Dan Waters

Kiss of Life
by Daniel Waters
Available Now

The phenomenon that's been sweeping the country seems to be here to stay. Not only are the teenagers who have come back from their graves still here, but newlydeads are being unearthed all the time. While scientists look for answers and politicians take their stands, the undead population of Oakville have banded together in a group they're calling the Sons of Romero, hoping to find solidarity in segregation.

Phoebe Kendall may be alive, but she feels just as lost and alone as her dead friends. Just when she reconciled herself to having feelings for a zombie -- her Homecoming date Tommy Williams -- her friend Adam is murdered taking a bullet that was meant for her. Things get even more confusing when Adam comes back from the grave. Now she has romantic interest in two dead boys; one who saved her life, and one she can't seem to live without.


IBT: If you could choose one fictional character to bring into real life, whowould you choose?

DW: My top-of-mind response was Buddy Glass because I think he might be the
fictional character I would most like to hang out with, but there are
probably better choices if one is considering overall benefit to humanity.  I
guess an obvious choice would be Superman (although I'd pick Power Girl,
because she has all of his powers plus the powers of being A. female and B.
gorgeous), but then I thought it might be actually doing humanity a
disservice to bring to life someone whose sole purpose was to solve all our
problems for us.  So then I thought maybe a common enemy like Galactus or
Sauron would be a good thing, something that unites the world in purpose, but
then I worried that the broad social policies of say a Sauron would be too
attractive for a large segment of the world's population to pass up, thus
defeating my initial reasons for giving him life.

Maybe I should stick with Buddy Glass.

IBT: How did you survive being a teen?

DW: With a few scars and bruises, like most other people.  I enjoyed my teen
years, although it isn't a time of my life I'd care to revisit, except for
maybe 19.  19 was pretty cool.  Actually 17 was really good, too.

The key to surviving any attack on the psyche is to have a rich interior
life.  Most teens are inward-looking and introspective already, which is half
the battle.  The other half is to be able to understand other people and
society; reading widely and playing sports can help with this.    Pickup
basketball and frequent trips to the library made for a much healthier teen
Danny.

IBT: As a zombie fanatic myself, I though your Zombie mythology was refreshing
and fascinating. How did you get from brain eating zombies to the Differently
Biotic?

DW: Thank you.

The decision to eschew brain-eaters in favor of my kinder, gentler zombies
was almost purely instinctual, but it was one of those almost reflexive
actions that made more and more sense once the initial blush and frenzy of
writing cooled and I started to figure out what it really was I was trying to
do with the story I wanted to tell.

There were a number of things about the modern American myth of the zombie
(basically ignoring voodoo traditions and thinking Night of the Living Dead
forward) that struck me as being rich material to work with.  In most Romero
inspired treatments, individual zombies aren't really much of a threat
(unless they are/were a close relative!  Then you'd better watch out!).  All
you need is a ten foot head start or a baseball bat to avoid a lone zombie.
But collectively, zombies have power.  This is where zombies differ from say
vampires, which are basically undead superheroes, able to fly, beguile,
perform acts of incredible strength, etc.  I liked the idea that the
"monster" of the story, in societies' terms, was pretty much powerless.

Another concept that often got lost in "traditional" zombie fare was the
degraded humanity of zombies.  Many of the post-NOTLD films seemed to be
about maximizing kill count rather than exploring the idea that zombies are
basically us, but dead.  But then, maybe maximizing the kill count was the
point, the idea that one can cathartically experience what it is like to
waste dozens of people that were just like us not so long ago?  This to me is
one of the most frightening aspects of the American zombie myth.

I also realized that many of my favorite science fiction/horror tales were
also zombie stories, in a way-1984, The Stepford Wives, The Body Snatchers.
Much like the brain eating zombie stories, these stories were all about the
fear of assimilation, the loss of individuality to a homogeneous horde, the
destruction of one's personality and identity.   I'm not sure that people
today have that fear-the fear that society will assimilate them-that they did
years ago.  People are more free to carve themselves out as individuals, to
reinvent themselves continually, to add 62 pieces of flair to their Facebook
page-but the fear of today is that a person can be as individual as they can
be and society just might not care.  I'm thinking of this great story in the
parody newspaper The Onion  where Marilyn Manson does his level best to shock
and get a rise out of a middle American neighborhood-at one point going
door-to-door wearing "a suit of human noses"-and the reaction is this very
blasé, world-weary "whatever".  Or those cable or satellite commercials,
whatever they were, where a suburban mom is serving lemonade to Freddy
Krueger/Jason Voorhees-esque movie monsters or gang members and explaining
how she used the cable or satellite services' "parental controls" function to
block them out so her kids won't be exposed to their particular
worldview-much to the remorse of the tearful monsters/thugs.  I love those
commercials! They completely flip the dynamic of the Stepford wife and make
the soccer mom the most powerful being in the universe!

But the point of all this is the modern concern that being allowed to exist
or being a fully realized individual in a society doesn't necessarily mean
that your voice will be heard by that society.  The zombies in the world of
Generation Dead aren't looking to assimilate other people (via 'turning'
others through the consumption of their brains) or replace them-they are
actually looking to rejoin society, a society that they believe will be made
better and stronger by their participation.

And then there's the multiple levels of zombie-as-consumer, etc. that are so
fun to work with.  I could go on ad nauseum.  Basically I either riffed
heavily on or inverted as many traditional zombie tropes as I could think of.

IBT: How have the books/movies you've read inspired the books you've written?
What are you currently reading?

DW: Everything you read, watch or experience goes into the big Hadron collider in
your head, and when you write, all of those images, thoughts and ideas
hopefully come back out in interesting ways.  Sometimes the influences are
obvious and overt, others are subliminal to the point where even I might not
recognize them until I reread/re-watch whatever it was that influenced me in
the first place.

I'm currently reading stacks of non-fiction, books you would generally find
in the "Cultural Studies" of your local bookstore, for a project I'm working
on.  I also made a list of the "Twenty Works of Fiction that Most Influenced
Me as a Writer" and have been reading those as well.  I'm realizing as I
reread some of these formative books that their impact on me as a writer and
a person is considerable.

IBT: How do you decide what ideas make it on the page? What were some of the
ideas that didn't make it?

DW: I think all of my ideas make it onto the page-some page!-eventually. Scenes,
characters, whatever else can and do end up on the cutting room floor.
Early drafts of Generation Dead were far different from the final result. One of the main characters-a point of view character-disappeared entirely, gone. He got in the way, he was dull, he added nothing to the story and subtracted much. I still felt oddly guilty and criminal when I removed all traces of him from the book, even though it was the right thing to do.I cut one especially horrific scene from the book because it didn't work with the rest of the book. I can't tell you about it though because it may show up in a later work!

IBT: What is your favorite type of hero?

DW: Sandwich, definitely.

I don't know that I have a favorite type of literary hero-I like flawed heroes, perfect heroes, inept heroes, antiheros-whatever is right for the story. The unity of a story is more important to me than following a particular "type".

IBT: As an author how do you respond to those who think that censorship is a
necessary evil?

DW: I always try to start from the position of "seek first to understand". Quite
often you find that people have different definitions for the words involved; unless we start from a position with a commonality of meaning we're kind of stuck.
Let's say the "necessary evil" folks believe that "censorship" = "expunge the
work/genre in question from our libraries, schools, and bookstores, and then
salt the cultural soil from which it sprang so that nothing may ever grow
there again", than we are likely to have a serious difference of opinion that
I--as a writer or really just a member of society--have a moral obligation to

oppose strenuously.

If however, the necessary evil contingent has a more tightly focused belief,
such as "censorship" = "make it more difficult for children to gain access to
certain works without clearing certain societal/parental channels first",
then we may have some common ground.

I'm opposed to censorship, but I think there's a tricky line to walk as
someone who writes for teens or children. I believe that cultural artifacts
have the right to exist-even if they are "offensive" to a segment of society.
Art's "purpose" quite often, is to offend segments of society, to overturn
the status quo.

That being said, I also believe in the family's right to limit their own
exposure to cultural artifacts, especially where children are concerned.
There's a lot of garbage in the world, even-believe it or not!-on bookstore
shelves!

The toughest question that I ever have to field-even tougher than these
questions!-is "my son/daughter is X years old. Is your book appropriate for
him/her?" The answer is-I don't know. I don't know your child! I don't
know you! I can tell you what my publisher recommend, or I can point you to
various sources that many educators consider reputable for a recommendation,
but even the best intentioned of these organizations might ascribe to a moral
world view that differs from yours. That being said, I think my book is both
entertaining and "worth" reading, that it would be wrong for a parent to
prevent indefinitely a child who wanted to read it from reading it. I also
think that most teens can "handle" serious subject matter, and that such
subject matter improves and enriches their lives and therefore the lives of
everyone around them. But who cares about my opinions?

Maybe I should say something like "My personal belief is that this book is
appropriate for just about anyone, but it is up to you, preferably in
conjunction with your child, to determine at what age it is appropriate for
them."

Yeah, that line is guaranteed to boost sales!

My answer hearkens back to those commercials I mentioned previously. I
absolutely believe in the right for Freddy Krueger and the fictional The
Wire-esque thugs to exist, but I don't intend to let my young kids access
them until I feel that they can understand them for what they are.
Sorry for the multiple digressions, but certain issues are too complex to
answer definitively. I don't pretend to have done so here.

On a side note, I'm surprised and hurt that no one has banned Generation Dead
that I'm aware of yet.

IBT: What's next for you after Kiss of Life?

DW: I'm working on a few different things, all young adult projects. I recently
turned in a third Generation Dead novel called Passing Strange to my editor.

IBT: If you woke up tomorrow to a traditional zombie invasion, what would your
escape plan be?

DW: My plan would be to make myself less tasty.