ANNOUNCING: The New Normal: A Zombie Anthology
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| (If you'd If Cover by Chris Van Dyke |
The book will be titled The New Normal: A Zombie Anthology.
As the title conveys, the unifying thread of this anthology is its genre. Every story, mine included, is a variation on the concept of the "zombie story." But, I can see you're very curious as to how this anthology came to be.
(I'll get to that shortly.)
Some of you reading this post may recall that last August, I wrote a piece about another anthology titled Beneath the Twin Suns, edited by the wonderful Renee Gendron (with whom I'll be working with again in the future, but that's for another time). Well, many of us who greatly enjoyed that experience, formed a rogue splinter group near the conclusion of the book's publication. For many of us, Twin Suns was the first time any of us had worked on an anthology, and we simply wanted to keep the experience going.
We wanted to do it with a different genre though. Twin Suns was a "shared world" anthology, and most of the stories were Sci-Fi and Fantasy. So, we decided to all write stories in a different, but semi-related genre, that some of us--I was not one of them--had experience in writing: zombie stories.
Being part of this project was quite different compared to Twin Suns in one discernable way: it was a more democratic project. Twin Suns was undeniably Renee's brain child. She had the idea conceptualized before she put the shout out to the writers asking for contributions. She had the rules already set in stone (1500 word limit, an Element of Romance, a Happy Ending, the Shared World, related to the theme of Time, etc.), and we the authors had to agree to them to be a part of it.
With New Normal, we had none of that.
Hell, we didn't even have an editor at first. That is until Nikki Mitchell, a Twin Suns alumni herself, stepped up and agreed to play that part. And she did a damn fine job of it. She sent out the polls, she kept everyone organized, and she kept everyone informed. I only hope the 20 of us who contributed didn't scare her away from every undertaking such a role ever again.
In the end, we opted to only have 3 basic guidelines for this anthology: 1) The stories had to take place on Earth (during any time period), 2) the Zombies had to be "virus-based" rather than Night of the living Dead magic-based, and 3) the only way you could kill them was by destroying their brain function. That was it. Very loose guidelines.
I have to admit that writing my story for this book was very difficult. Besides the fact that I'd never written Zombie Fiction before (which was also the reason I wanted to be a part of this project, for the new experience), I placed two added limitations on myself.
First of all, I placed an added limitation on myself when writing: I didn't want my story to be Post-Apocalyptic. In most zombie media I'd experienced, the setting is always the same. The plague has already swept across the world and the world is in total shambles. Bands of people are desperately trying to survive, not just due to the zombies, but also due to the loss of modern civilization. So, I didn't want to do that.
Second, for some reason, I wanted my Zombies to be non-human. We see human zombies all the time, and I thought it would be mildly amusing if my weren't. Also, I think partly out of my admiration for Mary Robinette Kowal's short story "Evil Robot Monkey," I wanted my story to be an "Evil Zombie Monkey," story.
Unfortunately, the story didn't materialize at first, and I don't think these added limitations helped.
I tried starting the story twice before finally it caught fire and became the story I contributed, "The Account of Juan Diego Ruiz, PhD." Like my story in Twin Suns, it really began with the opening lines:
"The committee selected Moira to be the test subject.
It was a logical choice, but I still didn’t like it. Moira had been in the lab since she was a baby chimp. In fact, we both arrived the same day. In all that time, through all the tests, she’d always come out well at the end. And, as a bonus, science moved just that little bit more forward too.
This time, I wasn’t sure how she’d fair."
Suddenly, I started asking myself those classic questions that create story. Who's talking? Why is this time more disconcerting than before? What's causing this worry? In the end, despite the difficulty I had in getting the story going, once I had someone with something to lose--the basic formula for conflict--I had my story.
And it's a pretty good one at that.
"Juan Diego," however, it just one of 21 stories in The New Normal. That's the great thing about an anthology: there's more than one opportunity to find your next favorite story.
However, if that prospect isn't enough to tempt you into buying a copy, then consider this. Because so many of us were Twin Suns alumni, we decided to take a similar lead with the profits. Follow this logic. Zombies are traditionally interested in eating brains, so we decided to give any money this book makes to a "neuro-based," (our term), charity. We debated for a while if it would be a Neuroscience Charity, a charity that helped Neuro-divergent People, or a Mental Health Charity.
Considering that everyone's mental health has likely taken a hit due to this pandemic, we opted to donate the funds to the World Federation for Mental Health, the World Health Organization for mental health issues. So, even if zombies aren't your thing, maybe you'll consider buying the book, knowing the money will go to benefit a good organization doing good work for the world.
Come January 20th, the book will go live on Amazon. Consider getting a copy the next time you need a new book to read.
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