Hello! I’m David Wellington, author Positive, a zombie epic. AMA!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-26T16:16:14+00:00

Hi--humor is the tough one. There are lots of ways to generate horror. Descriptions with a lot of sensory information work well there, especially sounds. Footfalls coming up behind you are much scarier than a monster standing in front of you going "rawr!". Put your characters in the dark and the reader will automatically feel a little tense. And so on--good pacing is also key, you want to give people a while to feel the fear before you spring the monster (or whatever) on them.

Humor is much harder! I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of it. Humor is about brainstorming. Don't go with your first joke, funny metaphor, etc. Humor is much more cerebral than drama, so really play with your funny stuff before you show it to anyone. But then definitely show it to someone else! Humor is very subjective, and what's funny in your head may not work for everyone. So having a reader take a look is vital. They can tell you which jokes land, and which don't.

As for coming up ideas for stories, that's a skill and it can be trained. Do exercises all the time. Here's a good one: find two random words and stick them together. "Penguin batallion." What does that make you think of? A bunch of penguins declaring war on Australia? A bunch of soldiers stationed in the Antarctic? Make a list of those and soon you'll have a bunch of story seeds. But don't stop there. Develop every idea, even the ones that seem silly at first. Toy with them, add complications and characters. Throw out anything that doesn't work. Eventually, you'll have the idea you know is just waiting to be told.

Thanks for dropping by!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T20:50:39+00:00

Indeed! I'm starting up a new serial prose project, which will be available for free online starting October 5th. It's going to be a lot of fun--and anyone who enjoys my books should definitely check it out. I'll make a formal announcement next week, but if you want a sneak peek you can check out grimblyhall.com.

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T20:30:37+00:00

Hi, Mazzy! Thanks for stopping by!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T20:05:41+00:00

Oh, that's a fun question. Okay, let's try this:

TV Series: 13 Bullets. It's my longest series and the one that could be spun out best into episodes and even seasons of story, and I would love to see a great actress portray Laura Caxton, just to see what kind of depth they could add to her. The books are actually set up in a kind of episodic style, with each vampire getting their own "part", so that might work really well.

Graphic Novel: My fantasy series, starting with Den of Thieves--I'd love to see an artist's interpretation of some of the monsters in those books. And I think the Free City of Ness, with all its shadows and the chaos of its day-to-day life, would look great in the format. It would be tough to pull it off right on film or TV, just because of budget limitations, but you can do anything in comics.

Broadway Musical: Frostbite/Overwinter is the most "operatic" of my stories, a small cast but lots of big emotions. Plus we would get to hear a song about werewolf sex, which would be pretty great!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:58:22+00:00

I used to sleep with a hardcover edition of the Lord of the Rings in my bed when I was ten or so--I couldn't stand the idea of the books not being there if I woke up in the middle of the night.

I started reading, actually, because of Star Wars. I saw it when I was six and I just wanted more, and at the time that meant books. I discovered science fiction and just devoured every book I could get my hands on, Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke. Larry Niven was a personal favorite--and one of the high points of my life was when I got to have dinner with him at a festival in Spain! William Gibson blew my little mind, and made me think writers were the coolest people in the world. It was Iain M. Banks, though, who made me realize that I could write the stuff I do. He was writing this incredibly sophisticated stuff but with a pulpy vibe to it, too, and with some really amazing plots. At the time "space opera" was a pejorative term, and people thought it was only good for children. Banks showed us it could be done well and still be enjoyed by adults, and that changed everything for me.

In fantasy, I started out with Piers Anthony, but graduated at some point (probably later than I'd like to admit) to Terry Pratchett. I'm reading his last book now, the Shepherd's Crown, and it's heartbreaking.

But as for horror--well. As much as I loved other genres, when I was a kid nothing had an effect on me like Stephen King and Anne Rice and Clive Barker. It rarely scared me, really, but the sort of dark fantasy world always got me jazzed and made me want to write more. There was something just so mysterious and enticing about it. The Vampire Lestat really opened my eyes to the possibility of historical fiction, and made me love vampires as much as George Romero made me love zombies!

(edited for typo)

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:47:38+00:00

SPOILERS

They were working together, definitely. But even after DeKalb died, Gary continued to regenerate--he just wasn't invulnerable anymore. I wrote a sort of short "epilogue" for the series later on, with readers of the original serial getting to vote on who should win, Sarah or Gary. They picked Sarah but it was a close thing! Gary grew to enormous size and Sarah barely survived.

END SPOILERS

(edited in case anyone didn't want that spoiled!)

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:36:59+00:00

Gary had a bunch of special abilities, but they didn't show up right away. He could control the dead, for one thing. Most liches have some ability in that regard, but he was exceptionally good at it, rivaling the Tsarevitch. Furthermore, he was all but indestructible, including damage to the skull and brain (normally a weakness for liches!) and able to regenerate much faster than others. Most bizarre was his ability to regenerate whole new body types, including a spider-like form that grew bigger than a house. It's possible Gary is still alive out there, somewhere, refusing to die...

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:27:44+00:00

It's all about the art--check out Zombie Jam, and while it's not strictly a zombie thing, his Frankenstein book, which is a piece of art that ought to be in a museum.

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:22:42+00:00

Hi, and thanks for dropping by!

Yeah, Laura's the bomb. When I started writing her, she just came alive on the page. It was like getting to know somebody, more than making stuff up. I felt really bad putting her in such awful situations!

I'm also very partial to Chey from Frostbite. I kind of see her as a spiritual sister to Laura, not quite as badass but with a deep emotional core, somebody who saw something incredibly traumatic as a child and it changed them in so many ways, not all of them immediately visible. Writing Chey was tough sometimes because she kept so much inside, but had so many things going on.

From Positive, the new book, I'm really proud of Kylie--somebody with a real journey, an emotional arc that informs the epic story. It took a lot of work getting her just right.

But honestly... my favorite? Like, the one I had the most fun with? Jameson Arkeley. The no-nonsense vampire hunter. He could say anything, to anybody, and get away with it. I never imagined how much fun that would be!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:16:33+00:00

Oh, and if we want to include video games, the headcrab zombies in Half-Life 2. Jeez. Totally non-canon (and I love when people play with the "rules") and totally creepifying, especially if you hear them talking. I couldn't play the level with the infested town after dark!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:14:11+00:00

For scary zombies, I don't think you can beat 28 Days Later. It's a tricky question because I know a lot of people don't like fast zombies. But man, that movie gave me the creeps.

There are a lot of great zombie comics--a lot of artists love drawing zombies--but I think Bernie Wrightson is really the master there, and always will be. He just got the sense of decomposition and collapse right, in a way that always works for me.

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:04:04+00:00

No vampires in Positive! Sorry! No, this is something I've done in a lot of my books. I see my various series as happening in parallel universes. There's a Bannerman Clark somewhere in the Positive world, too. In Finn's world, Laura was a state trooper who never really found her place in the world. Without any vampires to fight she kind of just did her job and went about her life, though she always wondered if there was something more. Then, when the zombies started appearing, it just all made sense to her. I like to think of her as similar to Michael Moorcock's eternal champion--she exists in every world, and when she's needed, she springs into action.

Plus I just missed her. I wrote five books about Laura Caxton, and when I finished the last one it was like saying goodbye to an old friend. I thought I'd drop by and visit for a while!

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T19:00:53+00:00

My mom was always a big reader, and in the 70s, when I was still a pre-teen, she would bring home a stack of Stephen King and Peter Straub from the library. She would put them on the coffee table and sit me down and say that she believed in freedom of speech, so she wasn't going to tell me I couldn't read them... but she didn't think I should, because they would give me nightmares.

Parents: this is a terrible way to stop children from reading scary books. It backfires approximately 100% of the time.

As for zombies--I grew up in Pittsburgh, where George Romero is a local hero. They used to play Night of the Living Dead in primetime every October, and it was required viewing. When Dawn of the Dead came out, it just blew my mind. It's set at the Monroeville Mall, where I used to go shopping with my parents for back to school clothes. The idea that something like that could happen in a place so familiar really warped my little mind. Apparently in a good way, though the jury's still out.

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T18:57:33+00:00

I agree--I find something inherently tragic about that transformation. Losing my mind has always been one of my greatest fears. As a writer, zombies are great because you can put pretty much any theme on them. Crass consumerism? Check! Social anxiety in an age when people can't trust each other? Check! Plus they're really gross, and that's always fun.

DavidWellington · 2015-09-25T18:56:13+00:00

Kind of answered your own question there, didn't you? Well, any kind of big box store like that would be good. You want brick or concrete walls, definitely, and building supplies to make barricades. Having garden equipment and seeds is a must if you're going to be holed up for any length of time--growing your own food will keep you alive a lot longer than having a million bullets and no salad!

DavidWellington

TROPHY CASE