Story Profile: Bonnie vs. The Zombies

Writers should not read about zombie survival during a major natural disaster, but in 1995 that's exactly what happened. Hurricane Rita tore through my state and knocked out power for weeks. The roads were blocked by downed trees and no one could come in, get out, or make phone calls. Naturally, I was seeing zombies shambling about behind every chunk of debris that littered the roads.

Sometime later, a dear friend of mine asked me to write a story with her as the main character. Thus my post-hurricane zombie story was born. My friend, tough, sassy, fearless, became Bonnie in more ways than one. After completion of the story, I tagged the fictional name on her and there it stuck. It was probably the worst Christmas present ever. Sorry Bonnie, but for better or worse, you've been immortalized.

"Bonnie, get the gun."

She hurried to the back of the room and removed a pistol from its holster. She thumbed back the hammer and looked at Troy. Never could Bonnie have imagined that she would be drawing down on another human being, but now the situation was thrust upon her, and she had to take action. She stared into his lifeless eyes, into his blank expression as he attempted to bite her friends.

No, she was not drawing down on a human being. Whatever it was that had invaded and attacked them only resembled a human, and the longer she watched him, the less human he seemed.

Bonnie shut her left eye, took aim and squeezed off a shot. The bullet passed through his left shoulder, exploding the joint as it exited. They expected a cry of pain, a scream, and for Troy to jerk away. But he failed to even flinch. The pain did not even register.

Bonnie fired a second shot that ruptured his torso and obviously damaged his spine, as his legs went limp. Still he tried to squirm free and bite.

"Shoot him in the face," Joe yelled an instant before Bonnie reacted. Troy's head came apart as the hollow point ripped through his skull, spraying blood and brains across the room. The lifeless, ruined corpse dropped limp and Joe and T.L. released their hold on the thing.

"Someone tell me that didn't just happen," Bonnie said, shaking her head.

"Bonnie," Joe said quietly as he rose to his feet. "You just killed a zombie."

Story Profile: Pyro

"What should I write about?" I had asked one of my younger brothers. For me, younger brothers are like locusts. There are too many to count and they're always eating my food.

"Write about a pyromaniac," he replied without hesitation.

I'd never written about a pyro, but figured it couldn't be that difficult. I imagined someone with a fascination that became an addiction. Then I started researching interesting ways to create fire. Well, I researched a little, and then I started to recall some of the ways that I had created fire when I was a kid. So maybe it wasn't too much of a stretch for me to connect with the character in Pyro, which was probably why it's told as a first person narrative.

The story flowed rather easily, wrapping itself up in just two writing sessions. I polished it up and let some people read it. Though it was one of my earlier short stories, it's still one of my favorites, which probably says some things about me.

Anyway, when I was ten, the new digit birthday (the only time in life when your age gets another digit unless you live to be a hundred) my mom lit the candles on my cake just before she realized the camera was in the other room. She ran off to fetch her aged Canon to snap a shot of me blowing out my candles, and for thirty seconds I was there with my friends, unsupervised.

To this day I'm not sure why I did it, but as soon as she turned around, I slid the cake over, pushing it across the table, allowing it to settle beneath the white drapes. Before she had the camera in her hands, the cloth was flaming and my friends were laughing, most of them at least. The others gasped, then screamed.

Mom rushed in, some of my friends rushed out and I just sat there. She ran to the table, dropping her camera on the floor, then ran over to the sink to grab the fire extinguisher. As soon as her hand touched the red cylinder, she ran back to the table to evacuate us from the area. Jerking me up by the arm, she flung me back. She panicked for another few seconds, then returned to the sink to actually pick up the fire extinguisher this time.

After fumbling with the pin for God only knows how long, she managed to spray down the table, the cake, the wall, the floor and the window. Only the last little bit even hit the drapes that were almost burnt out by that time.

Of course she beat the hell out of me for that stunt, but despite the fact that I couldn't sit down for almost an hour, I didn't regret it. Not after realizing the power I had over order and chaos, creation and destruction. With no more effort than it takes to pass the peas, I managed to unravel two days of planning, an hour and a half of baking cake and cookies and six dollars worth of ice cream. I don't even know how much those curtains were worth, but we had a black spot on the ceiling that wouldn't come off for four years.

When the air conditioner went out and the whole trailer turned into an oven, if you stood beside the window, you could smell that birthday fire, even though it had been painted over.

After that I was hooked.

Author Interview: Jason Foux

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BECOME A WRITER?

One parent is creative and the other is a great story teller, so I didn't really have a choice in the matter. Stories started happening in my head and I started writing them down. The more I wrote, the more they happened. Now it's sort of an addiction. I can't go too long without getting my fix.

DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM A PARTICULAR SOURCE?

Music is a big source of inspiration. It helps me color a scene to give it the desired feel and portray the appropriate emotions. If I'm writing a fast paced scene, I use fast music to inspire me while I write.

As far as where I get my ideas, I'm not certain. Some of them just appear, popping up like a memory of something that never happened. For some, I'll see or hear about something and say 'What if' and that usually gets me into trouble because my imagination takes over and there's no stopping it after that. And sometimes I'll be in a certain mood or a situation and it just feels like a story is waiting to happen. The setting is right, like the opening scene of a movie and the story grows from that.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR POCKET NOVELS?

The first is Pyro. It's a first-person narrative. The narrator is recalling his long and storied relationship with his one true love; fire. he's not a bad guy, he just likes burning things and the power that the ensuing chaos gives him. A girl once told me that when she read the story she could see the character in some bar narrating his life over a beer. That's exactly how I tried to write it.

Bonnie Versus the Zombies is a bit of an odd story. Well, how it came about is. The story itself is probably exactly what you expect it to be. How it came about was like this. Hurricane Rita destroyed my part of the state, and in the post-apocalyptic setting that was once my hometown, my brothers and I ran around and explored the area, talking about how it would be the perfect time for a zombie outbreak. I wasn't that into zombies at the time, but the idea seemed fun. A dozen zombie movies and a few books later, I was ready to write a novel. The novel was introduce by the short story in question that doubled as a birthday present for a friend. Now the story itself is pretty simple and relatively close to actual events. After a major hurricane lays waste to Louisiana, three friends find that a portion of the population that hadn't evacuated had turned into zombies. If they're to survive, they must rely on each other and find a way to escape… if escape is possible. That's pretty much what happened after Hurricane Rita… sort of.

DESCRIBE YOUR NORMAL WRITING PROCESS.

There's not much normal about it. It starts when some stray idea latches onto my brain like a tick and won't let go. It's usually something like this: "Did that singer just say 'what if it was paradise' or 'what if it was parasites'?" And I get way too excited at the possibilities. Then I start brainstorming, letting my overactive imagination run wild with the idea. Basically, I cut the leash and turn it loose. When it's had its fun, it brings the idea back, but only after much gnawing and slobbering. It has then turned into something like this: "So this alien parasite gets inside a person and uses chemicals to alter the host's behavior to ensure its own survival." Then I remember something that I once saw about parasites and snails and birds and I incorporate things that actually happen into the story to make it more realistic. That way, if someone says that my story is too far fetched, I can say "there are actual parasites that take control of a snail's brain and force it up on a high branch so that a bird will eat it, allowing the parasite to infect the bird." Then there's this long process where I'm working on the characters, plot, timeline of events, conflict, resolution, etc. That part is pretty stressful. It's like trying to set up a tent from the inside. The more I try, the more things keep falling down on my head and nothing wants to take shape. Finally, I get it set up, step outside, and that's when I start seeing all the wrinkles. After some more time, I get those ironed out and I can write the blasted thing. by this point I'm so frustrated with the story that I pretty much hate it. So I write it for the sake of defeating it. There's usually some cursing, screaming, throwing of pens, and long walks to prevent me from losing my temper and going postal on a whole coffee shop full of people who don't deserve it because the characters don't do what I tell them to do, but in the end the story gets finished.

Told you it wasn't normal.

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?

Those damned characters. I spend days, weeks, or even months carefully and meticulously constructing the perfect plot outline just to have a character go off and deliberately disobey me. People get killed, the plot gets derailed, and the entire outline has to be scrapped and rewritten. We writers have far less control over our characters that one might think. In fact, we have very little control. They do what they will and we writers just type what happens. I guess I'm more like a reporter. I'll put my spin on things, but really I'm just telling you what happened in my own words. And that sucks because I spend a lot of time on my outlines.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS?

It's a tossup between two things. First is the actual act of writing. Creating a story from the careful arrangement of letters on a page is just magical. There's nothing like it. For me, the act of writing is very fulfilling despite the stresses and frustrations. I have to write. The stories inside me have to get out or I'll go crazy, and releasing them makes me happy.

Then there's the feedback. I'll get an email from a reader that says "Reading your novel has become part of my morning routine. I read a chapter before work every day." I write for myself, but hearing things like that is such an added and unexpected bonus that I'm not sure what to do with the compliment. So I just smile and do my best to not disappoint with the next story/chapter/novel.

DO YOU THINK THAT WRITING SHORT STORIES (POCKET NOVELS) IS HARDER OR EASIER THAN WRITING NOVELS?

I think they're about the same. A novel gives the writer more time to develop the characters and story, but the Pocket Novel allows for less complex works. Some stories can only be novels because there's so much that has to go into them. Some have to be shorts because it's not about the complexities but about a central idea and stretching it too far will dampen it.

WHAT AUTHORS DO YOU ADMIRE/READ MOST?

H.P. Lovecraft has been a favorite for over a decade for his use of psychological suspense and being the only author who can instill in me a sense of impending doom even though I know it to be fiction. (At least, I hope Lovecraft wrote fiction) Neil Gaiman is another. His stories are always so rich and unique.

WHAT DO YOU WANT READERS TO KNOW ABOUT YOU AND YOUR WRITING?

They need to know that my work is the greatest ever (don't tell them that it's not true). In all seriousness I want to push boundaries and write things that other people haven't written before. I know that everyone says that, and and serious writer should. I try to blur the lines between good and evil, pull stunts, break the rules. I want to try new things and take the reader along with me and I want it to be convincing. If my character wants to commit suicide, can I convince the reader to go along with it? Can I convince the reader that it's for the best? Can I convince the reader to hope that the character is successful in his attempt? And if he isn't successful, can I make the reader sad that the character wasn't able to accomplish the task? That's my goal. I want the reader to live the story with the characters and for the story to be as rich and unpredictable, yet believable, as real life.

ANY PARTICULAR GENRES YOU LIKE WRITING MORE THAN OTHERS?

Sparkly Vampire Teen Stalker Romance. Or maybe not. Mostly I write modern mostly-realistic stories with elements of humor, crime and dark drama, but I've also done zombies, vampires, fantasy, horror, mystery, sci-fi, pear trees, flaming hurricanes, train rides with the devil and a mutiny on a three-man fishing boat and I've had a blast writing all of them. Currently I'm on an apocalypse kick, but who knows what will be next? I sure don't.

DO YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING WRITING QUIRKS?

I sometimes type the words of a story while singing the words to whatever song I'm listening to. The weird part is that I don't recall what I typed until I go back and read it… and it always makes sense and doesn't contain Rod Stewart lyrics. Possibly the oddest thing is that one character in particular seems to be a powerful influence on me while I'm writing one of his stories. Whenever I work on a Jericho Mills story (a series about an alcoholic with a remote viewing problem) I tend to start talking like him. It wouldn't be so bad if Jericho Mills wasn't a dyed in the wool bastard. I've found myself saying things that I would have never said before I started writing his stories.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST PIECE YOU EVER WROTE?

The Hunted was about a guy being pursued by a killer who won't die. It was basically Friday 13th, or at least my impression of it based off what I'd seen from the previews. I was 9 when I wrote it… on a camping trip… with pencil colors. It was bad. Very bad. But it was also illustrated.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PIECE TO DATE?

That's a tough one. Maybe Flare, my vision of the world after a technology-frying solar flare sends us all back to the dark ages. I had a lot of fun with that one, but it was difficult to write. Not from the effort or length or detail, but because of what happens in the story. A lot of bad things had to happen to turn the main character from the everyman at the beginning of the story to the person he is at the end and to be convincing, I had to be… thorough. I have been told that some parts of that story were difficult to read. Well, they were difficult to write. But the characters and the story and the setting and the details all fell into place and I enjoyed writing that novel something fierce. I think it's my favorite… but I could name a dozen other pieces that could be favorites for equally good but completely different reasons.