S.G. Browne

This isn’t Yellow speaking. Not yet. This is me, offering a bit of a preface. An introduction, if you will. And also an apology.

The reason for the apology? This blog is a re-post from May 2008. So yes, I’m recycling. But at least I’m admitting it. I’m up front about what I’m doing. Plus, I’ve got a perfectly good excuse for re-posting this a year and a half later.

As an exercise, I’m going to do a series of these flash fiction posts as different colors, just for fun and to give me something to do that’s a little creative. I’ve already written the next one, but since it’s from the color Red, I thought it relevant to post this one as the first in the series and then go from there.

So, without further adieu, the color Yellow…

People are always asking me what it’s like to look like urine.

These are the people who laugh at me. Who walk away snickering and high-fiving each other and thinking they’re all that.

Men usually.
Teenage boys.
Fraternity members.

Assholes.

Women, on the other hand, are more likely to ask me how they look in me. Personally, I wish they’d ask the question in reverse but for some reason, most women tend to think I’m gay. Maybe not as many who think the same thing about Pink, but then that’s kind of a no-brainer. He’s Pink, for Christ’s sake.

Then, of course, there’s Red, Pink’s cousin, who most women find totally hot. Fucker. He’s all show and no substance. But it’s kind of hard to compete with Red when your complementary color is Purple.

So I’m driving down Interstate 5 from Portland to Salem in a rental car, a Hyundai Accent with manual locks and manual windows but with an XM Radio, and I’m listening to Classic Rewind, a station that plays rock and roll from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, when “Rockin’ Into the Night” by 38 Special comes on.

When I first got into music back in high school in the 1980s, my favorite bands were of the pop rock variety. I wasn’t into classic rock. I couldn’t stand the Rolling Stones, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, or The Who. And I couldn’t be bothered with New Wave bands like Oingo Boingo, Depeche Mode, INXS, Modern English, or Squeeze.

(Editor’s Note: I listen to all of these bands now, lest you think I’m totally lacking in my musical tastes.)

No, what I listened to back then, my favorite bands of the 1980s, were bands you don’t hear played on the radio anymore. Bands that didn’t have any staying power. Bands you find playing at dive bars and county fairs and asparagus festivals.

Night Ranger. 38 Special. The Babys. Loverboy.

Yes. These are my guilty pleasures. My forgettable pop rock bands. My county fair circuit rockers.

To be fair, I also listened to a heavy dose of Van Halen, Def Leppard, The Scorpions, and AC/DC, but nothing got my blood pumping more than “You Can Still Rock in America” by Night Ranger or “Head First” by the Babys.

So there I am, driving down the I-5 in Oregon, the radio cranked up and 38 Special pumping from the speakers, belting out the lyrics as if I’d been listening to “Rockin’ Into the Night” every day for the past 25 years, a big grin on my face.

When I get home, I think I’m going to take out my albums and spin some of my classic 80’s vinyl on my turntable and indulge in some more guilty pleasures. Then I’m going to add them to my iTunes library.

Now if only I could remember where I put my Izod shirt, my Sperry Topsiders, and my Vuarnets.

It’s 10PM on Sunday night, I’m flying up to Oregon tomorrow morning to visit friends and family and to do a couple of signings in Beaverton and Salem, and I suddenly realized my mother has dial-up Internet access. While I’m sure I can find a wireless Intenet cafe somewhere in Salem, I’m trying to get an entry posted before I have to travel back to a time when 56 kilobits per second was considered cutting edge technology.

Saturday night, I had the pleasure of sharing the SFinSF event here in San Francisco with Jeff VanderMeer. The event consisted of a reading from each of us, followed by a discussion and Q&A moderated by Terry Bisson. The series is held monthly, so if you’re in San Francisco or the Bay Area and you enjoy good author events, swing by and give it a taste. Proceeds for the events go to the Variety Children’s Charity.

One of the audience members came up to me afterward and asked where he could find some of the short stories I’ve had published. I haven’t written much short fiction lately and until recently hadn’t had anything published since 2005. To be honest, I don’t know if I want some of them to be found, but I thought I’d share them here, in case anyone else was curious. The only one I know that can definitely be found is the last one, “A Zombie’s Lament,” upon which Breathers was based.

“Wish You Were Here”
Redcat Magazine (Spring 1994)

“House Call”
Frightmares, Issue #6 (February 1999)

“Spooked”
Crimson, Issue #4 (1999)

“Beyond the Sea”
Dread, Issue #11 (April 2000)

“Prelude”
Penny Dreadful, Issue #14 (2001)

“En Passant”
Night Terrors, Issue #9 (June 2001)

“If I Only Had A Brain”
Royal Aspirations III (2002)

“Lower Slaughter”
Outer Darkness, Issue #30 (2005)

“A Zombie’s Lament”
Zombies: Encounters With The Hungry Dead (2009)

So there you go. Happy hunting. Let me know if you find any of them. And now I’m going to finish packing and get ready for my journey back to the 20th century.

Okay. So I didn’t really have a summer vacation. And the list of books that follows includes everything I’ve read in 2009, but it’s just what came into my head first.

The idea to blog about this came about from a comment on one of my posts that suggested I include a link on my web site about what I’m reading. Well, I looked into placing a flash widget from Goodreads on my site, but it turns out WordPress, on which my web site is based, doesn’t accept flash widgets. Seems kind of discriminatory, if you ask me. What’s wrong with flash widgets? What did they ever do to WordPress? Does the ACLU know about this?

So until I figure out the best way to include some kind of link to what I’m reading, I figured I’d just blog about it.

First up is what I’m currently reading, which is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

I’m glad I didn’t know about this book before as at first glance it seems to be at least a cousin to Fated, my next novel, in that God and Death and a number of other immortal entities are characters. Not sure if that’s where the similarities end, but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out.

Although I try to devour a couple of books a month, I’m a little behind, but so far in 2009 I’ve consumed:

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
World War Z by Max Brooks
Fool by Christopher Moore
Jailbait Zombie by Mario Acevedo
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Something Missing by Matthew Dicks
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard
In the Woods by Tana French

The reads I enjoyed the most were Water for Elephants, Beat the Reaper, and Fool, though both In the Woods and Sharp Objects had such believable characters and page-turning plots that they have to be included in the top five.

The most disappointing reads were Something Missing and Pygmy – the first because I just couldn’t seem to get caught up in the story or the character and the second because, well, the broken English of the protagonist used throughout the entire novel prevented me from enjoying the narrative. I appreciate what Palahniuk was trying to do and applaud the message of the novel, but if it had been any other author, I would have put it down before the fifty-page mark.

If I had to pick a favorite so far this year, it would be Water for Elephants. Great narrative and style, compelling story, wonderful characters and setting, and a protagonist you genuinely cared about.

Favorite book of all time? There’s a handful that would be in the running:

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
The Stand by Stephen King
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

But if I had to choose one book to read over and over, my desert island novel would be, ironically, Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

So long as I had the conch.

People are always asking me about zombies:

Have you always loved zombies?
Do you think you’ll survive the zombie apocalypse?
Is it necrophilia if you’re both dead?

In case you’re curious, the answers are:

Yes.
No.
Probably not.

Truth is, I’m not an authority on zombie sex. However, I do know a lot about sloughage, frothy purge, and cadaver impact testing.

For some reason, this troubles my parents.

But the one question that seems to come up most often is:

Why do you think zombies are so popular right now?

I hear a lot of people saying that the current mainstream popularity of zombies is a direct reflection of global fears regarding the economy and terrorism. Horror as catharsis for the fears and anxiety of a society making commentary on itself. They contend that zombies are the proletarians of the monster hierarchy and in troubled economic times, they become the poster child for the financial ills of a nation.  An allegory for the end of the world as we know it.

Me?  I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid.  I don’t believe the current surge in zombie popularity has anything to do with a reflection of global or economic fears.  And I sure as hell didn’t write Breathers because I was concerned about terrorists or my IRA.

Truth is, I think people have a tendency to apply social context where it doesn’t exist.

After all, where was the zombie mania during other major crises or catastrophes of the 20th century?  Like the Vietnam War? Or Watergate? How about the Iranian Hostage Crisis? The Stock Market crash of 1987? The Persian Gulf War? The election of George W. Bush?

It didn’t exist. Not on this scale.

So what happened to make them so popular today?  I’ll tell you what happened.  Zombies were taken out of their proverbial archetypal box.  No longer are they just the shambling, mindless, flesh-eating ghouls we’ve known and loved for most of the part four decades. They’ve expanded their range, become more versatile. More well-rounded. And who doesn’t enjoy a well-rounded zombie?

28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake made them faster.  Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland made them funnier. Fido made them domesticated.

Meanwhile, zombie fiction developed into a solid sub-genre, getting its start in 1990 with the publication of the John Skipp and Craig Spector anthology Book of the Dead.  Prior to that, zombie literature didn’t really exist and it didn’t really explode until this decade.

The new millennium brought with it a surge of zombie fiction, including, among others, The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z (Max Brooks), The Rising (Brian Keene),  Monster Island (David Wellington), Cell (Stephen King), Patient Zero (Jonathan Maberry), Day By Day Armageddon (J.L. Bourne), Happy Hour of the Damned (Mark Henry), Breathers, and of course, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Jane Austin and Seth Grahame-Smith).

Not to mention all of the YA titles, like The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Carrie Ryan), Generation Dead (Daniel Waters), Zombie Queen of Newbury High (Amanda Ashby), and You Are So Undead To Me (Stacey Jay).

Young adult readers aren’t eating these up because they’re afraid of what’s happening to their 401k’s or if some terrorist is going to board their plane.  They’re reading about zombies because they’re fun and scary and entertaining.

Truth is, today’s zombies are faster.  Funnier.  Sentient.

In addition to running like Olympic sprinters, being domesticated as pets, and fighting for their civil rights, modern zombies write haiku, perform household chores, and are used as terrorist weapons. They can also be found on the Internet going to marriage counseling, falling in love, and singing to their former co-workers about how they want to eat their brains.

That’s why zombies are so popular today.  To misquote Bill Clinton, it’s not the economy, stupid.  It’s the fact that they’re branching out and discovering that undeath isn’t just about decomposing and eating brains anymore.