Books You Should Be Reading

Guest Blogger - Author Mark Henry

Please welcome my guest blogger, author and zombie afficiano Mark Henry! Mark's debut novel, Happy Hour of the Damned, is out now in bookstores nationwide, and you can read my review on the book in the latest issue of Graffiti magazine! Mark's here to discuss real-life "zombies."

MARK:

There are zombies in front of my house again.

Squatty. Pre-adolescent. Zombies.

They come everyday at about 3:00 and stay until 5:00. It doesn't matter to them that these are my prime writing hours—because, that's what I do, I write, when the zombies aren't interrupting that is. I hammer out fiction at a desk in the front bedroom, facing the door, not the window, because Feng Shui suggests that's optimal, though I don't subscribe to that philosophy. Despite popular opinion, writing's hard and I'm willing to suspend my own disbelief for a shot at some plot clarity, but do you think these zombies care about a desk position that promotes positive energy and success?

No.

"No" is the word you're looking for.

Now, I've never actually seen them eat a brain, though I suspect that's their preferred activity between the hours of 5:00 and 3:00. I know they're zombies for the following reasons…

1. They engage in repetitive behaviors including, but not limited to, banging on garbage can lids.

2. They mumble, shout and groan instead of using anything resembling proper English.

3. They don't yield to oncoming traffic, rather shuffling around leaving the drivers to rush the gaps.

4. They can't skateboard to save their lives…if you can call what they are "living".

Seriously, what 12-year-old kid can't skateboard, after six straight years of practice? Always falling, skateboard skittering off across the concrete, making a racket. If he falls one more time, I fully expect his limbs to fly off; at least then I'd be entertained during my distraction.

Sometimes, I wonder if this is what I traded a career in social services for—a career, mind you, that required an exorbitant amount of education for ultimately too little income and even less fulfillment. Not that I'm complaining. I enjoy writing. I simply had to get out of the helping profession; it was so dysfunctional and there were way too many vampires.

It was getting so you couldn't swing a child abuse perpetrator without hitting a stinkin' vampire—and the hallways weren't even all that narrow. They didn't wear capes or anything. Most of the time they'd blend right in, but there were those moments where their true vampirism came gurgling to the surface like an open wound…or two.

Lunch was the worst of these times. The vampires would swoop in with their gossip and try to suck a quote out of an unsuspecting bologna-eater, to use in some sort of foul triangulation. It really was tiring—emotionally, that is, sometimes intellectually—which I probably don't need to tell you, I'm sure you've encountered your share.

So…I'd take vacations.

Long relaxing stretches away from the those life-draining creatures. I used to love the beach, waves crashing on the shore, seagulls chirping (if you can call it that, bleating is probably more accurate), but I had to stop going there, too. Any guesses why?

The werewolves?

No. Though I see where you're going with that—back hair is not pretty, especially on a three hundred pound woman in a two-piece.

Nope. It was all the ghosts and I don't think that requires any explanation.

But, getting back to the zombies. Since I don't have access to firearms (and abhor violence) and everyone knows that the only thing that'll stop the endless roll and crack and skitter of zombies is a shot between the eyes, I'm left with no alternative but to move to the back of the house.

Which I'll do, after I see one of them master an ollie, because—c'mon—how many times have you seen a zombie do that?

Mark Henry's debut novel, HAPPY HOUR OF THE DAMNED is in stores now, not surprisingly it's all about zombies, werewolves, vampires, cocktails, workplace strife, 12-step groups and awful sex. He lives in the soggy Pacific Northwest with his wife and three dogs that insist on proper English.