Kevin’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2012)

Kevin’s comments from the Kevin Strange Q&A about Robamapocalypse group.

Originally, Don and I had planned on doing both A zombie anthology, and an Obama anthology in which Barack Obama had to save the world or universe in every story, for the end of 2012.

While the Obama anthology didn't pan out, I had already roughly outlined an alternate universe version of Obama in which as a second term president he witnesses his daughters kidnapped and his female head of security raped and killed in front of him by the KKK. His hands are cut off and he's left for dead. A mysterious stranger nurses him back to health and fashions him metallic hands in order for him to use to exact his revenge on the klan. (This is now slated as the second installment of the Bizarrobama series, btw. It's called Afrobama.)

When I was outlining the idea for my contribution to Zombie! Zombie! Brain Bang! I thought, "How cool would it be if that same alternate universe Barack Obama was still around years later, but totally corrupt and cyborged out, and actually the villain of this piece?

So I ran with it. As for the political angle, just as many, if not more, left wingers think George Bush was the crazy dictator who was going to take away America's freedoms and create a totalitarian state.

That's why Lord Obama's suit of armor is red, not blue. To signify that the left/right political paradigm is false. They all work for the same masters, and if our freedom is being stripped away, it is not at the hands of one political party over the other. It's a group effort.

At one point I even toyed with the idea that a nearly mummified, living embalmed version of George Bush would be operating the Robobama in the same way that Past Clavelle operates the zombie bot from the midsection. But in the end, I thought that imagery was far too heavy handed. I was comfortable with the political message of the Zombo, the domed city, the white trash watching the ZFC on TV etc. Any more would have been overkill.

I could ask you the same thing about those posts, Sean. What drugs were YOU on? ;)

In all seriousness, I don't do any drugs. I drink a lot more now than I used to, but for 7 years, from the time I was 23 till the night I turned 30, I didn't touch drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, nothing. I don't even like caffeine.

Those are all the things people typically associate with gritty, full time writers, but I don't consider myself a writer. I'm a story teller. My movies, books, whatever I'm working on is just a big ole play inside my head and I do whatever I have to in order to get it out.

I was blessed with a hyperactive imagination. I've never had writer's block. I believe that is a natural talent, not the sort of thing that can taught or trained. You can hone it with exercises and much repetition, but if you're not a creative, imaginative person to start with, you're not going to get far as an artist.

So, I don't need drugs to fuel crazy ideas like Robamapocalypse. I find inspiration in other ways. For Robobama, I watched a shit load of Japanese exploitation movies like Tokyo Gore Police and Robogeisha. I read a lot of bizarro books like Apeshit, a Town Called Suckhole and Tentacle Death Trip. I got myself outside the box in terms of plot and then I just shut myself away and went to work.

I hate writing in the same place every day. I like to take my Laptop into nature and explore--let the sounds of the world be my soundtrack as I blast away at the keyboard. I would say my methods to pull out the kind of originality I put into my fiction comes from being an anti-writer.

Without giving away some of the big twists and reveals... There is a technology that pulls all non-living organic matter toward it, like a giant dark-magnet. One of the characters utilizes this technology to pull together all the slayed zombies into one mammoth zombie made of zombies.

Lord Obama demands all questions be asked here.