Sumiko Saulson's Blog, page 32

What Lives In The Darkness? Guest Blog by Tom Obert

Welcome to Fall Into Horror with Mocha Memoirs Press!

Mocha Memoirs Press is celebrating the new Fall season by showcasing their love of horror and the authors who write it. Please welcome TOM OLBERT as he shares his thoughts on fall and horror.

WHAT LIVES IN THE DARKNESS?

And fall is here. Only just, but its chill fingers can already be felt creeping up our spines. Before we know it, the leaves will turn, the days will shorten, and the shadow of the equinox will creep in silently in summer’s wake. The time of transition, when, it is said, the veil between this world and the next runs thin, and spirits walk the earth. Time for tales of horror to slip under the wire of our reason and stoke the fires of our nightmares.

Horror takes many forms, both subtle and gross. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves and ghouls. The shadows of arcane superstition that never stop haunting us, even into this digital age. The unknown touching our primal fears from the inky blackness of the dark.

But, there’s another kind of horror, too. The horror of the dark places within the human mind and the dark places buried deep in the human soul, where we fear to look, perhaps even more than we fear the darkness outside. The demons we carry within are the ones we can never escape. Such evil can take many forms. Like the shadowy figure of Jack the Ripper skulking in the shadows of dark, misty, gas lit midnight streets, transcending time and space, a seemingly eternal horror that will always be with us. Because such evil is waiting to be born in the depths of each human soul, and will never die.

In my novella “Black Goddess,” I tried to explore those dark depths we call evil. The evil of the torturer. Of the murderer. The evil of hate and revenge and unimaginable cruelty that defies all reason and devours the soul of both victim and victimizer. Such darkness has been with us from the beginning, in particularly dark chapters of history, taking on forms of evil so pure, so horrific that our darkest dreams pale in comparison.

The eternal question presents itself to a troubled young man who has seen evil up close and intimately: Is evil merely a random perversion of human emotion spawned by violence and chaos, or…is evil a primal force, like a dark infection stealing its way into the human soul, feeding on it from within like a parasite, until nothing beside remains?

The protagonist of “Black Goddess” becomes obsessed with the nature and essence of the evil that has destroyed his life and his faith. His search for answers evolves into a dark quest that is destroying him, little by little. The closer he draws to the dark, forbidden cosmic truth at the heart of the darkness, the more he hungers for it to the exclusion of all else, like a drug addict endlessly seeking his next fix. He has given his life, and possibly his soul to a dark experiment through which he reaches closer and closer to the center of time and space. What will he find at the center of creation? God, or Satan? When he looks into the mirror of the first moment of time, will he find light or darkness at the core of his own soul?

What can any of us expect to find, when we peel back the layers of sanity we show to the world, and face the darkness we carry inside?

BLACK GODDESS

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Continue on with this FALL INTO HORROR. You can join Mocha Memoirs Press authors and share in their love of horror on Facebook. You can also click on the links below to meet other horror authors:



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ABOUT MOCHA MEMOIRS PRESS:

Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC is a genre-oriented publishing company. Their vision is to provide an outlet for outstanding speculative and romance stories that often fall beneath the radar of traditional publishing houses. They seek to provide quality stories that invigorate the reader’s literary palette like a good, strong coffee. Like great coffee houses, they offer a variety of flavors. They publish stories in the following genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance, including the sub-genres of steampunk, cyberpunk, diesel punk, alternate history, weird westerns, and mash-ups.

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

Women and Agency in Opposite Sex Pairings

One interesting thing that came up near the end of the “Women of Marvel” panel was the observation (made by the only man on the panel, as it so happens, and yes he was white) that female characters, upon entering a romantic involvement with a male character, tend to lose all of their personal agency and become an adjunct to this man.

Well, I think in this situation, it’s sadly a case of art imitating life. Social norms dictate that a woman, once involved with a man, is communicated to through this man instead of directly. Male-female coupling often leads to a lessening of personhood for women. That puts women in a situation where we feel we have to choose between romance and independence.

I feel sorry for a lot of men – especially ones who aren’t so bright who wind up involved with a very ambitious or driven woman. A lot of the reasons I broke up with Greg had directly to do with his male chums playing into his male ego and the idea that as a man, he was not only entitled to, but honor bound to speak for me.

Well, I’ve got 18 years and about 60 IQ points on the dude, I didn’t want him speaking for me. I didn’t want my choices to be determined by a man who – not only I – but everyone else – knew was much worse at decision making than I am.

Now lot of people are telling me that I need a smarter man to make decisions for me. And I keep saying, “No. What I need is to make my own choices. I love men, don’t get me wrong – I just don’t want them making choices for me. Is that OK?”

Now that I am single, I notice that people are constantly trying to suss out whether or not I may be involved with some man who has the power to tell me what the fuck to do. People are all like, “Oh… maybe she likes him. Maybe we can get him to put her in her place.”

Not sure where my place is, by the way. But wherever it is, it’s probably under some guys, who are protecting me from other guys (in their minds) because you know, the big bad boogieman other dude is the reason you need to control women. For our own protection. From other men who might be trying to “use us” for our bodies, or our money, or whatever things that are ours that you need to control for us because we can’t be allowed to control our own bodies, or our own money.

Historically, women who were no longer under the control of men – mostly childless widows, or widows without male heirs to take control of their estates – were considered so powerful and dangerous that witch hunts were used to divest them of their property.

Nowadays we just prematurely age women – men my age literally run the world, but you want to tell middle aged women we are in our dotage. Seriously? Tell it to Obama, he’s considered extremely freaking young for a president. Tell it to Donald Trump.

The average lifespan for women is 86 now. That means the middle of your life is 43. People in their 40s are only half way through their lives. If you are a man, that means you are coming into your own.A woman in her 40s can come into her own, too, but not without a fight.

I admire and respect women who are successfully able to conduct relationships with men without losing their personal identity or sight of their own ambitions. It’s a little late in life but, I suppose it is time for me to admit that I have ambitions and dreams of my own. I want to be more than someone’s wife, someone’s daughter, or someone’s fiancee.

None of this is easy for a very romantic person. It’s not easy for a girl who is prone to smiling and laughing in the rain for no reason. I’m so used to sucking up the smallest drop of a man’s love like a flower trying to grow in the desert. I am used to allowing the need for that love to interfere with everything that means anything to me. I’m just a girl who misses her daddy sometimes.

Before my dad died, he told Greg he was glad he was there to take care of me. The last words my dad said to Greg were, “Get off the couch. Miki has to drive.” Greg was passed out. My dad wasn’t perfect, but he loved me. My dad knew how I was – an emotional chick who always liked to have someone there to hold my hand. It’s like the premium for hand holding got too high. I was going to have to pay through the roof for hand holding.

I still want someone to hold my hand. I just want to be treated as an equal – not inferior because I’m human and I need some affection. Is that really too much to ask for?

One good thing about dating is, you can send these guys back to their homes afterward and they don’t stick around trying to run your life. So if you see me out and about with a man and we’re doing our thing and having a good old time, do him a solid: don’t start trying to determine what his relationship to me is, and whether or not you can use him to control me. If I start feeling like a dude is being used to put me in my place, I am going to run away from him screaming, like he’s made out of chains and trying to trap me somehow. I just need me right now.

I hope that’s okay.

Guest Blog Fall into Horror Alexandra Christian

Welcome to Fall Into Horror with Mocha Memoirs Press!

Mocha Memoirs Press is celebrating the new Fall season by showcasing their love of horror and the authors who write it. Please welcome ALEXANDRA CHRISTIAN as they share their thoughts on fall and horror.

Why Characters are So Important

So I’m known for writing romance and I’m okay with that. Romance has given me a lot in the last several years. Even if it’s tragic, I love a good love story. Which surprises a lot of people who know me personally. I’ve been described by my family and friends as weird, morbid, and dark. My bookshelf looks like some kind of monument to Stephen King. So to the outside world, the fact that I write and read romance novels probably seems slightly off-kilter. Shouldn’t I be a horror novelist? I’ve often asked myself that same question. But truthfully—the procedures are quite similar if you think about it. Both horror and romance are fueled by the love between the characters. At least, they should be.

Take Stephen King’s The Shining. On the surface that story is about a man who is half-crazed with desperation losing his mind in a haunted hotel. That is NOT what The Shining is about. It’s about a little boy who loves his father and knowing that something terrible is happening to him. It’s about a man who loves his family so much that he’s willing to go to any length to support them. It’s about a mother who is at the end of her rope but still praying for a miracle because she loves her husband. In fact, Wendy is almost as perceptive as Danny. She knows something terrible is happening to her husband but because of her love for both him and her child, she’s trying to make the best of things. The love between those characters is what holds that story together. Without it, the whole thing would just be bland.

So many people think that horror is about scaring or hate or monsters and to an extent it is. Horror is often dealing with our deepest fears and the monsters are usually outward personifications of those dark things within ourselves that we’d like to forget. But at the center of any good horror story, there has to be a complex character(s) that the reader can care about. At least to some degree. Otherwise, what’s the point? Who cares if the monster eats Johnny’s face if Johnny is a flat character with no relationships and no personality? That’s why the climax of Dracula is Lucy’s very gruesome death. Once Dracula kills Lucy—devoted friend of Mina—the intensity of the story grows to a fever pitch, making it imperative that they slay the vampire. And then at the end of the story when Dracula is ultimately destroyed—we actually feel bad for him. Stoker spends all that time building the characters through those journal entries so that we care when bad things start to happen. And that’s what makes a good horror story.

This month I get to make my debut as an editor with the release of An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It’s a collection of Sherlock Holmes mysteries that are also horror stories. There’s a wide variety of stories there. Everything from zombies to werewolves and even a vampire story, but the one thing they all have in common are great characters. Beyond the mystery, Holmes and Watson have an interesting relationship that really plays into putting them in horrific situations. Not only that, but my authors have introduced some original characters that add depth to the stories that rival Conan Doyle’s—in my humble opinion. A pair of scheming old lady novelists, a brother and sister desperate to retain their immortality, a fallen nobleman who is so frantic to regain his former glory that he’d resort to extreme measures—these are just some of the characters that you’ll encounter.

So when the autumn chill is upon us, curl up with a cup of tea and a great horror story. Mocha Memoirs Press is spotlighting their horror titles this month and I’m sure there’s something there to tickle your fancy. Vampires, aliens, werewolves, or real-world monsters—there’s a book for every taste! Happy reading!

An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Comment below and click on the rafflecopter options below for a chance to win the tour prize, a $25 Amazon Gift Card!

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Continue on with this FALL INTO HORROR. You can join Mocha Memoirs Press authors and share in their love of horror on Facebook. You can also click on the links below to meet other horror authors:



http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=261682

ABOUT MOCHA MEMOIRS PRESS:

Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC is a genre-oriented publishing company. Their vision is to provide an outlet for outstanding speculative and romance stories that often fall beneath the radar of traditional publishing houses. They seek to provide quality stories that invigorate the reader’s literary palette like a good, strong coffee. Like great coffee houses, they offer a variety of flavors. They publish stories in the following genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance, including the sub-genres of steampunk, cyberpunk, diesel punk, alternate history, weird westerns, and mash-ups.

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

Sumiko Saulson panel/appearance schedule at Con-Volution

Greetings Sumiko,

Apologies for the glitch the first time this went out. We have corrected the problem.

Get your creative juices flowing: what inspires you to Art?

Friday 14:00 – 15:15, Oak (Hyatt Regency SFO)

Discussion of what inspires the artists to create as well as their chosen medium. What can new artist do to get past their artist blocks?

Anna Warren Cebrian (M), Carolyn Jones, Sumiko Saulson, Landry Walker

Women of Marvel

Friday 15:30 – 16:45, Oak (Hyatt Regency SFO)

From Sue Storm to Gamora, the women of Marvel have been complex and controversial. Whether they are in the lead or supporting characters, Marvel women have a range of personalities and goals that defy simple categorization. Let’s talk about our favorite Marvel women and why we love them!

Carrie Sessarego (M), Tyler Hayes, Sumiko Saulson, Linda Kay Silva, Ms Brianna Wu

Autograph Session: Sumiko Saulson

Friday 17:00 – 18:00, Autograph Table (Hyatt Regency SFO)

Sumiko Saulson

What the Superhero Movie Got Wrong

Saturday 10:00 – 11:15, SandPebble D (Hyatt Regency SFO)

Ever sat in a darkened theatre grumbling at the screen, “That’s NOT how that goes…” and getting weird looks from those around you? Yeah, us too.

Ric Bretschneider (M), Steven Mix, Sumiko Saulson

Secret Panel

Saturday 11:30 – 12:45, Harbor B (Hyatt Regency SFO)

If we told you, it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?

Steve Libbey, Matt Marovich, Steven Mix, M Christian, Jennifer Nestojko, Emerian Rich, Sumiko Saulson, Linda Kay Silva, Frank Wu, Carrie Sessarego

Diversity in Speculative Fiction

Saturday 14:30 – 15:45, Pine (Hyatt Regency SFO)

Gregg Castro (M), Jaymee Goh, Thaddeus Howze, Bradford Lyau, Balogun Ojetade, Sumiko Saulson

Reading 3

Sunday 13:00 – 14:15, Oak (Hyatt Regency SFO)

Kyle Aisteach, Sumiko Saulson, Ms. Amy Sterling Casil, Bryan Thao Worra, Jaymee Goh

Women Who Rarely Make History

Sunday 14:30 – 15:45, Sumac (Hyatt Regency SFO)

Sumiko Saulson (M), Kyle Aisteach, Carrie Sessarego, Ms. Amy Sterling Casil

Returning to the Demos Oneiroi

I have to listen to my fans…

They told me that “The Moon Cried Blood” was a young adult fantasy no matter what I thought about it. They also told me that “Happiness and Other Diseases” was a romance. All of the horror, intrigue, sex and violence was secondary. They were just so in love with Flynn and Charlotte’s love. I wish I could love like that, but I’m not that brave.

My characters are always happy to see me. It’s not that easy to disconnect myself from my day to day life and pour myself back into the Demos Oneiroi, or a depopulated San Francisco, or to put my own feelings to bed because I have to feed all of my emotions to Charlotte and Flynn for a while.

They can’t live, or breathe, or exist, without me.

I spent a year buried in the Demos Oneiroi, writing three novels in the span of nine months on a wave of disillusionment and inspiration while my relationship with Greg fell apart.

Real men are multidimensional and complicated. No matter how complex my characters are (and I’m told I give really good character) they’re still idealized versions of men, designed by a woman.

Real men stubbornly refuse to be ideal.

They have their own minds.

Romantic heroes are beautiful illusions

I love Flynn because I wrote him, and I wrote him role reversed: Charlotte doesn’t sublimate her will Flynn, the way I always do in love. She isn’t persuaded, because she already knows what she wants. He’s seduced and that involves a surrender of will (the way love very often does). He struggles with issues of identity: who is he separately? Not just in relation to her. He has trouble asserting himself. But he’s stronger than people seem to think he is.

This is Flynn asking after me

Flynn knows that it is a gift: he is complicit in and consenting to surrender to his love for Charlotte. His obedience is a love offering: it’s NOT involuntary. It is very deliberately selected.

I resent that loss of identity in love. I’ve been consumed too many times, I refuse to give myself away so easily. I have value. Besides, I have free will. There is no love given that I can’t take away. No one can steal my war wounded heart, but as Nyx, Somnus, Phobetor, and that whoring old Zeus can tell you, I can still give it away whenever I chose.

Sumiko stubbornly refuses to be ideal.

Sumiko has her own mind.

There is a fine line between jade and self protection. Seal writes all of the love songs about that, or if not, Kate Bush, perhaps, or Robert Smith, or Martin Gore.

All of this leads to the following in relationships with men: either contention (I’m being for real and we’re butting heads because I’m independent) or feigned weakness and stupidity (I’m acting helpless and pretending I don’t know what I do know.)

But I’m not going out like that pretty little red head, and anyway, she’s absolutely right: you know nothing, Jon Snow. Foolish hearts can rule over wise minds, but that never turns out well for me.

My independence may mean more to me than being very good relationship material does right now. I’m kind of fed up. I want to do me.

I have no idea how to write that into a story, though. I mean, how to the willful love?

No rest for Tea Cake

In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Janie Crawford’s life is defined by her black womanhood and always in relation to other people: her grandmother, and a series of men she’s involved with.  One cannot argue that Janie was only in love once: she loved most of the men she was with, but only Tea Cake allowed her to be herself while in love.

That’s an important distinction for a woman: can I love a man, without losing myself?

Flynn must be trying to be funny or something

Well, although she does love Tea Cake, it scandalizes the town.  It all ends tragically, but Janie can hold her head up high because no one can take away her perfected memory of the love she once had. Tea Cake has now been conscribed to her memory as the perfected and idealized hero of her imagination instead of the real man with all of his foibles.

Well, apparently, Ms. Hurston did in real life scandalize her peers by having an affair with a man twenty years her junior while in her middle forties – showing I suppose, that she was ahead of her time. Men have ever been allowed to do such a thing, but for a woman to, that’s absolutely scandalous. It’s a bit scandalous now, but she did it in the 1930s.

Of course, in real life, he didn’t die.

They broke up, and she went on to travel the world and write a series of novels.  The Harlem Renaissance was pretty male dominated. Her voice, with all its womanly nuisance and feminine concern with love, home, hearth, and the mystical was a threat to the patriarchy. Later she was falsely accused and scandalized.  She tried to recover, but never fully did. She became a journalist, and died in poverty in her late 60s. Novelist Alice Walker is responsible for a posthumous reemergence of the works of Hurston.

Janie Crawford and Tea Cake’s love will live forever, but Hurston’s love affair with her young man Albert Price only lasted seven months. People who write well about love aren’t any luckier in love than the rest of us, necessarily.

I’m still hopeful that eventually, I can find a way to have a successful career and succeed in real love, but to be honest: there aren’t any guarantees. All I can really do is be true to myself and hope that I’ll meet someone who will understand perfectly and put up with my shit. Like Hurston I seem to suffer from ambition, and having something to say.

I haven’t learned how to hold my ground without making a man feel diminished.

I can only hope that someday I will meet a man who is strong enough not to be intimidated by a hardheaded woman.

In the meantime, I’ve got to own the fact that I’m a very pragmatic romantic.

I know there’s no shortage of love in the world and it’s not going to all evaporate while I’m working on a novel or three.

Bodies

In the movie “Say Anything,” there’s a character played byLili Taylor named Corey Flood. She’s a talented singer/songwriter who is in love with a shallow guy named Joe, and even though their relationship is fail, she writes excellent songs about him.

Now, Corey is not the star of this movie. She’s a supporting actress, and she’s comic relief. A lot of times, I feel like that girl. Maybe I’m not in bad company, really. Because Billie Holiday was that girl, and Janis Joplin was that girl. Girls like that usually die of a drug overdose and a broken heart, but I’ve stubbornly insisted on continuing to live.

And I can be very happy at times. I’m happy most of the time.

But there’s always someone around who can’t let that happen. There’s always someone who feels a deep seated urge to let you know that you’re really not pretty enough to be allowed to play the romantic lead in your own life. You’re too fat – or maybe you’re too skinny. Perhaps you’re too short, or too tall. You might be too nerdy. Maybe you’re too ethnic. Maybe you wear glasses. Maybe you’re to serious. Maybe you’re not serious enough.

But whatever it is, you’re not good enough.

Your love is not real. Real love occurs between two pretty people in a Hollywood movie. You’re not Ione Skye. You’re a character actress. Character actors may be able to “pull that off” but come on now… you’re not a man. You can’t do what Dustin Hoffman or Peter Dinklage can do.

You’re the comic relief, Corey. You’re the comic relief, Rizzo. If this is Stella Got Her Groove Back, you’re whoever the hell Whoopi Goldberg is playing. And anyway, you’re not a real person. You’re a body.

A not pretty enough body.

Oh, but I am so angry, and I am so over you, Joe. I’ll be writing fictional stories to my imaginary lover, because I’m in too much pain to imagine ever having anything that’s real.

The Teenage Crush That Happens Every Month. (from Musings & Confusings Blahg Excerpts 7/25/05)

This is a pretty awesome description of ovulation. Is ovulation useful for writing erotica? Oh hell ya.

The Teenage Crush That Happens Every Month. (from Musings & Confusings Blahg Excerpts 7/25/05).

Ghosts In Bones: Release party and Book Signing

Sumiko Saulson:

I am so excited to be a part of this reading on Sunday with Serena at The Dark Entry in Berkeley, and I hope some of you can make it.

Originally posted on horroraddicts.net:

Ghosts in Bones  Release Party:

Sunday, August 16

4:00pm – 7:00pm at The Dark Entry:

2589 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, California 94704

Come celebrate the release of Ghosts in Bones, There WILL be cupcakes.

Sumiko Saulson, deTraci Regula, and Elva Nelson-Hayes will be reading from their books as well.

Summary:

The main theater of crime in Ghosts in Bones is a forsaken kitchen. It’s where most of the attacks on the body take place. (The body itself is no longer our protagonist, Pallas’s, true home.) It’s complicated because, while our clever and intuitive Pallas may want some mysteries solved, she doesn’t want The Beast, her internal captor, sentenced and gone. She is a possibly- perimenopausal ciswoman, and people wonder why she isn’t over her anorexia yet. It is a misunderstood, stigmatized, and lethal disease against which she has no insurance, so obtaining treatment seems unlikely. The ever-sabotaging beast—her eating disorder personified—is happy about that.

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An Exploration of Zombies in Literature and Film (by Maria Ramos)

Guest Blog by Maria Ramos

Maria is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy.

You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889

Find her earlier guest blog about Bram Stoker’s Dracula here..

An Exploration of Zombies in Literature and Film

Following the success of AMC’s runaway hit The Walking Dead comes Fear the Walking Dead, the network’s spinoff series set to premier later this summer. The Walking Dead is based on the comic book series of the same name created by Robert Kirkman, and now the prequel series will also fall under the same universe, with a rumored timeline meet up later on in the series. But these tv series aren’t the only popular zombie fiction to have been adapted from a literary medium – or vice versa.

The term “zombie” can be traced all the way back to its Haitian roots growing from the religious practice of voodoo. The first use of the term in popular culture is pinpointed in Western literature in  William Seabrook’s 1929 novel The Magic Island. This concept was used again in the 1932 Bela Lugosi film White Zombie, and was the general perception of the zombie until George Romero’s seminal 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, which posited zombies as harbingers of the apocalypse, reanimated by unknown forces and in thrall to nothing but a hunger for living flesh.

Following Romero’s resurgence of the zombie, the genre continued to expand, including several adaptations. Not only have zombies taken on various appearances throughout the years, their speed, intelligence, and the way the virus is transmitted varies greatly. Tony Burgess’ 1995 novel Pontypool Changes Everything, about a virus spread via the use of language that drives victims into a rage, was adapted into the 2008 film Pontypool. This fast moving, low budget horror films success is due in large part to Burgess adapting the material for the screen himself.

Warm Bodies, the 2011 novel by Isaac Marion and a modern zombie romance making reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, takes place in a world where zombies retain some of their sentience. Save some minor changes, most of Marion’s novel successfully made it to the screen intact in the 2013 film adaptation – a charming and lively experience that stands out against the grisly nature of most zombie stories.

As some of the adaptations remained similar to their counterparts, others altered aspects of the storyline or elements of the zombies resulting in dramatically different movies. World War Z, a novel by Max Brooks, delves into the themes of isolationism, survivalism, politics, and the ineptitude of world governments in the face of a rapidly escalating crisis. Unfortunately, a screenplay rewrite for the 2013 film adaptation left behind much of the book’s premise turning it into an action movie and resulting in the title being the only thing the movie had in common with the novel.

Alternatively, some movies have merely been loosely based on zombie lit, as is the case with H.P. Lovecraft’s novella Herbert West – Reanimator as the inspiration for the horror comedy Re-Animator. Lovecraft’s themes of misanthropy and insanity, and his preoccupation with visceral imagery are all present in the film. The popularity of Re-Animator and the huge cult following Lovecraft’s work resulted in a recent release of a comic adaptation of the film. Likewise, Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and 28 Days Later all spawned graphic novels, and a novel based on Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero was subsequently written by Romero himself.

Similar to The Walking Dead series, at times it is necessary to change plot specifics, as some of the book’s developments would not work well on the screen. Many argue that this enhances the viewing experience for fans of the book, as plenty of surprises still lie in wait for them. With Fear the Walking Dead (premiering on AMC through DTV and Hulu) being a prequel series to both the comic book and tv series The Walking Dead, viewers truly have no idea what they’re in for.

Zombie fiction continues to be a template onto which authors and directors can project fears and attitudes that reflect modern culture. This has led to the acceptance of the genre even by those who aren’t into horror, which in turn has led to the proliferation of more zombie stories, a trend not likely to stop anytime soon.

Zombie Doll Images By Mistress Rae

Www.mistressrae13.etsy.com
Specializing in handmade one of a kind zombie babies, steampunk-inspired jewelry and accessories, anthropomorphic oddities and more. Now taking custom orders.

60 Black Women in Horror Writing

60 Black Women in Horror Writing.