What's up with all the Zombies?

Right now, zombies are in vogue. They have hit television shows, big movies, a gazillion books and now a commercial. I personally don’t get it. I remember when Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968. I had friends who saw it, but like now, I wasn’t interested. It was, like so many contemporary zombie books, an independently produced black and white film.  Now it’s a classic that’s been remade a dozen times.

I doubt many of the current zombie books will be classics, but I know the authors are hoping for the best or at least decent sales, among the hordes of other zombie books. Being an author can sort-of-turn you into a zombie, especially when you’re plowing to the end of a book. What turns me into a zombie, I recently discovered is line edits! It makes me cranky and when I haven’t had a morning cup of Joe to get me started, the inner zombie appears.

To be honest, I’ve never seen Night of the living dead, The walking dead, or read a zombie book. I admit I saw World War Z. It was all about Brad Pitt for me, besides my grandkids wanted to see it. My favorite character was the Israel female soldier. I hope if there is a WWZII, she’s in it. She really was kick ass. The zombies were just the side show.

Since I love to research and learn new things, or just love to be able to throw out some trivia. I went in search of zombies. What I found, most authors and movies have it all wrong. A zombie is a corpse, (that part is right) raised up by way of magical means, or witch craft. Zombies primarily come from the Haitian and Creole belief systems. Today, instead of magic, disease epidemic is the most popular form of raising the dead. Well, in WWZ, they were alive when infected, as it is in most books. How else can the world go zombie. So where almost every author and movie maker has it wrong, they take a living person and turn them into a zombie, where in reality, they should be dead, and then come back to life. It’s why they look dead and they have a certain fashion sense to them. The clothes are rotting like they are. 

Makes sense to me.  

All of this is rambling thoughts, early in the morning, when I’m almost done with my line edits and can’t think of anything to blog about. I really just wanted to write something different then working on my book, or talking about it, or promoting it. Ya know, all the shit that comes with being an author. The truth, authors after a long writing haul are zombies. They are in the zone, know what it feels like, they are expressing their inner zombie. They are raised up out of their chair like a dead corpse. When they come out of their office, after days of living off of chocolate and coffee and need a little protein, it looks like a zombie, acts like a zombie. Holy shit Batman, it’s a zombie!