Dayna Ingram's Blog, page 4

Label Me

I am catalogued in the the Library of Congress:



Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ingram, Dayna.
 Eat your heart out : a novella / Dayna Ingram.
      p. cm.
 ISBN 978-1-59021-333-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1.  Lesbians--Fiction. 2.  Zombies--Fiction.  I. Title.
 PS3609.N4686E28 2011
 813'.6--dc23
                                                           2011039634



I am glad they have their priorities in line with mine, listing "lesbians" first and "zombies" second. 

Does this mean I can have a Wikipedia page now? My dream!

 

Cover Me

 

Much sleeker than the one I imagined up just for funsies a year ago.
Back-cover text explosion: "A breakneck tale of kick-ass, wise-ass, sexy-ass lesbians and ZOMBIES, Eat Your Heart Out opens on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee's Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez—hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise—and actual ZOMBIES, leaving Ashbee's hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can't lock.
Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend? Will Renni's experience slaughtering motion-captured CGI monsters save the day before the army bombs the town? Once bitten, how many zombies can a person expect to take out before succumbing to infection? Who is the mysterious Deus Ex Machina, and what is he doing with that bone saw?
All of these questions and more whisper behind the scream of the single most important thing Devin needs to know in order to survive: is Renni a top or a bottom?"



As you can see, a lot has changed since I wrote my first cover-letter for this little story.
I'll be doing a Goodreads giveaway for this title sometime in November/December. Check back!

Get ready to Eat Your Heart Out

("Get ready for Eat Your Heart Out?")

I haven't updated this thing in four months! But that's okay, neither has Hyperbole and a Half. What is up with that, Allie? That's right, I'm talking to you like I know you. What? What, huh? Draw a frikkin' funny picture already!

*Ahem*

Excellent news in the land o' me: my little zombie novel that could is being published by BrazenHead, a queer-themed speculative fiction imprint of Lethe Press!

I am super excited, it is incalculable.  But I'll try anyway:

Z x 7.6 <.999X - 2 + 76% > 0 / shfifty-five = EXCITEMENTRAGE

Minus the rage. Something got mixed up in the calculation there. I shoulda carried the Z?

Anyway, you guys, you can read this book this November, hooray! Can you feel the excitementrage? If I ever start my own small press, that is what I am calling it. ExcitementRage. Yes.

IN THE MEANTIME, you can read a little about the book here. It is a novella, which means it is a short novel, which means you can keep it on your toilet tank and flip through it a couple times a day (depending on how regular you are) and probably finish it in about a week. Maybe less. You have to take the average amount of time you spend pooping and divide that by how many pages per minute you can read and multiply that by the number of pages in the book, and.....NO MORE CALCULATIONS. It's a quick read, is what I'm saying.

I am still in the editing phase, which is a bit weird, because it's like workshop, only it's over email, and mostly I have learned that I am a terrible speller and I need to invest in a dictionary or thesaurus. I will post more info closer to the release date, which is sometime in November. (That is so symmetrical...I started writing the book last November and this November it is being published...SYMMETRY! ALE OF THE GODS. That's my next book title.)

The Elephant is a Zombie

The Elephant is a Zombie

"That was delicious, Temperance!"
   
This is Albert, my next door neighbor. He teaches remedial English at the community college. He's always saying things are delicious. I hear him over the fence in his backyard, playing catch with his eight-year-old. "Delicious toss, son!" On quiet nights, I imagine I can hear him on top of his wife: "Delicious, dear. Delicious." 

Without even having to be asked, Rickshaw clears the first course. No one else seconds Albert's comment on the gazpacho. His wife, Nancy, gives a little half-cough, half-sneeze when Rickshaw reaches around her for the bowl. She's a yoga instructor at the Y. I bought this entire dinnerware set at Sears just yesterday, but no one's commented on it either.

Besides myself and Rickshaw, and Albert and Nancy, there is one other couple at my party. Horace and Regina. She cleans my house on Tuesdays and Fridays, but only for a year, then the coupon expires. Horace used to work with my husband at the brewery until the accident. We all used to be friends.
   
There's a weighty silence while we all wait for the second course. I've never prepared a three-course meal in my life, and I had trouble deciding what should be second. I chose quail, which is a tiny-ass bird that I'm surprised the guy at the meat counter at Food Lion even knew people could eat, let alone where to get some. I had to drive to the next town over, about fifteen miles both ways. For the main course, I made baked macaroni, which I know is a little middle class, but I'm serving it in these cute little ramicans with a special cheese. It was on sale.
   
Horace clears his throat and swiftly looks around at the others. I'm not sure I am meant to see him do this, but he is sitting directly across from me, in my husband's usual place, so it's difficult not to see him. "Temperance," he says, clearing his throat a second time. "I appreciate the thought behind all this, but...."
   
Rickshaw comes back into the dining room, expertly balancing the five plates of quail, and Horace closes his big mouth. I can smell the bird before the plate is set before me; it smells like hot glue and maybe fish, somehow. But fowl is supposed to smell weird, I think. The stinkier, the better.
   
Once the plates have been set, everyone sort of picks up their forks and pokes at the thing on their plate, unsure where to start. "I know, it's an odd dish," I laugh through the awkwardness. Regina seems to be having trouble cutting into hers. "Rickshaw, help her."
   
Regina yelps, and Horace leans over to her before Rickshaw has even taken a step. He picks up the bird by what one assumes must have been its leg and shoves it into his wife's gaping mouth. She chews reticently.
   
"We've got it, Temperance, we've got it," Horace says, smiling and nodding as he goes back to his own bird. He should be smiling. After the accident at the brewery, they only waited about month to hire him back on. Even though my husband turned out to be perfectly all right, they refused to hire him back. I've been living off the life insurance, which is strange.
   
Albert holds his quail to his face and gives it a tentative lick. Nancy looks at him and twitters like she's witnessed this move before. She catches me looking at her and drops her eyes to her own untouched bird. I bet they all wish I had a dog right now so they could quietly dispose of their meals.
   
I can't contain myself any longer. "All right, Jesus Christ, listen. I know I'm not the greatest cook, okay? You don't have to be shy about it. Come on, tell me, I can take it. The gazpacho was crap. Everything doesn't have to be delicious all the time, Al. It was under-spiced and over-cooked, and the quail is - well, okay, I burnt the fucking quail. Just say it!"
   
In the corner of the room, Rickshaw burps wetly and his lower jaw falls into his hands. He looks at it like everyone else has been looking at their second course, then he puts it in his pocket, so as not to be rude.

Albert gulps next to me, and someone's leg shakes so hard the table rumbles.

"Jesus, Tempe," Horace says, stealing glances at my husband. "That's not it at all."

I Wish I Had Something for You

OH WAIT


here is something:




































You have to click on the image and zoom in.


THIS IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY!


My heterosexual platonic life-partner and I were watching some show and heard the word "contrarian", and we could not believe that this was an actual word. It sounded too much like a mystical beast, and so we began to develop a children's book series about the Contrarian, who was naturally contradictory, and he lived in the Vagina Tree (different story entirely) and fought an enemy whose origins and mystical nature we had not fully imagined (or partially imagined, or imagined at all). Anyway, then the events pretty much follow the comic to a science. Reality killed my fiction! Super sad.



Next week: It's back to zombies, people. I just can't stop!

Omniscient Foreskin

Are We Breaking Up?


    Lily knows Jane is cheating on her, but it's difficult to prove because they haven't yet set the boundaries of their relationship. Well, not officially. They did have one conversation, or exchange of words, late one night after six shots and two hits of acid. Emboldened, Lily said, "Jane, I like you. Like, I like like you. You know?" Flattered, Jane said, "Wanna make out?" Later, Lily tried to clarify: "So we're like together, like together together?" Still later, Jane solidified things: "Sure, I guess."
    Those three words meant everything to Lily, everything that words as brief and smoke-like as those three words can mean to a girl as young and perpetually stoned as Lily. She put herself to sleep with those words, whispered them into the crook of her elbow as she composed sonnets in text messages she would accidentally send to her cousin Joan on more than four occasions. In those three simple words, Lily envisioned a life, a world, entirely populated by she and Jane (and maybe one of those hairless cats she's seen in movies). "Sure," Jane had slurred, and Lily saw a white picket fence; "I," and there was Jane in the yard waving a spatula at the gas grill, wearing one of those novelty Kiss the Cook aprons; "guess," and there was Lily, dragging Maury, the hairless cat, behind her in its purple harness, leaning over to Jane to oblige the aprons' command.
    But here is Lily, now, sitting in her mom's idling Dodge Stratus, trying to figure out where Margret Winterbottom fits into her picket fence dreams. She supposes she fits atop Jane's quietly thrusting lap, the same position she saw Margret and Jane in last night at Bodie's graduation party.
    Someone outside of the car pounds a gloved fist on the windshield and flakes of thinning ice sloosh off into the road. The glove clears an oval of space on the glass and Jane's face appears, scowling. Lily locks the doors and pretends she can't see Jane.
    "What the fuck?" Jane's voice is muffled by the glass and also the roaring of the motor as Lily guns the car's engine. She's been sitting outside of Jane's house all night, and the car would desperately appreciate a moment to shake itself awake in the twenty-degree weather, but Lily is impatient. Jane stands aside and lets the Stratus zoom away, instantly pulling out her phone and sending a string of rapid text messages to Lily which mostly read as gibberish because she forgets to remove her gloves. Receiving these messages, Lily thinks they are some kind of code and spends the remainder of the afternoon trying to decipher them, which distracts her from thinking about Margret Winterbottom's tongue sliding all over Jane's stomach.
    Around midnight, Jane receives this text: "What r u saying?"
    Feeling as if she's spoken her piece and Lily is purposefully playing dumb, Jane simply deflects the text right back to Lily, as if it were undeliverable post, Return to Sender. Misinterpreting this gesture, Lily reads the text with an emphasis on the letter "u" - "What r U saying?" - and sighs deep and longingly, realizing Jane is being coy because she's afraid to be the first one to commit. Lily should have expected this and been more sensitive to it, being two months older than Jane and vastly more experienced in the world of dating (which Jane, for her part, does not realize they are doing).
    Wanting to reassure Jane, but not wanting to embarrass her, Lily texts back: "Sure, I guess."
    Jane deletes Lily's number from her phone. Lily composes a sonnet about how much she wants Jane to grill burgers in their back yard and walk Maury together, and sends it to Joan. Joan replies: "Ew, I hate those cats, they feel like foreskin." Joan is lying; she loves those cats, but even more she loves making up jokes about foreskin.
    Lily goes to bed thinking everything is okay. Margret Winterbottom goes to bed thinking she should have at least made Jane buy those tickets to the Tegan and Sara concert before letting her get to third.
    Across town, a newborn hairless kitten shivers uncontrollably, and does not know why.
 

No Zombies = No Blog Posts

It's simple math.

But I have updated the website's "Written Things" section.

Also, here's a cautionary tale about Facebook:

What's On Your Mind?

Franklin met Isabel on Facebook. He didn't even have to friend her because she knew next to nothing about manipulating her privacy settings; with one click, he knew everything he needed to know. Information that would normally take him weeks to uncover was simply laid out for him, naked, waiting. One afternoon, she posted this status update:
    "Gugh! I found a lump in my left breast! It's probably nothing serious, just like the last two that turned out to just be cysts that needed to be drained (pics up if you're not squeamish!) but now I have to make a doctor's appointment. I hate making doctor's appointments! Lolololol"
    Franklin set to work immediately. First he acquired a nondescript, white-paneled van, which was the easy part. The hard part was painting all the easily recognizable medical insignias on its sliding door. The red cross proved little difficulty, but the snakes of the caduceus kept coming out more like worms with ridiculously cartoon faces, and for the life of him he could not draw a heart that looked any better than a first grader's Valentine's Day rendering. But perhaps he was being too hard on himself. Finally, after about two days, he finished the exterior. He checked Isabel's Facebook.
    "Argh! Doc can't see me 'til the seventeenth! Doesn't he know the highlight of my month is having him squish my boobies with a giant machine! LOLOLOLOL"
    Franklin stenciled the words "Mammo-Van – Free Mammograms!" in pink letters on the side of the van, and parked right next to Isabel's car at work. He stepped out and pretended to have a smoke, or a text conversation on his phone. If anyone came by, he intended to tell them he was on break. But no one came by. He double-checked Isabel's status update to make sure her lunch break was still at two.
    He saw her coming. He put his cell phone in the pocket of his freshly pressed lab coat. He waited for her to look quizzically at the van, and then he said, "Good morning."
    "Hi," she said, and took out her car keys.
    Franklin felt sure she'd be ecstatic to see he was offering her exactly what she wanted – for free, no waiting, no doctor's appointments, done and done – but when she didn't jump at the chance, he grew flustered.
    He stammered, "Ever, uh, ever had a mammogram?"
    "No thanks," she said, politely averting her eyes as she unlocked her door and slipped inside the safety of her vehicle.
    Franklin stood beside the van for a few minutes, nonplussed. His phone beeped to alert him of Isabel's latest status update:
    "BURRITOS!"
    A woman in an elegant navy pantsuit, forty-ish, approached the van. "You know, I'm probably overdue for one of these."
    Franklin eyed her from head to foot. She'd do.

An Even Three

The other night I went bowling and drinking (the two go hand in hand, unless you're thirteen, and even then, who knows). Sometime between drink three and drink four I got the urge to jot down a story idea but found myself without paper or writing implement. So I used the Note function on my phone, which allowed me about three thousand characters to write this:

"I am being stalked by a zombie. He's unlike other zombies in that he's completely cognizant; he sits on my front porch and taunts me. I have a porch swing and he leans back in it, kicking his feet against the rail. He says, 'Come on out, little girl,' and flashes his rotted teeth at me."

This is based on a dream I had a few nights ago about facing off with a zombie named Rickshaw. He was a bit of a gentleman until it came time to eat my brain. I shot him in the head a few times but he was unfazed. Eventually, I figured if I couldn't kill him, I would have to at least neuter him. So I got a friend to pin him down while I used a pair of pliers to pull out all his teeth. I'm not sure how any of this will factor in to the story, but there will be a story. (Which, come to think of it, was also probably partially triggered, however subconsciously, by Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend.)

Man, it has been all about zombies since November. I promise you, next month I will only post about non-zombie related things. Such as crime fiction, dystopian futures, and prostitutes. What cheery topics I choose to write about!

Writing Cover Letters Can Be Fun

Hello there, [Editors of a Contest I Don't Expect to Win]:

Attached you will find my submission for your zombie novel/novella contest, entitled EAT YOUR HEART OUT. It is a novel of approximately 50,000 words in length. Allow me to tell you a little about it:

EAT YOUR HEART OUT finds Rain, a twenty-something college drop-out, struggling to breathe new life into her relationship with her emotionally unavailable former-stripper girlfriend Carmelle in the midst of a freak zombie outbreak. After Rain is bitten by a zombie, she begins not only to fear the loss of Carmelle, but also the possible loss of her own life to the dreaded Infection. All seems lost until Rain is able to team up with a most unexpected ally - the one, the only, the ineffable Michelle Fucking Rodriguez.

Told with fast-paced, whip-smart sincerity, EAT YOUR HEART OUT is not simply a zombie satire clinging to the coattails of whatever's left of the lesbian community's infatuation with Michelle Rodriguez. Okay, it is that, but it's also a deeply disturbing exposé of the American Government's abuse of power, a chilling examination of the inextricable bond between personal identity and sexual orientation, a penetrating probe into the minds and hearts of female twenty-somethings (and Michelle Rodriguez), and one hell of a zombie quest novel. With recipes!

I'm lying about the recipes.

My name is Dayna Ingram, and I'm a writer and student living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My short stories have appeared in the literary journals Collective Fallout and Livermore Street. But none of them were zombie-related, so, meh.

Quick Update

Just to link to my website, where you can currently find a .pdf copy of my EAT YOUR HEART OUT manuscript.

http://dingram.yolasite.com/written-things.php

Also note, I found a spelling error/typo on the third frickin' page just now. Frrraaaak. Oh wells.

Enjoy!