Identity Crises of the Living Dead

Yes, “crises,” as in plural.

It’s occurred to me more than once that this blog, with its numerous photos of cats and mountains and trees and flowers and stuff, would appear to the casual observer to be someone’s grandma’s on-again, off-again hobby. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’d be flattered by the comparison. I often wonder how many of those old-school grandmas who love flowers and cats and pretty sunsets are still out there in this day and age. I raise a cup of hot chamomile to them, wherever they are.

And I’ll drink it out of a pink mug, in my Big Pink house, just to make you mad. We love you, Grandma, wherever you are.

After my days’s adventures among the living dead with an angry protagonist I like to come home to a little wholesomeness, that’s all. Unlike a lot of people who write in the genre I don’t like living in Horror World 24/7. I don’t denigrate those who dress their houses in black lace and skulls; it just ain’t me, babe. 

Will photos of local squalor make this blog seem more sophisticated? Well, then, let’s squalor ‘til you holler! Gotcher pot o’ gold right here, ha-ha, get it? I’m feeling smarter already!

Although I’m not scrapping any categories, I’ll make a point of presenting most of my turbo-wholesome Nice People Stuff on my Facebook page. Most of the nice, normal-type people I know are on my Friends list there. 

I’ll still run the occasional photo essay from time to time but I need to punch things up here. People would never know what a wonderfully ghastly zombie horror writer I am at first glance of the page. Nor would they know at the 22nd glance. So I’ll dial back the cats and mountains and trees and flowers and stuff to the every-once-in-a-while.

If you lived here, you’d be home by now.

I realize some are wondering why I don’t write more about writing. I am writing, aren’t I? Why don’t I write about that?

Put simply, and more abruptly than I’d like, I’ve noticed I’m less inclined to write about writing when I’m writing. I add quickly that there is a rather comical point behind this, namely, that my best successes are when I’m at my most chaotic. There are methods to the various madnesses, but stuff like Comma Massacre Day (one day last month I went through all 240 pages of The Wrong Kind of Dead and, well, massacred masses of commas), and abandoning a chapter in the middle to go back and read the entire novel from the beginning, cutting sentences, axing paragraphs, dropping entire pages in the manuscript in the process...these aren’t things I feel I could responsibly recommend to anyone. 

Worse, I’m not even sure I could sell this as entertainment. (Woo-hoo, look at me, I’m so random!) That said, I suppose I’d better give it a shot. I’ve got a few ideas for posts.

Not original, but apropos.

Of course, I can always run excerpts from my latest work in progress, whether it’s the last novel in my zombie post-apocalypse series or from the book of poems I want to follow that with. There’s other stuff I’ve been working on, too.

The main thing I’ve been working on is the nerve for online confrontation. If I am to ever get going with these podcasts I’ve been talking about for the last three years, I need to come up with a final decision on the metaphorical hills I’m willing to metaphorically die on. 

Soon. (No, really!)

That’s precisely what’s been holding me back on everything. I’m not that fussed about anything to argue with people about it. After years of stewing over this, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no way I’m not going to get mixed up in something, no matter how hard I try.

So maybe I shouldn’t try so hard. Maybe I should take a stand on things. There was a time I used to enjoy wandering into comments sections and kicking rhetorical backsides. Perhaps that I don’t enjoy it anymore should give me a more mature perspective.

It should be fun to find out.