Things I Forget to Blog About: Tuckerizing Edition
• Sara Harvey and I are rarely at the same conventions these days. Hypericon was the first one since THE COLD ONES came out. As you know, I named the kickass ex-Marine major in that book after her: Sara Harvey, zombie-hunter extraordinaire.
Sara Harvey the author and Sara Harvey the character could not be more different. Author Sara is a generous, sweet, bohemian lady partial to soft flowing clothing of impeccable style, wide smiles and body glitter - often enough that my son dubbed her the Glitter Lady. Major Sara is hard edges all the way, unsmiling with short-cropped black hair, whose idea of fashion is a black tank top and camouflage pants. Author Sara has chopsticks and ribbons in her hair; Major Sara carries at least six guns and knives, and as hard as you try, you'll only find three of them. Author Sara writes beautiful, fascinating books of undefinable genre; Major Sara says "fuck" a lot. Enough for reviewers to mention it.
As people bought copies of THE COLD ONES at Hypericon, naturally they asked me to sign them. Of course I did so, signing, "Aim for the head! -- Elizabeth Donald, 2010."
Soon word spread that the zombie hunter's inspiration was actually at the convention, and people began asking poor Sara to sign them as well. Always a good sport and unfailingly nice to fans, Sara did so.
And she did it with the only catchphrase she could think of that Major Sara Harvey uses.
"FUCK!" -- Sara Harvey.
• Mark Kaiser and I have been friends since God was a little girl, sometime in the early '90s. We were in college together in Memphis, and we actually had one date. Sort of. He stood me up. He remembers it differently, but I know the truth. Now I get to snark at him about it for the rest of time.
We lost track of each other over the last decade, and last year we discovered that through wild coincidence, we both ended up in St. Louis. He's married to a wonderful woman who is expecting their second child, and I've had the pleasure of their company several times. This is what is good about the internet, folks - it could have been many more years in the pre-Facebook reality before Mark and I realized we were in the same city. The world is big and hard to Google.
At any rate, it occurred to me that despite years of friendship, I'd never gotten around to naming a character after Mark. As we've seen, I am terrible with names, so I borrow the names of my friends, family, colleagues, random people on the police blotter… hang around long enough and you'll get eaten by a zombie. At the rate my characters die, I run out of names a lot.
I finally finished my bar scene that hung me up for a week - which just goes to show this whole book is gonna be a root canal, I swear to Christ - and started plotting the next scene. Then I felt the need to text.
ME: Muahahaha. Time to introduce Mark Kaiser the smartass tech to the new book.
MARK: Excellent
ME: You might even live.
MARK: Dream!
ME: Will Sarah mind if I feed you to zombies?
MARK: My lovely, darling wife's response: "ZOMBIE CHOW!"
MARK: !
ME: Oh yeah. That's love. :)
MARK: I prefer to escape the clutches of zombies, much as I've managed to scrape and charm and wit my way out of so many other tight situations in my real life…
MARK: But in your zombie universe, I might just be Baldric. [sigh]
MARK: So, introducing me to the book = you are now writing? That's my guess…
ME: Plotting the next chapter, actually.
MARK: Wife: …"Because you care about all of your zombies' nutritional needs. Made with the finest… BRAAAAAIIIIIIINNNNSSSS."
ME: I think she might have to show up sometime too.
Oh yeah. They're O.K. Our Kind.
Sara Harvey the author and Sara Harvey the character could not be more different. Author Sara is a generous, sweet, bohemian lady partial to soft flowing clothing of impeccable style, wide smiles and body glitter - often enough that my son dubbed her the Glitter Lady. Major Sara is hard edges all the way, unsmiling with short-cropped black hair, whose idea of fashion is a black tank top and camouflage pants. Author Sara has chopsticks and ribbons in her hair; Major Sara carries at least six guns and knives, and as hard as you try, you'll only find three of them. Author Sara writes beautiful, fascinating books of undefinable genre; Major Sara says "fuck" a lot. Enough for reviewers to mention it.
As people bought copies of THE COLD ONES at Hypericon, naturally they asked me to sign them. Of course I did so, signing, "Aim for the head! -- Elizabeth Donald, 2010."
Soon word spread that the zombie hunter's inspiration was actually at the convention, and people began asking poor Sara to sign them as well. Always a good sport and unfailingly nice to fans, Sara did so.
And she did it with the only catchphrase she could think of that Major Sara Harvey uses.
"FUCK!" -- Sara Harvey.
• Mark Kaiser and I have been friends since God was a little girl, sometime in the early '90s. We were in college together in Memphis, and we actually had one date. Sort of. He stood me up. He remembers it differently, but I know the truth. Now I get to snark at him about it for the rest of time.
We lost track of each other over the last decade, and last year we discovered that through wild coincidence, we both ended up in St. Louis. He's married to a wonderful woman who is expecting their second child, and I've had the pleasure of their company several times. This is what is good about the internet, folks - it could have been many more years in the pre-Facebook reality before Mark and I realized we were in the same city. The world is big and hard to Google.
At any rate, it occurred to me that despite years of friendship, I'd never gotten around to naming a character after Mark. As we've seen, I am terrible with names, so I borrow the names of my friends, family, colleagues, random people on the police blotter… hang around long enough and you'll get eaten by a zombie. At the rate my characters die, I run out of names a lot.
I finally finished my bar scene that hung me up for a week - which just goes to show this whole book is gonna be a root canal, I swear to Christ - and started plotting the next scene. Then I felt the need to text.
ME: Muahahaha. Time to introduce Mark Kaiser the smartass tech to the new book.
MARK: Excellent
ME: You might even live.
MARK: Dream!
ME: Will Sarah mind if I feed you to zombies?
MARK: My lovely, darling wife's response: "ZOMBIE CHOW!"
MARK: !
ME: Oh yeah. That's love. :)
MARK: I prefer to escape the clutches of zombies, much as I've managed to scrape and charm and wit my way out of so many other tight situations in my real life…
MARK: But in your zombie universe, I might just be Baldric. [sigh]
MARK: So, introducing me to the book = you are now writing? That's my guess…
ME: Plotting the next chapter, actually.
MARK: Wife: …"Because you care about all of your zombies' nutritional needs. Made with the finest… BRAAAAAIIIIIIINNNNSSSS."
ME: I think she might have to show up sometime too.
Oh yeah. They're O.K. Our Kind.
I did NOT stand you up!!!! ;). Just sayin' :)
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