Trans/plant/portation

While watching Zombieland a few years ago, I was struck by the notation, made almost in passing, that in a zombie apocalypse, larger and slower people would be the first to go. Certainly I personally would not win a footrace against well, anyone, but in a zombiecalypse, I don’t need to be speedy. I just need the right equipment.

Telling fat people that they’re doomed when the undead rise is simple fatphobia that doesn’t actually serve us very well. So let me tackle this and other popular misconceptions about zombie behavior.

1. Zombies aren’t fast. It’s oh so fear-inspiring to depict them this way, but frankly, they don’t have a lot of synapses firing upstairs, so actual running is nearly impossible. But let’s say they’re ambling at a quickish pace. Put up some trip wire outside and inside your barricaded home. Now you’re both faster and more agile than most zombies, and your size need not be a factor in outrunning the postmortem. Read More…

In third grade, it was Abraham Lincoln. I adored him. I’d brave the creaky wooden step stool in my grade school’s tiny library and reach as far as I could to knock another book about him into my greedy hands, and usually I’d have read through it in one or two days. I became an annoying font of information on Abraham Lincoln and his family, and I certainly had my preferences. Mary Todd Lincoln was nearly persona non grata to me.

In context, my family ventured most summers to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a two-week stay in a friend’s condominium. My mother instructed me with a firm shake of her index finger not to breathe a word about Lincoln while we were anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Statements like “We won the war!” said in sing-song would not be tolerated, and she feared people would respond poorly. She reminded me that I didn’t like it when people made fun of New Jersey—which was often—and the residents of South Carolina wouldn’t enjoy such mockery, either. Read More…

Jon Stewart made some hay this week over the redesign of the Quaker Oats Man, one of the first trademarked images in the United States, created in 1877. What redesign, you ask? Well, he’s been slimmed down and reverse aged, looking leaner and younger than he ever has before. See for yourself:

Notable about the size-down is the way in which the marketers discuss the changes. “Five pounds thinner,” they say of the rework. How does one determine such things for a non-person who has only ever been depicted from the neck up? Is an exact figure predicated on the years of photoshopping done to fashion models? A flimsy guesstimate? Read More…

Some amount of hay–I haven’t quantified it in any way–has been made over the disinclusion of Jenna Talackova from the Canadian Miss Universe pageant. The usual suspects that get trotted out in the name of “unfairness” after all, couldn’t be a part of the rationale for disqualifying her; Ms. Talackova’s presumed muscle mass didn’t matter in a non-physical contest, and her “male socialization” was moot given that by definition, the attributes sought after on the part of the judges would specifically be looking for gender neutral areas (as in the Q&A section) or feminine-coded areas, like how good contestants look in an evening gown or swimsuit. In other words, Ms. Talackova was either on equal par with the other candidates, or at a disadvantage, not an advantage.

But no matter, she was out. Until Donald Trump himself, manager of the whole affair, reversed his decision. Through his attorney, Michael Cohen, he said:

The Miss Universe Organization will allow Jenna Talackova to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada pageant provided she meets the legal gender recognition requirements of Canada, and the standards established by other international competitions.

The application process does not make any mention of transgender inclusion or exclusion, so it’s interesting that there was any basis to rule her out in the first place. Read More…

Folks don’t have to bring it up a dozen times; I get that this is one of people’s top questions for me. After all, there are a lot of books out there that depict the author’s life in some fashion, and not all of them are memoirs. Certainly very few of them are about people who are gender nonconforming. If we presume I was going to write something and not just make my way through life–which is a big assumption,  granted–then there was a specific decision-making process at work here. I picked this story and told it in this way. Perhaps people see memoir writing as narcissistic in the lowest common denominator. I hope my book doesn’t strike readers that way, not the least reason because I attempted to describe a story that allows for everyone else’s story to be told. Nothing in this book represents anyone else’s experience, and in that way, I hope I’ve done something that stretches beyond vanity. Here’s where my motivation lies: Read More…

At some point, any zombie apocalypse had to move into a new phase–zombies eventually run out of human brains to eat, humans find a way to reverse zombification, thus beginning a new chapter in humankind, or humans defeat the zombie onslaught. Of course there was another option–people dying out completely. But human history has shown us capable of responding to almost any threat, and so we found a way of succeeding even when all seemed lost. So many theories about surviving zombie attacks have focused on battling zombies, avoiding zombies, and discerning whether a loved one has become a zombie, it has largely slipped through the cracks of culture that even zombie doomsdays must end.

And then, if any humans have made it unscathed, it will be time to start living again. Read More…

I bring this up today because ineffective transitions killed my most recent back-and-forth with an agent on a novel of mine. You’d think an individual with personal experience transitioning would handle these story shifts better, but apparently, they’re two different things entirely.

Now then, with this case in question, much of any transition in the book had to do with the main plot point, uncontrolled time travel. With the protagonist at the mercy of something–or nothing–pushing him between the Prohibition Era and the 1980s, in different geographic locations, it was up to me to make sure readers could come along for the ride. A couple of my beta readers who looked at an earlier version of The Unintentional Time Traveler noted some bumps in the last third of the novel when time jumps occurred. So I sat back down with the manuscript and examined the language, the necessity of those movements. Read More…

Look, nobody likes a bitter jackass, although all of us have had run-ins with mean people at one point or other. Some experiences stick with a person, however, and even if one’s outlook is generally positive, well, a little rumination on justice is probably okay. In this spirit I take up the idea of zombifying my history’s greatest offenders. I invite others to do the same!

Robert B., former landlord during my second year of graduate school: Robert’s main problem was that he was a slumlord who just couldn’t admit it. He owned a dozen or so dilapidated, once-proud brick apartment buildings in Syracuse, New York and despite not wanting to ever maintain the structures, thought that tenants should pay current luxury apartment rates for the honor of residing there. When I pointed out that my living room ceiling was starting to bow, he asked me not to stand under there any more. And when a 6-foot section of that ceiling, no longer able to hold onto the rotten joist, collapsed seconds after I ran out of the room, he sued me, saying I’d done the damage myself. So yes, I would bite this guy on his dominant hand so he could watch himself turn putrid before he became a blathering zombie.

Wendy B., former college roommate: Wendy was a great friend that I met during my brief stint in the Campus Crusade for Christ. Although she claimed she didn’t believe in anything they were preaching, she also wasn’t cool with it when I started to come out of the closet. I came home from class one day to find my elderly cat locked in a kitchen cabinet, traumatized and covered in his own excrement. She refused to admit she’d done this to him, but that’s the problem with living with only one other person. Two weeks later, she moved out, calling me all manner of homophobic names, and four weeks later, I learned she was in a relationship with another woman. So Wendy, I have a zombie bite with your name on it.

Road Rage Guy in Alexandria, Virginia: All I did was stop at an amber light, and this creep followed me for ten more blocks, ranting at me from the wheel of his Jeep. When I got out of my car in a parking lot (I was headed for a haircut), he parked one row over and then screamed that I was a freak of nature. Geez, I know I needed a haircut, quit it already! His roundhouse punch may have been obvious and easy to stop, but this guy seems better off as a rambling undead than free to roam the suburbs of Washington, DC.

Mitt Romney, current candidate for President: No, he hasn’t injured me personally, but honestly, I see this more as a public service to improve his communication skills, because yes, Mitt has all of the panache of a wet bag of dog poop. At least eking out “braiiiiiins” would keep him away from his gaffes about $10,000 bets and how little he pays in taxes.

Actually, four people in 41 years is a pretty non-bitter list, all things considered. That said, I’d love to see other folks’ nominees for this little ignoble award. Feel free to add in the comments section!

Rick Santorum sticks around like a sexually transmitted infection. As the Washington Post put it earlier today, while Mitt Romney has trouble connecting with audiences on the stump, Santorum’s message is frighteningly clear: he wants a United States of Christ. Or at least, his interpretation of what that would look like. I can see the cows coming home, and Santorum still hasn’t mentioned any of the Beatitudes. Apparently he’s given up on inheriting the earth.

Santorum’s Web site claims that he will “lead us from the front,” but in reality it sounds like he wants to lead from the uterus. Not his uterus, since he doesn’t have one, but any garden variety uterus from a random woman in America.

Once upon a time, the fight for abortion rights and reproductive health was fought over the terms of when, abstractly, a human life begins. That abstraction is now being pushed into legislative agendas and bills, in the form of “Personhood” laws that would make pregnancy termination by any means—even, horrifyingly enough, miscarriage—a crime on par with homicide. Read More…

Prospective or emerging writers place so much emphasis on landing an agent or publisher that we may forget there’s a whole lot to do after the contract is signed. Rather than sitting back and waiting for my 5-star reviews to come in and my phone to ring off the hook (not that my phone even has a hook anymore), I’m working hard on getting my literary ducks lined in a row. I’ve created a press kit, gotten head shots, staged a fake interview so I have a Q&A to give to bloggers and readers, talked to the cover designer, lined up some reading gigs, and asked a few author friends for blurbs or to be part of the blog tour. And there are still more items to consider here.

What’s the ISBN? Are there advance reader copies available, because some reviewing organizations have a 3-to-4 month lead time or won’t run a review after the publication date. What’s the expected price of the hardcover or paperback? Will it be available in Canada? The UK? Which ebook readers is your publisher working with for the title? Read More…