Artist/photographer David A. Reeves is one of my very favorite artists because he uses paper cut art to create haunting photographic scenes. I am a paper cut artist so pretty much anyone who does something cool with paper cut art is cool by me. Bonus that he does paper cut art with zombies and the video game Limbo. So he’s pretty much the love of my art life. Check him out here.
Samples of some of my favorite shots:
Happy Thursday zombie friends!
So, for a while I’ve been kind of, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for…ho-hum? How about boring? Can I meet your boring and raise you an idle and uninspired?
Well I’m getting my groove back and starting Monday I’ll be back to bringing you more College of Blogging posts, more writing posts, more inspiration and maybe just a little bit of awesome. What do you think? You guys all good with that? Next week I’m actually bringing back Hot Dystopian Summer Nights ! I’ll talk dystopian all next week and if you want to read what I covered last year, here’s a list of posts: Hot Dystopian Summer Nights 2010!
But first I must share with you one of the MOST WONDERFUL engagement announcement pictures ever by a lovely, inspiring couple from California. These pictures are spreading like wildfire across the internet, and the reason I am reposting them here is because the photographer has been so cute about them being posted everywhere. Photographer Amanda Rynda said in an interview here, “I can’t say I’m surprised. I think viral activity is part of the zombie nature, right?”
Tell me these are the best engagement photos ever?
[throws tantrum]
[begins story]
Last night I was participating in a conversation on Twitter (was it a conversation or a great act of coercion? we may never know.) I was tweeting along merrily when all of the sudden my lights died and I was bathed in the warm blue glow of my laptop screen.
And then I heard my husband calling up for me from the inky basement where his office is because he couldn’t find his way to the stairs without breaking his neck. We fumbled around in the dark, searching for phones to use as flashlights because we couldn’t find any of the real flashlights except the one that shoots a red laser dot that belongs to the cats who thought it was incredibly nice of us to play with them before bed.
One glance out the window proved it wasn’t just us, our neighborhood had gone dark thoroughly. Minutes ticked by as we scrambled to put on non-pajamas and like our neighbors, we left our home because at least there was ambient moonlight outside and nothing but solid walls of darkness and cats desperately trying to trip us down the stairs.
We stood out on our lawns, the whole neighborhood, with our eyes turned to the sky and now I wonder if we were looking for aliens or help from above, or who knows? I don’t know why we expected the magic electricity fairy to descend from above, but there we were, searching the skies, looking for any light in the darkness.
I don’t know how long we stood searching when the low flying helicpoter buzzed our rooftops and climbed about six blocks away and began circling. This left us in a bit of a twittered state as we ran around guessing at what this could mean. From a distance the wail of fire engines and police cars echoed through our neighborhood. We could see nothing, but oh boy we coudl hear it.
My anxiety level reached a fevered pitch at about that point and I declared that I would go out into the darkness and bring back news. Inside my chest, like a weight, was a persistant need to know, and since our public power district customer service numbers were all tied up, I assumed the worst. Aliens. Terrorists. Zombies. Nothing was out of the realm of possibility.
So I convinced my husband to get into the car with me, at which time the headlights nearly blinded us since we’d been at least 20 minutes with only somber moonlight and phone light to guide our way. A few blocks from our house and we saw that the darkness stretched on a lot further than we expected, and also I didn’t anticipate the street lights being out and the sudden and ridiculous number of drivers who suddenly forgot how to drive. Turning left from my neighborhood was nearly suicidal but we managed to creep along, searching for any sign that the world hadn’t gone dark and that my blog presence had about 2 hours of battery life before it too would be gone. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little worried about it and my Twitter account.
We managed to find a grocery store outside our neighborhood that had power. Inside we bought cheap flashlights and tried the power company again. This time we got through and this is what we learned:
Someone driving a car erratically, on a phone, plowed with enormous speed into the power box about seven blocks away from our house and took out the power for 1500 people. Because police and fire trucks were on the scene assisting the idiot driver, crews couldn’t get to the power box yet to assess the damage, but they were thinking the electricity would be back by 1am.
We returned home and used our new flashlights for all of about 5 minutes before deciding there was nothing to do but go to bed, which provided my second lesson for the night: I am so screwed if we suffer a social collapse or apocolypse. Without my computer or books, I am quite boring.
My first lesson actually came earlier when we returned from seeking knowledge about our situation and I felt 100% better with information I could use. In a social collapse or apocolypse, I am going to be playing the role of the person who Must Collect Information To Form Plans and Make Decisions. I will be part of the plucky hero group who go explore the island because there might be a monster or starbucks there. I will be the one to tell our group to Stay Calm Until We Know More. I will be the one driving around in the dark, searching for answers.
I also learned, Lesson 3, that I am not the only person with this character trait. There were a lot of people out walking towards electrified civilization last night, flashlights in hand, almost everyone in groups of 2 or 3, meeting on corners to exchange What is Known in order to Form Plans.
Lesson 4: Most people do not have this trait and are too afraid to go out into the dark. There are more people who will pile out of their houses to form groups of worried survivors who stand in their lawn, staring into the sky.
Lesson 5: There are also a lot of people who stay inside and stare out their windows at the people forming bonds and connections on their lawn. Those people, I suspect, are the party members who betray the group for their own gain and maybe carry machetes and scowls. Maybe. I never got a chance to check because they didn’t leave their house.
It is 7:52am. I have been awake since 5:45am and I had to dress myself in the dark because there was no power still. I took a shower and my dumb-ass self grabbed for my hair dryer like it was special. So I am at work, in clothes that thankfully match, with wet hair.
Ho-ho, and I thought I had nothing to post about today.
I have two big events and a blogfest to tell you about:
My husband’s high school is hosting an event Wednesday, June 8th, called YA Authors Night. Five really awesome authors are coming to town to spend three hours talking to kids about their books, about writing, and why reading is so important. It’s open to the community, free books and free food will be provided. My husband and I are, of course, going and not just because I’m about to go all fangirly over these authors. I was honored to be asked by the school’s librarian to create a flyer for the event. (I even got to name the event!) I was so nervous about this task, but I think it turned out pretty cool. I’m really proud of the librarian and the school for putting this together.
The five authors are:
OMG I AM GOING TO MEET ELLEN HOPKINS YOU GUYS WHAT.
Lisa McMann’s book Wake was one of the first YA books I read when I started getting into reading YA. I am also interested in reading her book Cryer’s Cross. I’ve read Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King and Please Ignore Vera Dietz is very high on my MUST READ list. I have not read Matt de la Pena or Coe Booth but they are now on my radar. They are a little outside my usual reading (I am not their intended demographic) but I’ve read nothing but awesome things about them.
This is going to be one of the coolest events I’ve ever attended. These sort of events – talking with students in an open dialogue with several of my fellow writers – is one of the things I look forward to most about publishing. I can’t wait.
It is con season again and I’m floored.
CONTAGION OUTBREAK POP CULTURE EXPO, is this Friday-Sunday June 10-12th.The last two years I’ve done a play by play update from Osfest (Omaha Sci-fi Festival) throughout the weekend, and I may be doing that for Contagion – I’m not sure yet. We’re waffling about getting a hotel room, but because there is a zombie walk on Saturday (we’re raising money for three local charities by dressing up like zombies and moaning our way through downtown streets. HELLS YEAH) and I’m not going to want to walk around the convention all day in zombie gore and having a hotel room would better facilitate a shower. Of course I live 20 minutes away from the expo so it feels weird to get a hotel room. We’ll see!
Some of the highlights of the convention that I am most looking forward to:
Meeting Jewel Staite of Firefly fame. I love her character on Firefly, but she is practicing in one of my biggest convention pet peeves. To get her autograph you have to pay $30. To get a picture with her is an additional $20. I hate when celebrities do this. I could never look someone in the eye and be like, “Sure I’ll sign your book. That’ll be $30. Sucker.” You could buy the whole Firefly series on DVD for less than her autograph. I am looking forward to her Q&A panel though.
Another rockin’ blogfest by my favorite Alex J. Cavanaugh:
It’s All Fun & Games Blogfest, June 6, 2011 – list your three most favorite games and why. Board games, card games, RPG, video games, physical games, drinking games - even mind games! If it’s a game you enjoy playing, it’s worth sharing.
1. Cheating (only a little) but my favorite video games are by video game company Bioware: Mass Effect (1 and 2), DragonAge (all of them), and Jade Empire. I love them because they are fantastic stories, intriguing mysterious, and AWESOME character development. I know that’s weird for video games, but Bioware gets an A+ for character development. Also dialogue:
Alistair: Were you really locked up in that cage for twenty days?
Sten: It may have been more like thirty. I stopped counting after a while.
Alistair: What did you do? Twenty days is a long time.
Sten: On good days, I posed riddles to passers-by, offering treasures for the correct answers.
Alistair: Really?
Sten: No.
Kang the mad: I am Kang the Mad. I make things explode, and I make things fly, and I’m very good at both. The things I fly tend to survive. The things I explode… not so much.
Leliana: “You aren’t all stone, Shale. There is a person inside of you.”
Shale: “If so, it is because I ate him.”
2. Betrayal at the House on the Hill – a board game that throws all the horror movies and books youv’e ever seen and watched into one game. For the first half of the game you explore a house on the hill, a haunted house, turning over rooms and dealing with whatever is inside. At some point a character triggers the betrayal and one character (usually the one triggering the betrayal) becomes the betrayer. He leaves the room with a set of rules while the rest of the group get their own. The betrayer has a purpose for the second half of the game and it is usually to do terrible things to the rest of the players. The rest of the players try to survive. There are 50 different scenarios and the same scenario could be played 50 times without the exact same results. It is a wonderful game for replay value.
There are twelve potential characters to play, though only 6 at a time. They are all stereotypes of horror stories: the mad scientist, the priest, the professor, the creepy little girl from New Orleans, the sweet little blond pigtailed girl, the naughty little boy, the apple pie little boy, the busty co-ed, the nerdy college girl, the Lara Croft girl, the big stupid strong guy, the gypsy woman, etc.
3. We Didn’t Play Test This At All- a card game where the cards change the rules as you play the game. Sometimes the game ends in minutes, other times much longer. It is great game to play while you pass some time with a group of friends or makes a great drinking game for the 21+ players. Infections and ridiculous, it is a lot of fun to play.
From the publisher’s website:
“The most aptly named game ever!
In this exceptionally silly and awesome game, your objective is to win! Simple enough. Sadly, all of your opponents have the same simple goal, and they’re trying to make you lose. Between Rock Paper Scissors battles, being eaten by a random Dragon, or saved by a Kitten Ambush, there are many hazards to avoid.”
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
Finally, a dystopian for boys! Ok, that was mean, but Ship Breaker has very little of the romantic, emotional subplots that most female-centric dystopians possess which was both refreshing and grim because Paolo’s dystopia is really scary. I adored the imagery, particularly when they traveled to Orleans. Really, the storytelling is top notch, no wonder it won the Michael L. Printz award for 2011.
I didn’t know this was a series, but after checking GoodReads and it is listed as “Ship Breaker #1″ I guess that means it is. Interestingly enough, the ending could be a true ending and work just fine, but there is also plenty of space to keep going.
via Goodreads. Set initially in a future shanty town in America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being dissembled for parts by a rag tag group of workers, we meet Nailer, a teenage boy working the light crew, searching for copper wiring to make quota and live another day. The harsh realities of this life, from his abusive father, to his hand to mouth existence, echo the worst poverty in the present day third world. When an accident leads Nailer to discover an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, and the lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl, Nailer finds himself at a crossroads. Should he strip the ship and live a life of relative wealth, or rescue the girl, Nita, at great risk to himself and hope she’ll lead him to a better life. This is a novel that illuminates a world where oil has been replaced by necessity, and where the gap between the haves and have-nots is now an abyss. Yet amidst the shadows of degradation, hope lies ahead.
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This book scared the holy hell out of me and that’s not even an exaggeration.
If you could have seen me while reading this book! I spent a lot of time with my mouth open, feeling like I’d maybe possibly taken a hallucinogenic before trying to read a perfectly respectable novel. Slice of Cherry is something like Alice in Wonderland if it were populated by Bret Easton Ellis characters. Had Christian Bale popped up in the narrative with a chain saw I wouldn’t have even been very surprised. Slice of Cherry is something altogether different from typical Young Adult books. It’s gorgeous and terrifying and I’ve never been so in love with psychopaths in all my life.
EDIT: While writing this little blurb, I went to GoodReads to get the book cover and…realized the listing was called Slice of Cherry (Portero #2). My reaction: WTF NUMBER TWO?!?! OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE. I knew Dia had written another book called Bleeding Violet, but it had never caught my attention because covers with miscellaneous lady body parts, particularly dangly legs, seem to inspire a pavlovian reaction of disinterest in me. I did not know Slice of Cherry built on Bleeding Violet, though while I haven’t read Bleeding Violet I think they are more companion novels set in the same universe than sequels to each other. Someone correct me if I’m wrong about this and confirm that I have actually read a book series out of order.
DOUBLE EDIT: I just checked Dia Reeves’s website and the fact that she has happy looking rainbows on her site makes my head explode by way of cognitive dissonance. What I want to know is who does she think she’s fooling? Anyone that can write books like Slice of Cherry should not be allowed anywhere near a rainbow. Just you wait, blogosphere. One of these days you’ll be reading her blog and suddenly those rainbows are going to open up and swallow you into a world of OMG WHAT IS THAT MONSTER COMING TOWARDS ME. And then don’t complain I didn’t warn you.
via Goodreads. Kit and Fancy Cordelle are sisters of the best kind: best friends, best confidantes, and best accomplices. The daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy are used to feeling like outsiders, and that’s just the way they like it. But in Portero, where the weird and wild run rampant, the Cordelle sisters are hardly the oddest or most dangerous creatures around.
It’s no surprise when Kit and Fancy start to give in to their deepest desire—the desire to kill. What starts as a fascination with slicing open and stitching up quickly spirals into a gratifying murder spree. Of course, the sisters aren’t killing just anyone, only the people who truly deserve it. But the girls have learned from the mistakes of their father, and know that a shred of evidence could get them caught. So when Fancy stumbles upon a mysterious and invisible doorway to another world, she opens a door to endless possibilities….
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XVI by Julia Karr
XVI is a dystopian that doesn’t jump us light years into some TRON-like technological future, and I really like that. It feels more realistic and the gadgetry more plausible and I really enjoyed the side characters which really doesn’t happen as often as it should. I thought it was marketed a little weird since the whole “sex-teen” thing wasn’t really as big of a deal in the story as all the copy and blurbs made it out to be. Thank God, although I’d have liked to have seen a deeper dive into the consequences of a world that treats its women so much more like objects than people. That was my only complaint. The side characters, most of whom are boys, don’t treat the girls any different even though society seems to be teaching all the other males in the population to treat them like objects. So I don’t know, but it didn’t detract from my absolute enjoyment of the world and the characters. The characters really made this book for me, particularly Wei, Sal, and the grandparents. Also the ending felt like it was only the first in a series of books? But I can’t find any mention of a second book anywhere. I’d very much like to read more Julia Karr and I’d love to read more about the world she built in XVI. OH Oh oh, also? Really shiver-worthy villain. I kind of wish he was in the book more than he was, but maybe because he was just on the periphery made him so upsetting a character.
EDIT: Serendipity! The day I was prepping this post and checking Julia’s website, she posted that XVI is going to have a sequel and it just got it’s title: TRUTH. Can’t wait to see what’s next for Nina and Sal.
HEY. You don’t have an excuse not to check XVI out because Julia has put the first chapter up for free on her blog. Check it out!
via GoodReads: Nina Oberon’s life is pretty normal: she hangs out with her best friend, Sandy, and their crew, goes to school, plays with her little sister, Dee. But Nina is 15. And like all girls she’ll receive a Governing Council-ordered tattoo on her 16th birthday. XVI. Those three letters will be branded on her wrist, announcing to all the world—even the most predatory of men—that she is ready for sex. Considered easy prey by some, portrayed by the Media as sluts who ask for attacks, becoming a “sex-teen” is Nina’s worst fear. That is, until right before her birthday, when Nina’s mom is brutally attacked. With her dying breaths, she reveals to Nina a shocking truth about her past—one that destroys everything Nina thought she knew. Now, alone but for her sister, Nina must try to discover who she really is, all the while staying one step ahead of her mother’s killer.
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Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase
Yes, I read a romance novel. Yes, it was naughty. Yes, I was completely shocked out of my shoes that I actually liked it. I promise it was not for lack of trying. It’s not that I have anything against romance as a genre, it’s just that I really don’t care for formula writing very much. I’m also not crazy about the implication many take that all women want to have romance forced upon them by a lord/duke/king/sheik/emperor/pirate whatever.
In any case, I must give Loretta Chase credit where credit is due because she wrote two exceptional main characters despite the formula or the genre. Jessica was a strong, interesting, fully realized character and Dain was interesting and moody and really unlikeable a lot of the time and not perfect or beautiful at all. It had a Beauty and the Beast twist to it that I liked very much. I thought Jessica was well written outside the typical British heroine box and I admit when she shot Dain in front of all his friends I threw my hands up and whooped with joy. It was awesome. It was a friend’s fault I even knew this book existed, but I blame the mini series North & South for putting me in the mood for a British romance in the first place. Now I’m knee deep in Downtown Abbey. Who else loves British romances? What is it about all those gentlemen and ladies and uncomfortable but beautiful clothes that just screams dashing young lovers and shocking, secretive passion? If you like British romance, the scene in Lord of Scoundrels in the rain beneath a lampost will make your toes curl, I promise.
via Goodreads. Sebastian Ballister, the notorious Marquess of Dain, is big, bad, and dangerous to know. No respectable woman would have anything to do with the “Band and Blight of the Ballisters” – and he wants nothing to do with respectable women. He’s determined to continue doing what he does best – sin and sin again – and all that’s going swimmingly, thank you… until the day a shop door opens and she walks in.
She’s too intelligent to fall for the worst man in the world…
Jessica Trent is a determined young woman, and she’s going to drag her imbecile brother off the road to ruin, no matter what it takes. If saving him – and with him, her family and future – means taking on the devil himself, she won’t back down. The trouble is, the devil in question is so shockingly irresistible, and the person who needs the most saving is – herself!
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March is a HUGE release month for me. There are too many books coming out in March that I’m desperate to get my hands on, so I had to slim my spotlight to only 4. Tough choice, but here are the four I will probably read first.
The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan
Release Date: March 22, 2011
Must-Have Reason: The third and final installment in Carrie Ryan’s amazing ZOMBIE series The Forest of Hands and Teeth. I just…need to know how it ends!!! More zombies, more zombies for me.
Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Release Date: March 22, 2011
Must-Have Reason: This cover was released more than a year ago and I remember having a minor heart attack right along with the rest of the YA blogging community. This cover is so gorgeous, one of the few books with models on the cover that completely captures my heart. It wasn’t until many, many months later did we even find out what this book is about. And lucky for us, the premise is as cool as its cover.
Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon
Release Date: March 29, 2011
Must-Have Reason: The first book in this series, Silver Phoenix, blew my freaking mind. This fantasy is one of the very few non-western fantasy stories out there and Cindy’s imagination is worth every word. It feels like I’ve been waiting years for this book to come out, and now that it is finally here I almost can’t take the suspense. I so can’t wait to see what has happened to my favorite Asian fairy tale.
The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta
Release Date: March 8th, 2011
Must-Have Reason: Um, because I have a huge author crush on Melina Marchetta? Isn’t that a good enough reason? No? Ok well, The Piper’s Son is a companion to Melina’s to-die-for book Saving Francesca with some of the same characters but focused on one of the side characters who totally stole my heart right out from under the main character’s nose. This book has been out for a long time in Australia, but has finally made it state-side. Of the four books on this list, this is the one I have pre-ordered.
Zombies!
I haven’t posted many good zombie things lately. Sorry about that.
But! I’m ready to rectify that with an exciting new video game coming to XBox 360 (and PS3 and the computer I think) called DeadIsland. It is a first person shooter RPG with drop in/out co-op play like Left 4 Dead. If you’re not a gamer, that’s cool. This information is probably boring to you then. But! The trailer for the game is one of the coolest trailers for a game I’ve ever seen, forget that it is about zombies. The trailer is gorgeous and sad. Evisceration never looked so heartbreaking. I think playing the game will be more terrifying, but the trailer is quite beautiful. If you like your horror to be kind of lovely and sad and scary all at the same time.
So here is the first trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqrG1bdGtg
And here is the second recut trailer going backwards (which will make sense only after you watch the original.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BoIqVn-qB4
Here is the official website but alas, it isn’t up and running quite yet. Apparently the game is due out sometime this year, so I suspect the site will be up and running soon too.
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Deadline by Mira Grant, the second book in the Newsflash trilogy (the first, FEED I reviewed here) comes out in May and I bloody can’t wait. FEED was so, so good and the writing was so gutsy. I loved every minute of it. Here’s the cover, and here’s a blurb. Isn’t Mira great?
via GoodReads. Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn’t seem as fun when you’ve lost as much as he has.
But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.
Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.
For my 30th birthday my very best friend in the whole world, costume designer Lydia Dawson, made me zombie-love art. For most this would be totally inappropriate and scream-worthy, but for me it was like she reached into my soul and plucked out my greatest wish. Lydia is currently finishing up her thesis, a steampunk look for Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. I’ll be flying up on March 4th to see it and I absolutely can’t wait. Good luck, girlfriend!
I also think it is quite Valentine’s Day appropriate. Don’t you?
“My Heart For Yours”
I apologize for the grainy photos. My scanner decided to be zombie shy and wouldn’t talk with Photoshop so I had to take these with my camera phone. Trust me when I tell you these pictures don’t do it justice. It is WAY more gruesome in person. It lives on my bookshelf in my office next to the book FEED by Mira Grant, appropriately a zombie novel. I didn’t do this on purpose, it’s just where the alphabet fell last time I added new books.
GRUESOME and AWESOME.
Ok, creepy time. When I took the frame apart to take a picture of the art without getting a reflection of me in my pajamas in the photograph, I realized that the piece had become imprinted in the glass. Like a creepy ghost story. You could only see it when I held it up to a dark background but there it is. CREEPY ZOMBIE LOVERS FOR EVERYONE.
I have to admit, I only barely resisted the urge to make gruesome zombie valentine cards for my card giveaway. I wanted to so bad, but since I don’t know all of the people who wanted one, and even those I did know, I wasn’t sure how well that would go down. “That Tell Great Stories chick is crazy! She sent me a watercolor Valentine card of real hearts and zombies and tried to make it romantic. Idon’tthinkso. LOCK UP YOUR KIDS.“
Instead I’ve got robots and trees and secret messages and stuff. Still cool. Less bloody. I was going to mail them all out today, but I’m not quite done with all of them. I think they’ll all be out by Friday which should still get them to everyone by Monday.
Day 19.
Sorry this is late going up. I’ve been stricken with the plague and just woke up from sleeping for 15 hours straight and I had not had it prepared ahead of time. On the plus side, I feel incredibly well rested. Still sick though.
I haven’t gotten much writing done this week due to said plague. Also other things I will talk about later, but I needed a pick-me-up story this late in the game of someone winning even after not winning NaNo since I do not think I’ll make 50,000 words this year.
I didn’t know this until earlier this month when she posted it, but the very awesome Carrie Ryan‘s popular YA zombie book The Forest of Hands and Teeth was a NaNoWriMo book she started in 2006. Something “different” for her that ended up becoming such a beloved series.
So here is her story of not winning NaNoWriMo but in the end writing and editing a great book series. Enjoy and have a great weekend full of writing. We are almost to the end.
I was a stickler for the rules and so I started casting about for a new idea — something to stretch my writing voice and take me in a new direction — and that’s when JP (my husband) suggested I write what I love which was zombies and that was that. A year later I sold The Forest of Hands and Teeth. -Carrie Ryan
