Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sunday, October 28, 2012

OK, here's another ancestor of Mama Lona's Man, one that I probably haven't seen since I was nine years old (trust me, that has been a while). It's the "Zombie" episode of "The Night Stalker," which I loved as a kid even though it ran out of steam pretty quickly. However, it did go on to inspire "The X Files," so that's good.

The interesting thing, for me, is that this show dates to 1974, meaning it came out after Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," but it wasn't based on his flesh-eating creatures. It was instead a reference to the classical Haitian zombie.

According to TV.com, in this episode, "A voodoo priestess animates her dead son to take revenge on the gangsters that killed him." Now, that's not what happens in my book, but the plotline is not entirely dissimilar ... it just took a while for that idea to percolate through my brain and into the storyline, I guess.

Anyway, you can watch the whole thing here.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Here's another antecedent to Mama Lona's Man, a book I read twice (and paid $20 for, used!): Green Eyes by Lucius Sheppard. It has zombie-type critters that aren't rotting, brain-eating monsters, which is similar to the tack I tried to take.

A link is here.

But, I have to admit I never did really understand the ending. And it's not exactly a romance, and mine is, so I have that going for me, which is nice. I will gift a copy of Mama Lona's Man to the first person who sends me the name of the movie I just referenced.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

It occurs to me that I should toss up a relevant link now and then so you know what I'm talking about ...

Mama Lona's Man.

I wanted to point out some fictional characters who have some similarities with my heroine, Abigail Callisto. One that I'll start with can be found here.

And that one's name, come to think of it, is Abigail too, although I had thought up my character (in a different form) before I ever saw that show. And, my Abigail is not quite so flamboyant. Yet.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

This is my first romance novel. I've written several fantasy and science fiction novels before — on used bookstore shelves near you — but this story took me in a different direction.

Oh, sure, one of the leading characters is a zombie. And, yes, there's a Navy SEALs vs. zombie gunfight at the end. But the core of it is a love story, a story of sacrifice.

I'm going to use this blog to lay out how the idea came to me, the various sources that inspired it, and I'll throw in random zombie stuff now and then. My zombie character, by the way, is not the shambling, rotting zombies you see on TV and the movies; he's more of a classic throwback. It takes a brainy young college student — my heroine — to see him for what he is.