Enter the zombie.

The modern zombie archetype has not been around for nearly as long as Stoker’s creation. Arguably, the rebel indie filmmaker George Romero is the closest we can come to a Bram Stoker of contemporary zombies. Romero’s seminal 1968 film, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, laid out almost biblical rules of the game for future incarnations of flesh-eating dead: cadaverous-looking, slow-moving, ravenous, and “all messed up.” The idea resonated for Vietnam era audiences burned out on Cold War paranoia and a constant stream of body bags on the nightly news. Again, in its day, the film was thought of by many as a simple, lurid, gruesome version of an EC comic – VARIETY called it an “unrelieved orgy of sadism” – but the archetype connected with people in unexpected ways.

The shambling, cannibalistic, reanimated dead touched an irritated nerve-ending in our culture’s deep, primal subconscious.

All of which brings us to today, and the real reason I’m blogging about this in the first place. I suppose I should just be happy that I’m gainfully employed, co-writing a series of original novels with the great Robert Kirkman, creator of the Eisner-award winning comic THE WALKING DEAD. I suppose I should just basically be satisfied with the ecstasy of working on such an amazing project – each of the three books we’ve been contracted to write for St. Martins Press expands upon the back-stories of the comic’s most popular characters. I suppose I should just shut up and be content to ride the Kirkman juggernaut of AMC’s smash hit series of the same name. But like my fabulous and beautiful ex-wife Jeanie says, “Bono… you always have to pick at stuff, over analyze things, and just gnaw at the bone until there’s nothing left.”

Pardon my rumination but I cannot stop wondering why zombies – and specifically Kirkman’s incredible universe – are so resonant today. What chord have we struck in the year 2011? Sure, the comic book series is a page-turner of the first order – an epic survival quest that plays like Homer’s ODYSSEY on mushrooms. Certainly that has something to do with the phenomenon. If THE WALKING DEAD sucked we wouldn’t be here right now, you and I, geeking out so heartily. But there’s a deeper meaning to Kirkman’s creation – and by extension, the zombie archetype in general. I think I know what it is.

For millennial America, the zombie is the wolf at our nation’s door – the stubborn, lumbering danger that just keeps coming, regardless of what we each do individually to shoot it in the head. The economy. Gridlock. Terrorism. Global warming. Unemployment. The zombie is the Roman Circus – the rotting underbelly of an empire in decline. On a more personal level, the zombie is your mortgage sinking underwater, your property taxes skyrocketing, your foundation festering with termites. The zombie is a lymph node. It’s that microscopic, unseen cell beneath the thin flesh of your armpit – a ticking time bomb — just waiting to become cancerous. Maybe you can destroy one of them, but they keep coming. They are legion. It sounds grim but the zombie is the personification of the blunt, impassive, inexorable obsolescence lurking beneath the shiny surface of modern life.

The good news is, art itself can offer a remedy. The horror genre in particular is best at providing catharsis – a poignant vehicle through which people can experience the worst case scenario, and ultimately, at least on a virtual level, find mastery over these impenetrable threats. That is the key to THE WALKING DEAD. It’s got all the slam-bang shock value of a great zombie-thon, but what it’s really about is the Living. What it’s really about is survival. Family. Even love. Which, let’s face it, is all we really need to survive.
That and a 12-guage shotgun.

Which brings me to THE WALKING DEAD: RISE OF THE GOVERNOR. The first original novel in Kirkman’s and my planned trilogy, the book is due out from St. Martins on September 27th, 2011… choreographed to coincide with the hotly anticipated second season of the AMC series. But for my money, the comic is the real driver of these books. The comic exists in a world by itself – a sui generis blend of horror and human drama – which is so rich with off-panel back-story that we could write en entire library of supplemental prose.

This one is the first.
Yes, I’m proud.
Find it here.

PS: Visit The Walking Dead novel’s Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/pHU50D) for links to the first chapter of RISE OF THE GOV, as well as a chance to win an e-reader!

Let me explain. I like to cook. It’s a hobby. I know actual chefs, and I would not in a month of Sunday dinners pretend to count myself among this gonzo fraternity. Being a chef takes a special brand of creativity, courage, stamina, taste, the ability to curse a blue streak, and a willingness to work for minimum wage. But I do dig futzing around the kitchen. My specialties are slow-cooked fare: Pork shoulder, short ribs, gumbo, brisket, pot roast, and veal shanks.

However… the origin of The Miniaturist comes from the same place you go to get a good sauce.

First you create a tantalizing hybrid by incorporating disparate ingredients – say veal stock, sage, Pinot Grigio, rosemary, and lemon juice – and then you whisk the hell out of it. For The Miniaturist I incorporated three genres that I love: Hard-boiled noir, high fantasy, and Lovecraftian pulp… and then I whisked it like crazy. Finally I applied the most important step: Heat. I raised the temperature through a classic suspense structure.

As with all good pan sauces, the heat can do something magical. It reduces the liquid into a silky, succulent ambrosia. Reduction intensifies all the flavors.

The Miniaturist – in its cooking stage – got reduced from a planned novel into a very concentrated, intense, savory novella. And I hope it is as delicious to read as it was to cook up!

But no meal is worth its salt without a great table setting… and no chef is worth a damn without a great wait staff and environment in which to serve it all up (also known as “the front of the house”). The front of this house – Cemetery Dance Publications – sets an amazing table. With original illustrations by the great Vincent Chong, and a haunting cover, this little novelette is a bargain for collectors and casual readers alike. Check it out! (Click image for ordering information.)

PINKERTON’S WAR will read, I promise you, like a page-turning thriller novel, and it’s all true, corroborated by both historic record and Pinkerton’s own accounts from his private files. This is history as heart-pounding Hitchcockian suspense! I will be blogging like crazy about this work – so stay tuned – and keep your eyes on the past!

The French call this cultural cycle “Film Noir” – don’t ya just love the French and their names – and the term has come to be associated with the look of these flicks more than anything else. The low-key shadows, the smoke curling from cigarettes, the ubiquitous Venetian blinds, and the wet, dead-end streets. But the subtext of these motion pictures was as poignant as it was telling.

In DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) the movie begins with Fred MacMurray already bleeding, shot in the gut, terminal… and he slowly dies while he narrates. In D.O.A. (1950) Edmund O’Brien, already full of poison, stumbles into a police station at the outset and says, “I’d like to report a murder… mine.” At the start of SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) we see William Holden floating face-down in a pool, already dead, the recipient of a scorned woman’s bullets… and Holden narrates the rest of the story from the grave.

Why so glum? Were we still stinging from the blood and treasure lost in the War-to-End-All-Wars? Was post-traumatic stress putting the squeeze on Hollywood’s heart? At the core of all the great Noir films was pessimism, true, but maybe beneath the pessimism was a perverse form of schadenfreude – don’t ya just love the Germans and their names – a lovely word which refers to the pleasure we take in observing someone else’s demise.

I submit, in the pits of our latest economic calamity, we should make more Noir! It’ll make us feel better… or at least convince us there are folks out there with problems worse than ours. I’m talking about stories of people double-crossing each other, stealing, spying on their neighbors, lying, betraying their best friends, having affairs with each others’ wives, taking bribes for nefarious deeds… but enough about the U.S. Congress.

Let’s drag our cinema down into the gutter as well.

We need to see Adam Sandler gut-shot and bleeding at the fade-in… we need Steve Martin with a body in his trunk… Sandra Bullock with a nine millimeter in her fanny pack… Hugh Grant with a time bomb shoved up his keister.

It’s the American way… the comfort of knowing it could always be worse.

People have a bunker mentality now. We’re circling wagons, cutting losses, staring at the bottle. Is it half empty or half full? Fingernails are getting chewed to the nubs. Flags are at half-mast. Lights are low. The “better angels of our nature” (as Lincoln said) are now folded up and being sold on Craig’s List. Dogs are hungrier. Streets are meaner. Harsh words come quicker. Is all this good for us? Are we learning what matters? Or are we dying with a watery gasp in a flood of corporate greed?

In the spirit of Allen’s melancholy Isaac Davis, I have come up with my own reasons for living. In no particular order, here are the things that keep me going:

1) MY WIFE’S NECK. Wars have been fought, seas sailed, fortunes made, mountains moved – all on account of my wife’s lovely neck. Okay maybe that’s hyperbole. But have you seen my wife’s neck?
2) THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. It’s a novel that came out in the year 2000. It was written by Michael Chabon. It’s about comic books. And it makes me glad to be human and proud to be a writer.
3) MY KIDS’ LAUGHTER. Ultrasonic whistles will rouse dogs. Snake charmers use their pungi flutes to mesmerize cobras. When I hear my kids giggling I melt. My kids’ laughter should replace antidepressants.
4) FRANK ZAPPA’S GUITAR SOLO ON “PENGUINS IN BONDAGE.” It’s the first song on ROXY AND ELSEWHERE. The lyrics have something to do with kinky sex and Kleenex wrapped around coat hangers. But the solo – a blues epic channeled through a hive of effects – sends me.
5) BRAISED SHORT RIBS. Marbled USDA choice. Brown them off in butter. Then roast them slow and low in soy sauce, scallions, brown sugar, ginger and Pinot Grigio. Closest thing to God you’ll ever find on a plate.
6) THE SOUND BARRIER SCENE IN “THE RIGHT STUFF.” Phil Kaufman directed it. Brilliant guy. But credit Levon Helm, the greatest singer in rock and roll, who says, when he drops Yeager from the B-52, “Put the spurs to her, Chuck!”

I could go on.
Maybe that’s good.
I feel better already.

PS: A special holiday blog coming soon!

-Jay