks your ear off. But as we, through Neal, get to know Del, we are led into sympathy with him as well, and we come to understand that he talks because he’s lonely. He is vulnerable not only because he is a homeless widower but also because he is a traveling salesman–someone who, like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, survives by the good will of others–but he is also incredibly savvy and resilient.

I realized this year, more than ever before, how much I relate to Neal Page, especially in his very physical and verbal displays of frustration. I really see myself in the scene where he throws an almost acrobatic tantrum–and literally throws his car rental agreement–in the remote parking lot where he gets stranded after he gets dropped off at the alleged parking space of a rental car that doesn’t exist. Co-workers probably think Neal is a calm, mild-mannered guy, but he has high standards for himself, other people, and the universe at large, and when those standards aren’t met, he doesn’t know what to do. So he explodes, and sometimes he hurts people. I can relate, so very much. (I gave a major character in the zombie apocalypse story I just finished writing, Adrian Fallon, this same flaw. I also realized after watching the movie on Friday how much the road trip elements of my story had been influenced by Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.)

I think nearly everyone can relate to Neal–who, again, is the character through whom we experience the story–in one respect. The whole way through the film, we’ve been imagining, along with Neal, these idyllic scenes of what his family must be doing at home. Through him, we’ve experienced the gradual stripping away of comforts he has always taken for granted–money, transportation, warmth, privacy, security. (These are things, by the way, that Del, a perpetual traveler, cannot take for granted. I think the heavy trunk he carries around represents the burden of the constant stress of the road.) By the end, we, along with Neal, want nothing more than to go home, take a shower, eat Thanksgiving dinner, and go to bed. Yet (spoiler again) Neal makes the radical decision to turn around and invite Del to share Thanksgiving, one of the most intimate holidays, with his family. There’s a lot of talk today in the blogosphere, the publishing industry, churches, etc. about “radical hospitality.” Planes, Trains, and Automobiles shows us, profoundly, that tired, frustrated, flawed people are the ones who can best show such hospitality.

 

 

by

getting psyched for NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, not an official holiday but the flagship event of the eponymous nonprofit organization. If you complete a 50,000-word novel during the month, you can claim to have “won” NaNoWriMo, though it’s not a competition. I did this once, almost 10 years ago. I wrote a novel, heavily inspired by The Dark Knight and Harry Potter, about a man who goes around taking the punishment for other people’s crimes. I had also been reading a lot of George Eliot at the time, so my prose in the novel is very dense, and my narrator often breaks out into philosophy. Unless you already know a lot about guns and police procedures, crime drama is not a good genre for NaNoWriMo because there’s little time for research. So my novel, which I self-published as A Man of No Reputation, has a lot of problems, but it inspired a number of themes that continue to appear in my writing, such as loneliness, self-sacrifice, and a protagonist with a perpetually sad-looking face (he can’t help it; it’s just what his face looks like!).

This year, I’ve decided to use NaNoWriMo as motivation to complete the zombie apocalypse narrative I have been working on, slowly, for over a year. I won’t be able to claim to have “won,” since I have no intention of writing 50,000 words; I am at roughly 26,000, and my story arc is nearing its end. (I’m not sure what the finished project will be properly called–a long short story? a novella? I’m mainly thinking of it as the source text for a movie.) Since November starts this Thursday, I want to take a few minutes to look back on the changes my story has gone through and forward to how it might end up. (I really do mean “might”; I have a general idea but no actual outline. I am what they call, in writers’ group lingo, a “pantser”–I plot by the seat of my pants.)

Originally, although I was and still am calling my story a (dark) comedy, my main character was going to die. It was going to be a beautiful, self-sacrificial death, kind of like in my 2009 NaNoWriMo project. I maintain that a comedy can end with the main character(s) dying, like in (spoiler alert) Thelma and Louise, a major inspiration for my story along with Zombieland and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (yes, I’m writing a road trip story). But after getting a lot of feedback about how much people in my writing groups loved my main character, Sam Larson, I started to reconsider killing him off. Yes, I was partly trying to please my audience (not a bad thing), but it also occurred to me that perhaps I could better reinforce one of the themes of my story by allowing Sam to survive.

That theme is LIFE, and it’s a theme uniquely suited to a zombie narrative, which is permeated with a grotesque parody of life. Readers learn early in the story that Sam suffers from clinical depression and that about ten years ago, he attempted suicide. Although Sam has learned to live with depression and no longer wants to die, he constantly struggles to believe that his life has value, especially in this new world in which people tend to be judged by their physical prowess and survival skills. (I’ve written extensively on my blog about this issue in zombie apocalypse narratives.) I think I could still convey this theme with Sam dying a heroic death at the end, but I believe the theme will come through even more clearly if I show him living.

I’m also using a motif that is especially suited to the zombie subgenre: eating. People are constantly eating in my story, whether it’s oatmeal heated up over a fire on the side of the road or a full Italian meal in the safe house. Of course, zombies are always eating too, but they derive no joy or satisfaction from this meaningless activity. In contrast, I wanted to show my characters enjoying food as a gift of life and sharing it with each other. So the eating scenes are not throwaways but integral to the message of my story.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Are there any other themes and motifs you can think of that are particularly appropriate to zombie stories? Let me know in the comments!

by

how Harry Potter defeated Voldemort

Over the weekend, I responded to a Facebook post asking how the main character of the story I’m writing would respond if he were in the place of the main character of the last movie I watched. The last movie I watched happened to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (the odds were pretty good), and the main character in my zombie apocalypse story is Sam Larson, whom you can read about here and here. I said that Sam wouldn’t be in Harry’s position at all; he’d be in Hufflepuff minding his own business. But, I wrote, if he did happen to find himself in such a critical situation, he’d probably do what Harry did: sacrifice himself for his friends and accomplish a quiet, understated defeat over evil.

That last part surprised me as I wrote it. My character, Sam, is certainly quiet and understated. But what’s quiet and understated about the most epic battle between good and evil of our time? With wands and spells and people flying through the air and Hogwarts castle burning to the ground? The answer is that Voldemort isn’t defeated in a battle. He’s defeated after a battle. In the final movie, which follows roughly the last one-third of the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the first half is loud and fast, with lots of cuts and lots of people on the screen at any given time. Then, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione slip away from the aftermath of the battle and witness the intensely private death of Severus Snape, things slow down. Harry watches Snape’s memories and learns his fate alone (and this is quite a long scene in the movie), and he walks into the woods to face Voldemort alone, except for the unseen presence of the spirits of his loved ones. When Voldemort finally faces Harry, there’s no music and no sound from the other characters, just Voldemort’s curse ripping through the silence.

A quiet, thoughtful conversation between Dumbledore and Harry ensues in Harry’s personal version of limbo, a whited-out King’s Cross Station (even the muted color creates a sense of hush in this scene). And when Harry returns to life, he stays silent, pretending to still be dead, until the right moment. Keeping quiet about his defeat of death is surely difficult for the ultimate Gryffindor, but Harry has learned wisdom to balance out his eagerness.

Once Harry reveals that he isn’t dead, chaos breaks out, and the battle resumes, but it isn’t the focus of the story. In the book, everyone eventually stops fighting and watches and listens while Harry and Voldemort face off and Harry gives a long, detailed explanation of the Horcruxes and why the Elder Wand doesn’t work for Voldemort–why, in fact, Tom Riddle is already defeated. In the movie, the conversation is much shorter, and the face-off has no audience; Harry and Voldemort fight alone on the ramparts of their mutually beloved school. Both portrayals, in different ways, value privacy over display and wisdom over physical force. Voldemort goes out, to quote T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang but a whimper.” And, in an anticlimactic but perfect move, Harry destroys the wand that brings about Voldemort’s defeat, knowing that it would come to defeat others.

Much has been written on how the valued qualities of all four Hogwarts houses are necessary in the defeat of Voldemort, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone explain how Harry comes to embody all four in the end. (I’m sure someone has written about this; I just haven’t seen it.) Obviously, Harry is most of all brave like the Gryffindor he is. He faces death, “the last enemy” as the Apostle Paul puts it. But he is also incredibly logical and thoughtful, like a Ravenclaw, figuring out the wand conundrum that still confuses me a little bit every time I read the book. He is wise in a different way, too–“wise as a serpent” (to use Jesus’ words), shrewd like a Slytherin, knowing when to hold back information and when to reveal it. And like a Hufflepuff, he gives credit to the others who participated in Voldemort’s defeat. Harry knows that although he is the Chosen One, his bravery, wisdom, and cunning would fall short if not for the friends he remains loyal to, even when (as he often is) he is tempted to strike out on his own. And not just friends, but surprising allies like Snape.

Well, shoot, I just made myself cry while blogging–AGAIN. Harry Potter fans, I’m interested to know what you think about all this. Let me know in the comments.