Interestingly enough, my current Work in Progress has zombies in it. If you have read other entries in this blog, you know how much I insist on hating zombie stories, and I do.

So, I wouldn't call this a zombie story in the ideological sense. As we learned in the third episode of Life: Narrated, our podcast, zombies are used to complain about social woes with impunity. Anything from capitalism, to immigration, to kids spending too much time on their smart phones. (if you haven't listened already, you should! It's interesting.)

But this story brings the zombie back to the basics, I guess. Where there's a necromancer whose in control and the zombie - in life a very important person who died under unclear circumstances - is used as a political pawn more than anything.

I'm halfway through my second pass at editing and as much as I love the story, there is going to have to be some serious structural edits in the next pass.

For instance. In the original, the necromancer is picked up by the army and they hitchhike to a secret military installation.

They hitchhike.

How secret could this military installation be if everyone keeps hitchhiking to it? Why would a seriously outfitted government agency not invest in a car? What kind of two-bit operation is this, anyway?

I honestly have no idea what I was thinking.

No, I do know what I was thinking, because I wrote that scene after hitchhiking on the back on an oil tanker - I was sitting literally on top of the tank - and thought, wow, this would be an awesome scene in a book.

But some things that happen in real life shouldn't go in novels because the details just stand out too much. Instead of focusing on the main point - which would be the military being interested in the necromancer - the reader will be like... but why are they hitchhiking? And why are they on an oil tanker?

All that aside, I haven't reached the 'Oh god why am I doing this? Is this terrible or awesome?' stage of editing, so I'm still feeling pretty chipper.

Hey guys!

Episode Three of Life Narrated is out! I know what you're thinking. Where is episode two? Episode two has been stricken form the record and will, from now on, be referred to as: NOPE.

 But Episode Three is bangin', ya'll.

In this episode, we talk about zombie narratives!

I like this episode for two reasons:

1) before I started researching zombies, I was very uninterested in the genre as a whole. I didn't understand why people like zombie movies and why they were so popular.

But after researching quite a bit, I started to see deeper meaning in it. I started to see the lines of connection between the African zombi, to the Haitian zombi, to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, to all the iterations of the theme since. I couldn't believe they were all connected.

This is why I find anthropology so fascinating, because you find connections where you don't expect there to be one.

2) We had a guest star on the show! Even though we were using a crappy Skype setup, we still managed to have the lovely and talented @Loolabette on to talk about zombies! It was fun!

I am very encouraged by our progress on the technology front and I'm hoping to have more guest stars in the future. Unfortunately, she's kind of hard to hear, but we're still working out the kinks. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Now, without further ado, here is Episode Three of Life: Narrated:  https://soundcloud.com/lifenarrated/life-narrated-3-zombie

PS - Every time we say Boris Karloff, pretend we're saying Bela Lugosi.

An update about the podcast! It's been going on! We've been learning stuff!

Namely that a certain someone COUGHMattCOUGH makes a terrible host when he is slightly disinterested in the topic.

We had another podcast in which we were supposed to talk about narratives in general, but I didn't really communicate what it was supposed to be about, and it didn't go very well. It ended up with me babbling a lot and getting off topic. EVEN THOUGH WE HAD A DOCKET.

Long story short, I'm going to be a better communicator next time about our new topic: ZOMBIES.

I am super into this now because my Work in Progress (WiP) is about zombies - not necessarily the way you're thinking. There's really only one zombie in the story, but he's an important zombie.

But not a romantic zombie. Let's be clear.

Anyway, I've been reading up on Vodou and African myths about zombies and anthropological theories so I'm all fired up to talk about that aspect of it. Add to that the fact that none of us really like zombie narratives but want to know why they are so prevalent in the past couple of years and we're gonna have a good time! 

Maybe even a special guest. (Insert suggestive eyebrow waggling here)

OH! And in keeping with the theme of this month, you should check out Shawn T Anderson's short story on Internet Troubadours - Kill Tokens and Taffeta - It's great! All zombiefied and whatnot.

I'm still not sure if I'll post the final edited version of Life: Narrated Episode 2 - it depends on what happens during the editing process which I am scared even to start.

Also: I just finished the first edit run through of my WiP y'all! I'm excited!


Whew. That's all the updates for now. A real post is forthcoming, promise.

If you have a suggestion for what we should talk about in our zombie podcast, leave a note!

Episode 1 of the new podcast Life: Narrated is available for listening here:

https://soundcloud.com/lifenarrated/life-narrated-1-narrative-in

A Caution Before You Listen: there are spoilers about Braid, Broken Age, Gone Home, Bio Shock, and Spec Ops: the Line. Also, we curse sometimes. There may have been mention of dick pics.

I think it will forever be referred to as the Un-aired Pilot. Because we made some mistakes.

We made some mistakes.

But we learned a lot, too! Like: don't bring a bag of Doritos to a podcast recording. And: Maybe wait to turn the dryer on until after you're done. Also, we should probably have a docket instead of just rambling on...

In this episode we talk about Narrative in Video Games. We touch on topics like ludo-narrative dissonance, unreliable narrators, game mechanics that drive story, historical video game knowledge, and we gush about how awesome Broken Age, Braid, Dwarf Fortress, and Gone Home are.

Towards the end, we get pretty into talking about Broken Age, which is a game that's just been released by Double Fine and which we spent a large part of our Saturday playing together. I apologize that we didn't explain the plot better, but I think we were all trying to avoid spoilers for that one, as the game literally came out last week.

The story with as few spoilers as possible is as follows: it is a game with two stories going simultaneously, one of a girl named Vella, who has been chosen by her town to participate in a creepy lottery/pageant/Hunger games/sacrifice where they dress them all up in cakes and feed them to a monster called Mog Chathra. It's apparently an honor to be chosen and everyone is all about it except Vella and her grandpa. Vella decides to fight the monster instead of letting it eat her, and her adventure goes from there.

The other story is of a boy who is stuck in a spaceship built to keep him safe. It's clear he's been in there since he was a baby because everything from the control room to the 'missions' the computer, Mother, send him on are designed for someone much younger than him.

At some point there appears this wolf who starts asking the boy to go on 'real' rescue missions. But you aren't sure who he is, how he fits into the ecosystem of the ship, and why these missions are so important.

It's a great game, and you should listen to us talk all about it and then buy it and play it for yourself. Though, again: Spoilers!

Whenever I talk about video games to non-gamers, I've heard things like "well, I prefer to spend my time with other people, not computers," or "kids today don't have any patience for a good story" or some similar nonsense.

But on Saturday, instead of going off and doing whatever it was that we had planned, we all sat, together, on a couch and worked through these puzzles for FOUR HOURS. And it was fun.

There are plenty of video games that are like that - that make you think, that tell a story, that can be enjoyed even if you aren't the one holding the controller.

So, if you aren't a video game person, I encourage you to listen to our ramblings and then try out one of the video games we talked about. It will be good for you.

The two microphones I ordered off of Amazon arrived today, because apparently this month is the month I start doing ALL THE THINGS.

I have had an idea for a podcast for a while, and it's slowly taking shape. Studying anthropology makes you appreciate the way we tell a story; the narrative of life. So I thought I'd have a podcast about life's narratives. The stories we tell ourselves.

This won't be actual stories being read aloud, like This American Life, but it will tackle questions like: why are zombie narratives so popular? Why does Game of Thrones have so much sexism when it takes place in a fictional world? Why do Americans throw out food that is perfectly fine everyday? Is representation important in popular media? Is fan fiction a good or a bad thing?

All of these things have to do with how we tell stories to ourselves and each other (yeah, even the one about the food).

Anyway, this is still in infant stages so I'll definitely let everyone know what we start doing it. I'm hoping for it to be a discussion format with me, my brother, and our friend Lauren, because we always have the best discussions.

If you have any topics you'd like to suggest, please do. We need all the help we can get.


In other news, there's a new story up on Internet Troubadours so check it out! This one is called the Secret of Room 404 and it's by Andrea S who has no online presence as she is a technophobe. I feel confident saying this as she WILL NEVER READ IT. I may, however, tell her about it, as I am incapable of keeping a secret. C'est la vie.