Jaidis Joins In

Today our final and super awesome Friday March Madness guest post is from Jaidis Shaw. It is hard to write when someone gives you an open ended subject, but everyone here has pulled it off with flying colors so far. I am pleased to say that Jaidis is no exception to that. Here she gives us an in depth look at a matter most troublesome, with both flare and a great sense of humor. Read on, McDuff!
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Writing and Epilepsy by Jaidis Shaw

I finally did it! I gave in and accepted the challenge of writing a guest post. Whew! You may be wondering why this is a big deal to me. Please let me explain. I am a 'wanna-be author.' I had never put a lot of thought into becoming an Author. I wrote what I loved, and it didn't matter what others thought. That changed when English teachers began stroking my ego by telling me, “You’ll be a great Author someday.” I can remember the exact moment when I decided I wanted to be an Author. My English class had finished reading a boring book. We were asked to treat the book like a series and write a few chapters of the next book. This was the best kind of assignment. There was no right or wrong answer. It was me, blank paper and my trusty pen. Well pencil, the teacher and my pen kept having disagreements. Maybe Ms. Carmichael was jealous of my trusty pen? In any case, the teacher insisted I put my writing abilities to good use and become an Author. She had faith in me, and so, my love of writing and dreams of becoming an Author blossomed.    

Four years later, I decided to give writing a real chance. I began working on a young adult fantasy novel, and things were headed in the right direction. Visions of book signings and book tours danced in my head. Of course, the Universe had different plans for me and tested my dedication to writing. I was soon diagnosed with Epilepsy. I set my writing aside as I tried to understand and adjust to this new condition. It took me a year to get comfortable with my new lifestyle. I was in my second year of college and what started out as an ordinary day turned into the most confusing and most difficult time in my life.  I had a biology final exam, and I was confident I would pass. I waltzed into class and was getting prepared when I realized I had forgotten my pen.  (My poor trusty pen sat all alone at home, wondering what it had done wrong to be left behind.)  Thankfully, a friend beside me had an extra pen, and I started the task of completing my exam in record time. But, do you want to know what came to my mind instead of biology? Squiggles.

Seriously, the only thing I could think of was squiggles. They plagued my mind and attacked all biology related material that tried to pass through. Soon, the entire class had finished their exams and had left me alone as I sat drawing squiggles on my exam. It was six hours later when I woke from my squiggle induced darkness and found myself in the hospital. I had fallen victim to a Grand Mal seizure. Factually, it was several Grand Mal seizures, one every couple of minutes for six hours. It felt like I had a 'Fried Brains' neon sign alerting all zombies in the surrounding areas. Thankfully, the nearby zombies like their food raw, and I was saved from that terror. I am trying to discern if my fried brain will better my chances of survival during the upcoming zombie apocalypse or harm it.

Instead, I had to face the terror of learning how to speak again. I substituted simple words for each other and had no idea how to properly formulate a sentence. It was at that moment I realized I would probably never be an Author. How could I be an author when everything I learned from my English classes sat in a pile of ashes? I still had the desire to write but lacked confidence.  Could I write something people would understand and enjoy?  So, I stopped writing. I didn't see the point in writing if I was too worried about what others thought of it to ever try and get it published. That was six years ago, and I have come to the realization that it doesn't matter what people think of my writing. I am starting to write new and exciting adventures with my trusty pen.  Oh how I missed you, trusty pen. I have a renewed sense of being.  

As I bring this post to a close, I would like to encourage everyone to take a couple of moments and visit the Epilepsy Foundations website (epilepsyfoundation.org) to learn about Epilepsy, the effect it has on those who have Epilepsy and families and friends involved.  If you ever visit my blog, Juniper Grove, you will notice I am an Epilepsy advocate. I am doing my part to bring Epilepsy awareness Out of the Shadows and into the light.
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Lori's Love

Today's guest blogging is from one of my good friends, Lori Titus. She brings us a story form of a blog post, using various characters from her awesome worlds, and even hinting at some future guest blogging for us. Enjoy!
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Sunday at the Office

Imagine a cold morning with a gray sky. I sit at my desk, clicking through documents on my computer screen. There is a cup of coffee to my left. My cat Maxie is curled up at my feet. Outside the door of my home office, I see an impatient man scanning through the messages on his phone. He’s reading a text from his wife.

“You know, you can have a seat,” I tell him. He walks in and stands in front of my computer with his arms crossed, his feet planted. He’s wearing his usual jeans and t-shirt, with mirrored sunglasses.  “Can you take those off, please?”

“Fine,” he says, removing the shades and sitting down.  I click onto a file marked with his name---Justin Granthem.

“And your problem today is…?” I say, my eyes still on the screen.

“I don’t have a problem, I have a request.”

I look up then. He’s serious. Now that his sunglasses are off I see that his eyes glow fluorescent green. Not good. I click on my lunar calendar. No full moon. But crap, that doesn’t matter. He can change into his werewolf form when he feels like it. Why the hell did I put that into the storyline?

“It’s about Rafael Castillo. I want to kill him.”

I sigh. “Justin, we’ve talked about this. I’ve given you plenty people to kill. You can’t go around killing everyone that pisses you off.  Your story is a serial. Don’t you get it? You can’t kill people until only you and Marradith are left.”

He gives me a cocky grin. “That would be fine with me.”

“Justin, let’s go through the list of the people you wanted me to let you kill. There was Will, who has helped you out of more than one jam….”

“I still have some doubts about him.”

“There was Syd…”

“Oh come on, look at all the people he‘s killed! I bet he doesn't have a kill quota….”

“And there’s Nora. She’s your mother-in-law.”

“Which is the best reason for her to die.”

“Well you can’t kill her! What will your wife think? And you certainly can’t kill her in the prequel, because that means Marradith wouldn't be born. Which by the way, you’re lucky I even let you be a part of that story. I compromised with you on that front, didn’t I?”

 “You did,” he says, standing up to leave.  “But I maintain the right to revisit this issue later.”

“Well,” I say. “Let me put it to you like this. Marradith has been pissed for the last four episodes. Do you wonder why? I can make her stay that way much longer.”

He cusses under his breath and stalks out, hands in fists. He almost bumps into the next character standing in line. “Sorry, Miss Luella,” he apologizes, and walks past her.

“Come on in, Luella. I’ve been expecting you,” I say.

She walks in, pulling up her skirts as she carefully steps into my office. I watch her sit down. Her posture is so painfully correct that I pull myself out of my slouching position over my keyboard. She touches her hair gently with a gloved hand, and the plume in her massive, lace covered hat moves faintly.  Her tiny, corseted waist makes me want to suck in my breath or buy one of those stretchy spandex girdle things.

She speaks softly but meets my eyes squarely.

“I wanted to ask you, what seems to be going on here? I thought my story was through for now. Ben and I were looking forward to a vacation. A honeymoon, at least.”

“How is the Sheriff?” I ask. “I’m not really sure how you guys are when you’re on a break.”

“Ben’s fine,” she blushes. “The matter is that you seem to be working on something with us. Starting and stopping. So we’re on break… until all of a sudden we’re not.”

“I have been considering some new options for you and your town.”

“Options? Is that what you call it?  We don’t know where or when we are these days. Last week you wrote about what happened in 1888 and this week it’s 1873 again. It‘s very confusing.”

“I’m going to clear that up for you soon, I promise. Be patient with me.”

“Is it that young man that was just here? Is he causing a problem?”

“No. I think I’d like you to go on a trip soon.”

“Trip?” she lifts an eyebrow.  “Another zombie hunting expedition?”

“No, there won’t be any hunting involved,” I smile slyly. “But you may get to take a trip on a train. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“Perhaps,” she replies coolly. “By the way. How did that young man know my name?”

“He’s seen pictures. He’s married to one of your great-great nieces, actually.”

“You don’t say?” she blinked.

“Luella,” I lean closer, dropping my voice to a whisper. “You didn’t see any dead souls hanging around him, did you? I’m not sure I trust him lately.”

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2011 Lori Titus

Lori writes The Marradith Ryder Series, which appears weekly on Flashes in the Dark.  Her novella, Lazarus, is available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. She can also be found on Twitter as Loribeth215.

Eric's Entry

Today's guest post is from Eric Pollarine. Come, sit, listen to his rant. It's quite interesting!

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I’m not going to start this guest post by lying to you, so here it is: I was going to use this guest post to simply plug my work. There I said it, now you can’t say that I wasn’t honest with you. However, I was talking to my old friend Ben Childs, who runs the Drunken Horror Podcast, the other day, if you consider yelling screaming, reminiscing and drunkenly discussing the finer and not so finer points of the entire Star Wars universe, talking. I don’t and I don’t expect you to, but there isn’t a word in the English language to convey the ridiculous nerd-dom that ensued, so bear with me as I move on.

One of the topics that came up before discussing all six episodes of Star Wars was that of zombies, and especially zombies in fiction. Now, as some of you who may read this already know, I am a huge zombie horror/survival horror fan. I go out of my way to read and review works of zombie fiction over on the horror/dark fiction/rpg reviewing site Flames Rising.

Others of you may know that, along with being a simple opinion pusher, I am also a small time writer who has penned several zombie horror stories, the latest of which was just published in May December Publications First Time Dead anthology series. (pick up both books, but really volume two is the best, a-hem read “The Mission,” just a suggestion)

I also have a collection of Novella’s and short stories that will be coming out from May December Publications, sometime this spring, some of the stories, two or three I believe, also deal with zombies. So I am kind of a zombie horror/survival horror freak. I have my own theories, I have my style and I have my own likes and dislikes about the genre, especially the inundation of slop work and the churning out of clichéd story line after clichéd story line, just to catch a ride on the ever cresting wave of the zombie in literature.

But during this questionably coherent conversation, I was saying how I believe that the zombie could actually become one of the best ways to symbolize humanity. It was a very foggy conversation, so I may be elaborating to you for the sake of filling up space. But it’s true. The zombie could in fact be the last great bastion of literary exploration. Think about it for a minute, and I mean really take the time to do so. Queue theory.

The zombie, in my opinion, has moved past the image of shambling political and anti-consumerist allegory and clawed its hulking bloody self into the forefront of what it means to be alive and American in this the bold new century. But not just the zombie, not just the monster itself, I should say. I’m talking about the entire genre here.

You have the zombies; and yes of course they still stand for any sort of crowd/collective action/mentality, be it consumerism, political radicalization, terrorism, the anti-humanist theory of cannibalism and etcetera. But you also have the survivors. And being an old man of 31 who has just recently gotten back up off his ass and returned to the work force after a two year long crippling bout of unemployment and fiscal drowning, due for the most part by the greatest economic decline in the history of the United States, well let’s just say I sort of have an idea as to what it takes to be a survivor.

In my little theory, my generation, or what I call the “True Loss” generation, the 28-32 year olds that grew up under the shade of parents that were probably just children themselves when they had us. The ones who told us that there would be everything under the sun waiting for us so long as we obtained these hieroglyphic little pieces of nothing called “Degree’s” from these bastions of bad pot and even worse beer called “Colleges.” Yes we in the “True Loss,” generation are the ones who will be the survivors. The ones who will reshape the world after the baby boomers and their ilk, on down to the Gen Xer’s, finish devouring the entitlement programs that they so clearly didn’t fight for.

They have become what they feared they would become, they have become the zombies. But not in the way they used to consider the prior generation’s as zombies. They have become the zombies by sucking the marrow out of everything and leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. And we have become the survivors, as of course, given this theory’s many, many holes because we’ll have to scavenge and struggle and fight them till the ends of the earth, just to survive being stripped of even the tiniest glimpse of the future we were promised.

So how does this trickle down into the literary realm?

Well, I knew you would ask and here’s that little tidbit as well. Literary is defined as, so says the great Google:

“Pertaining to or of the nature of books and writings, especially those classed as literature.”

So then, Literature is also thusly defined as:

“Writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features.”

Now take my little theory and apply it to those definitions and what do you have?

Proof Watson, proof I dare say, that the zombie has moved from being just a metaphor or simple translation of fear. The zombie has moved into the realm of the utmost of literary devices, especially if used to understand the methods, philosophy and culture of my generation.

Because couldn’t surviving and struggling against massive and global political/ socio-economic destruction be considered in the “True Loss” and the immediate future generations, permanent and universal interest? The answer is yes, just agree and it’ll all be over with.

Seriously though, this is exactly why I believe that zombies translate so well, and have been on everyone’s collective mind. Because we are fighting what feels like a losing battle, because the walking dead are devouring the living in a way that is even more nefarious than a skin soup or brain buffet. They are feasting on the future, our future.

There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight, but unlike the nihilism of the original holy trilogy Night, Dawn and Day and so many of the greatest zombie novels that have been surfacing or being released lately- I think our story will actually have a happy ending. I don’t think it will be as ambiguous as those films were, or as down and out and terrifying as those books are. Maybe I am wrong. And maybe the future has already been too far infected with the strain?

Either way you look at it we’re standing at the edge of the end, so I could just be pissing in the wind to get a drink. But then again couldn’t you drink your own urine if you needed to survive? I think I saw Bear Grylls do it once, or twice.

Cheers.

Eric Pollarine

Eric Pollarine is a freelance journalist and book reviewer with Flames Rising, constantly disheveled musician, right mad bastard and author. His latest works are the ebook Novella

“A Man of Letters,” a soon to be published collection of novella’s and short stories with May December Publications “Fireside Chat,” series, the newly begun free serial novel MONOCHROME, and is currently working on finishing his first full length book about, what else, the end of the world and zombies entitled “This is The End.” You can contact him through facebook, twitter and of course his website unlikelyconvergence.com. He lives, writes, smokes and drinks far too much coffee in Cleveland, Ohio.

March Guesting Madness!

After Pembroke so gallantly wrote me a blog post, I decided to try and make a month of it. I found some folks willing to take me on, so every Friday for the month of March I shall feature a guest blog.

We shall start with my super sexy friend and brilliant editor, Stephanie Gianopoulos. Here is what she has to say:

Bewhere the Homonym!

Or: Led Poisoning

            We all have to learn about it in school. It’s drilled into our heads over and over. Yet as soon as we can get away with it, we ignore it and behave as if we’d never heard of it in the first place.

            No, I’m not talking about the Golden Rule; that’s a rant for a pen much mightier than mine. I’m talking about the humble homonym.

            Remember homonyms? Words that sound the same but have different meanings? Does that wring a belle? If so, then your assistance could prove invaluable in the battle against rampant homonym abuse.

            Granted, I’m an editor. I spend all day looking at manuscripts that have been, until that point, unedited. So I should expect to see homonyms flung about willy-nilly, right? That’s my job; I shouldn’t be complaining about it! Right? (Rite?)

Wrong. I’m not complaining about the homonym confusion I see in rough manuscripts. My clients let me get in there and set things strait … er, straight … so that every little word gets to mean what it says. What disturbs me is that I’ve noticed an unfortunate trend in works that have already made it into print: with increasing frequency, homonyms are being treated as interchangeable. “Too” becomes “to” (and vice versa), “site” becomes “sight,” and “led” becomes “lead.”

Let’s focus on that last one, shall wee … Ahem … we? The inspiration for this whole rant was, in fact, my having spotted a number of instances of “lead” standing in for “led.” I ran across so many of these cases of led poisoning that I began to wonder if the powers that be had changed the rules of the English language and failed to notify me. (How rued.) But assuming that that isn’t the case, why would anyone think that a metal was the linguistic equivalent of the past tense of that thing that leaders do? Because they sound the same?

OK, maybe it’s easier to just grasp at whatever spelling leaps to mind with the most dexterity. Maybe we shouldn’t take that extra moment to consider whether the words we choose actually say what we intend to communicate. After all, people will figure out what you mean, won’t they? Does it really make a difference to anyone who’s not an anal-retentive editor-type freak?

Maybe not.

After all, your bread will still smell good if you use three cups of flower.

And if you tell your boss you’ll deal with pay cuts using the “grin and bare it” philosophy, it’s probably nothing a good lawyer can’t solve.

And, hey (hay!), that farmer who bought a new ho for his field, well, that was an investment with a happy ending. Right?

Rite?

Write!

I mean it: Write! But please do yourself a favor and consider the homonym. Just a little bit of thought can save you from ill-chosen language, ensuring that your own words won’t come back to haunt you.

Or byte ewe in the as.

Stephanie Gianopoulos is a freelance editor and writer. All similarities between Stephanie and Red the Editrix are purely coincidental, with the exception of the ones that aren’t. Oh and she has boobs and tentacles.