S.G. Browne

On the Undead Anonymous site, visitors can ask Andy, the main character of Breathers, questions about what it’s like to be a zombie.

This week, Tom, from somewhere in GMail land, asks:

Andy, do you floss regularly?  What does a zombie do about halitosis?

Good question, Tom.  Most Breathers tend to think that once you become a member of the walking undead, all of your personal grooming habits get tossed out with the bathwater.  Which is actually not something I’ve ever done, but it’s the first metaphor that popped into my rotting brain, so I went with it.

To be honest, I wasn’t much into dental care when I was a Breather.  Kind of took the whole flossing thing a bit lightly.  But once your become a zombie and you realize that if your teeth fall out there isn’t a dental hygienist in the county who’s willing to go anywhere near your mouth, you tend to develop better habits.  So yeah, I floss every day.  Morning and evening.  I prefer the Johnson and Johnson mint waxed floss, though dental tape can be more effective for cleaning between teeth that are not tightly spaced – a common problem for the undead.

As for halitosis, there’s not a lot zombies can do other than use a lot of mouth wash and eat a lot of breath mints.  Jerry pops Altoids regularly, which seems to help, but honestly, when your internal organs are gradually liquefying, you just have to get used to the fact that you’re not going to go out on a lot of second dates.

Thanks for asking!

(Author’s Note:  Since Andy tends to have a bit more “hands-on” experience with this subject, I’ll turn things over to him for this entry.)

The smell is the hardest thing to get used to.

You’d think it would be the bloating or the liquifecation of tissues or the fluid from the lungs oozing out of the mouth and nostrils.  The brain can go pretty fast, too.  Bacteria in the mouth chew right through the palate and before you can say “Night of the Living Dead,” your brain is pouring out your ears and bubbling out your mouth.

Fun stuff.

Of course, most of these problems apply to those who reanimated prior to being pumped full of formaldehyde.  (Future post alert.  Guess what F is for?)

In addition to the challenges mentioned above, if you’re unembalmed, you also have sloughage to look forward to.  That’s when the liquid leaking from the body’s ravaged cells gets between the layers of skin and loosens them, causing the skin of fingertips and toes to come off.  Sometimes, entire sheets of skin will peel away from an unembalmed zombie.  I’ve known a few melters who suffered this indignity.

But no matter what class of zombie – embalmed, freshie, or melter – the smell of undeath is almost impossible to mask.  Hydrogen sulphide leaking from various orifices, internal organs fermenting in a formaldehyde stew, the constant odor of gradually rotting meat…it’s a challenge to maintain your dignity when the stench of your rotting flesh wakes you up in the middle of the night.

You try to get it out of your hair or your clothes but no amount of Tide or Pine-Sol or bleach can get rid of the smell.  Someone should make a decent deodorant for zombies, or anything hygiene related, really.  They would make a killing.

(Next entry:  E is for Editor)

Meet Carl, one of the seven “survivors” who meet twice weekly for the Undead Anonymous meetings that are more or less the extent of Andy’s social life.

Carl is a bit of a curmudgeon, which is a nice way of saying he’s an insensitive prick. This stems from the fact that he’s angry about having been stabbed seven times, twice in the face, by two teenagers who stole his wallet and used his credit cards to buy seven hundred dollars worth of online pornography. The fact that you can get a lot of quality online pornography for free pisses him off even more.

Carl used to be a member of a local social club and resort, where he played tennis and golf and attended weekly dinners and hob-nobbed with the social elite of Santa Cruz County. Now he sits in a room with a bunch of rotting corpses twice a week instead of being able to go to the movies or take a walk on the beach or play a round of golf.

Understandably, Carl is a little bitter, so he tends to take out his frustration on the other members of the group. But his verbal barbs begin to soften as he develops a camaraderie with his fellow zombies.

In addition to his general snarky attitude, one of Carl’s more endearing habits is his tendency to distractedly finger the stab wounds in his face.

Next entry: D is for Decomposition.

Breather(br‘́́thər) n. 1 one who breathes; a human being; a living person   2 someone who has civil and constitutional rights   3 a tasty, midnight snack

When I first came up with the title Breathers, I was in a bed and breakfast in Hanalei Bay, Kauai, recovering from the fact that I’m a caucasian man who neglected to apply a strong enough sunscreen.  This was in October of 2003, two years after I’d written the short story “A Zombie’s Lament,” upon which the novel is based.

At first I wasn’t sure the title would work for the novel.  After all, Breathers is a dark comedy about zombies, not the humans who abuse and subjugate them.  Except for the Breathers who work at the SPCA.  But that’s for another blog…

Problem was, I fell in love with the title.  And although I tried to come up with alternate titles that might work, I couldn’t bring myself to lose it.  So I had to make sure the content of the novel supported the title.  Still, my publisher wanted to add a reading line so that potential readers would know it was a novel about zombies, so we settled on the title of the original story it was based upon.  Which was kind of cool.

Officially, the first draft of the first chapter of Breathers was written on October 3, 2003.  I only know that because I have the journal entry for it.  But that chapter isn’t the first chapter.  It ended up becoming the second chapter.  The opening to the novel originally went:

My name is Andy and I’m a survivor.  At least that’s what I’m supposed to say and think and believe.  But I can’t say it, I don’t think it, and the only thing I believe is that this is worse than anything I could have ever imagined.

I finished the first draft of Breathers in February 2006.  The long lag between start and finish was due in part to my personal life and to the fact that I’m a binge writer.  I don’t write every day.  Which is heresy among a lot of writers.  I used to write every day.  From 1990-2001.  Two hours every morning before work and whatever I could get in at night.  But binge writing works better for me now.

I didn’t start out to write a novel that had any sort of social commentary.  I’ve just always loved zombies and wanted to give them a voice, show what undeath was like from their perspective.  I wanted to create a zombie the reader could sympathize and empathize with, so that if he eventually gave in to his instincts, the reader would still be on his side.

Plus I always wondered if it was necrophilia if you were both dead.

Okay, I realize I said I was going to start writing Breathers from A to Z two months ago, but number one, I realized the timing was off. And number two, I’m a lazy blogger.

Part of that has to do with the fact that I’m just not comfortable sharing personal information. Politics. Religious beliefs. How many bowel movements I have each day. Not really something I want to talk about.

I prefer to stick with the whole writing thing. The occasional flash fiction. Perspectives from Andy. Maybe some insight into what happens when I sit down at the keyboard.

So since I’ve had several interviews and a number of future fans already wondering how I came up with the idea of Breathers and what it was like writing as a zombie and how long it took me to find an agent, I thought I’d start a running blog, twenty-six entries, going over the process of Breathers from A to Z.

Now, similar to Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk, this isn’t going to be the type of blog that goes “And then. And then. And then…” It’s going to jump around a bit depending on the letter and how much caffeine I’ve consumed on any particular day. And on those days when I want to sleep in, I’ll have Andy fill in for me to add the zombie’s point of view on the whole process.

So starting on Tuesday, I’ll post the first entry, A is for AGENT. Because really, I wouldn’t be writing this without her.