DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

So I spent basically every waking moment for the two days following the release with the book glued to my hand, consciously not turning any pages further than the ones I was reading (how I spoiled myself for Buffy and George during Feed) and, um. Wow. Wow.

(I was actually more surprised that no one died after Kelly (I did not like anyone's chances) than I was that you unkilled George. (You unkilled George! George is undead! The good kind of undead! [sortof.]))


I'm more surprised that no one here has mentioned that Maggie's parents are both richer than god and stand to lose a hell of a lot if KA goes away, or if people start developing natural immunity to it, what with (nearly?) all their proverbial golden eggs in the zombie testing and containment basket. And that they come with the added bonus of a direct connection to Our Heroes that could be very hurty.

Questions:

1) They were driving through Colorado, and Nebraska with torrential rains, right? Because... that doesn't make sense to me. I've been chased out of FL by Very Large hurricanes, and those hurricanes still took weeks to affect the weather patterns in Illinois - and often didn't at all. There are "perfect storm" situations, with one system heading East while the other heads West, but the sort of thing described in the book is unheard of, as far as I can recall.

2) What's with the network blackout? I can't think of a way a storm system could cause that. Was there a "killswitch" (actually a plan/protocol to shut down network services) being used?

3) I believe it has been established that zombies need to breathe, and can die of heatstroke. Do they need to eat, too? What's the shelf life of a zombie? It bothers me a bit that places like Santa Cruz, which have been uninhabited since the Rising, still have zombies two decades later. Shouldn't the hordes all be gone by now?

4) Are you familiar with Dr. Gardner's work on virii and wild mice? This one has been bothering me, because the described conditions in his work seem like a good model for KA. Without the whole "zombie" thing, of course.

I just finished up Deadline today over lunch.

I was completely prepared for Shaun to amplify and go zombie. I was devastasted by the "She would've gotten better." I cried my eyes out when George died in the first book and that was a brutal slap in the face. A well placed slap in the face at that.

Honestly, maybe I'm dense but Shaun and George's relationship never came across as incest to me because they were adopted. Of course, I also missed the clues in Feed.

I loved the discussion of the Reservoir Conditions, but the spider with KA...well, that made me shudder. And squick. And be real grateful you didn't dwell on it.

Of all of the minor characters in the book, I think Dr. Abbey is probably my favorite.

I loved that you made Dr. Kellis a gay man and that it was just another fact about him and he could have just as easily have been straight. He was just a scientist trying to do the right thing.

I've already lent out my copy and gave my oldest child a copy of his own--he loves books very hard.

Over all, I'd say you won the Internet and I'm saddened I have to wait a year to see how the story wraps. It's going to be a long year in deed. :)

Time to ad a new comment........walking through a cloud of Midges, and having a crane fly in my house have taken on whole new meaning. Thank you for the nightmares. :{

So my husband just finished Deadline and has this to say to you: That F*ing bitch, I'll kill her!

And he also wants you to know that no one has EVER caught him with a cliff hanger in a book quite as well as you did. And if you ever do it again, he is going to cry. ;) I am still reading it though! Halfway through.

In this series you have outdone yourself.

I was given Deadline and read it in two days (not bad for a full time freelancer!) and just..wow.

I explained to a friend that Feed was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail for my generation, that it's on of my favorite books of all time as a reporter. And that Deadline is waking up the next day after the worst story of your life, and shit is only worse.

<3

Oh! 499 comments in before me, if you read this I admire you even more than I did before. (and that was tremendously)

So I might have mentioned last year when I was reading FEED that I was at home in Wyoming and having truly bad startle responses when the horses on the neighboring ranches would run for the fence when the wind came up. Yep, I was home in Wyoming when I started reading DEADLINE, though this time it was the deer in the alfalfa fields that were freaking me out. Be proud of yourself, my dear. (no pun intended, sorry!)

Your writing of the George/Shaun pairing was deliciously subliminal in FEED because I assumed that they were an item if only because they only trusted one another as much as one would need to trust a long-term sexual/romantic partner, and also, nobody else on the planet knows them as well as they know each other. That is a sort of trust that I think few people in the Post-Rising world get to have. I was not surprised at the post-coital with Becks moment, but felt so very bad for Shaun at outing himself so accidentally. I am disturbed at the Kelly as Zombie idea, because it made me wonder after reading the end if she had ever been Kelly at all, if in fact the real Kelly was locked in a facility somewhere and that had been a clone!Kelly all along. And it makes my brain hurt. And my heart because I really hated her and then really liked her and then really cried for her, as I did for Dave. And Alaric's family, and I don't even know them, not really. I worry for his sister. Does she make it out of Florida? Does the almighty GarciaPharmFamily finally get on board with what is going down and put some weight behind our intrepid blogger!journalists? I want them to, I want them to be good and want them to want to save the world. I am an idealist at heart, I know this. *hangs head*

In unrelated events; thank you for providing a reason to use my Zombie icon, which I acquired when writing a character in an LJ roleplay game long ago. The character I was writing as was the product of one night of grief!sex between a woman who was searching for her brother and found instead what she thought was his double in another Shadow of Earth, one in which she could give in to the attraction he felt for her and she felt in return, once she determined much to her sadness that he was not in fact her brother. He was just randy for a hot babe. I will not reveal what was really going on, in case the story ever gets finished. But much is my amusement at the whole are they/aren't they related, because I wonder if the squick applies if they are images of siblings rather than actual. Would a Shadow version of you have your exact genetic structure? Would it matter? No need to answer, irrelevant. As I said, unrelated to the conversation.

I also want to vote for the Taunted Octopus shirt, black with orange writing on it please and thank you. Mostly because glow in teh dark inks fade faster than regular silkscreen ink, at least they used to anyway. Also, Taunted Octopus would be an awesome band name.

I am going to go back to watching for signal fires blown up labs and shambling hordes now, in my Metroplex and elsewhere.

Thank you for a fanfrellingtastic read, and the chills have not gone away yet!

S3
Denver, Colorado

If you happen to see Mira, please blame her for me not accomplishing anything my wife wanted this weekend. Me? I had a grand time!

Typo nitpick: All the pre-Rising stories have talked about Dr Ian Matras, but in Deadline he became William Matras and Ian Matras was his son. Just curious on which is correct? (The 2032 also through me for a small loop, but I see that's been covered already)

I think even more than the "woulda got better" I am most disappointed to realize that everything Dr Wynne did in Feed was a lie.

Of course he sent the CDC team to pick them up rather than just sterilizing them after George called in when they were supposed to be dead - they were supposed to be dead and he had to know what they knew. Maybe he found them likeable and that folksie easiness wasn't total crap, but ouch.

Similarly, listening in on Shaun's confrontation with Tate at the very end presumably again had more to do with making sure that everyone was on script. No doubt had Shaun or Alaric or Mahir broken off the script that the CDC had set up with Tate soliloquizing and falling w/o implicating the CDC, than some sort of tragic event would ahve occurred involving the sterilization of the entire area. What would a presidential candidate matter in those terms?

I finished Deadline this afternoon (oh wait, it's after midnight...yesterday afternoon) and then proceeded to read most of the comments before I got distracted.

One thing that was bugging me: on page 504, George yells at Shaun for not being dressed. On page 517, he has a pocket. In between those pages, I didn't notice him going anywhere near his clothing, but through the kitchen and then to the garage and back. (This is when they're at Maggie's once they've driven through the storm and had to strip to get inside.) Can anyone point to a sentence in which he gets dressed? I spent all those pages imagining him doing things mostly-naked due to lack of clothing identifiers.

Other comments.
1) SQUEE! I guessed the clone thing at the last line, as evidenced by a text I sent to a friend who finished before me. One was, clone George? The next was, read extras, I was right.

2) Had a hard time believing that Doctor Wynne was involved. :( :( :(

3)I didn't pick up on the fact that Shaun and George were sexually intimate until I read the threads. Kudos on the subtlety.

4) I am sad that Shaun changed his blog name. Not surprised, but sad. I liked "Hail to the King" but "Adaptive Immunities" just isn't as...Irwiny and pre-George's death Shaun.

5) Epileptic teacup bulldogs love.

6) Still trying to puzzle out the connection between Shaun seeing a George-without-retinalKA and the clone-without-retinalKA. Can't wait for more clues.

10) Here just because I can't leave the list at 6, but 7 is worse.

I noticed the clothes too, and reread a couple times before deciding he must have tossed them on at some point. I don't think it's actually said, though.

What about other large mammals? Are there zombie whales and tigers and elephants and capybaras?

It's said in-text that there would be zombie whales "if there are any left alive down there", so, yes.

(One assumes, since whales and dolphins are as bright as humans, that they would have worked out ways to spot/escape zombified dophins and whales, but until we get oceanographers' survey data, we won't know for sure.)

Well, I never had a better way to get through a night of pain that kept me awake than to read Deadline. Especially for the present at the end.

George 2 will work just fine for me, thanks.

I was a little surprised at the "revelation" of George and Shaun, but I kept on thinking in Feed that it was too obvious. But it makes sense either way.

One of my biggest peeves about the world was that dogs were amplification risks. I'm glad dogs made a big comeback in Deadline. :D

So I actually finished the book a few days ago and I've been re-reading it. I admit I didn't pick up on the Georgia/Shaun relationship either but I think I also had it in my head they were blood related until I read the lines talking about adoption in DEADLINE.

I felt like there was a lot of repetitive travel in this book. I know there wasn't but it felt like Shaun basically kept driving between a CDC campus and Maggie's multiple times. I know we were learning more and more about the conspiracy with each stop but it felt like less progress compared to FEED where the campaign trail took us to new places each time.

Great job on making me continue to miss Buffy. I don't mean that sarcastically. I miss her even more now that I know a version of George now exists, and I'm really glad we got to see more of Mahir. Maggie seems an interesting character. And crazy Shaun is crazy motif was excellent and entertaining the entire time. I do really like Dr. Abbey. She very much had a distinctive style and I wanted to know way more about her lab and what she was doing. I'm happy to hear that'll be in BLACKOUT.

Anyway really looking forward to BLACKOUT. I really want to know what Rick is doing and what the CDC, or whoever cloned her, thinks they're going to do with Georgia.

So, ladyaraia, avhn, and I were listening to "Bang, Bang" by Bekah Kelso, and it is STRIKING how applicable to DEADLINE it is.

Bang, Bang

Don't wanna open my eyes today
Things to do, a conscience to weigh
Was it so bad? Was it o--- kay?
Not enough coffee to wake me up
I'm up a creek and out of luck
I am surrounded, I better give it up

‘Cause I broke the rules
That I put in place
There's talk of prison,
there is talk of escape
Tell me what have I done
To be above and under the gun
Ch-ch-bang-bang

So listen here, Shadow
I'll make you a deal
Disguise as good times
And that will appeal
Far more to me than the thing you are offering now

What’s that you say
You don't work that way
You're in my head
Do as I say
I can't handle you today

Cause I broke the rules
That I put in place
There's talk of prison
There is talk of escape
Tell me what have I done
To be above and under the gun
Ch-ch- wait, wait

Maybe I'm too quick to pull the trigger
Maybe I deserve some amnesty
Maybe I should wait to deliver
Such a heavy sentenc-- ing

Yea, I broke the rules
That I put in place
But still, I'm standing
And tomorrow is another day
Tell me, what have I done,
Now that I know there
Ain't no, never no, wasn't no gun
Ch-ch-change

Seanan has mentioned contagious immunity a couple times in these threads, so I'm thinking he picked it up from George.

Who apparently was exposed to live state KA as a tiny baby. And if that means what I think it means, oh, the Masons are so much worse than broken people who then were bad, bad parents.

gosh i am so late to this party BUT

i finished reading deadline today and this happened:



this + feed are my two new favorite books of all time, btw.

Finished reading it today. One big reading gulp. Favorite type of read. :D

May as well tackle the big one first: The incest. Oh dear. Well. I have complicated feelings there. I'm adopted, and have a near-age brother. A lot of culture seems to take on the view of real family = biologically related. (I even noticed a some of it in this very comment section, which was a bit distressing.) I've had multiple people on multiple occasions say/imply that it would be okay if I... you know with my brother because we don't share the same genetics. And of course they're horrified if I turn it back around on them with their own siblings, because that's gross! That's their brother/sister! ... yeah. So, in short, I am definitely leery of the simple "they're not related, it's okay" arguments.

But, within the story-verse, I think I am okay with it. Probably won't be making up "OTP" t-shirts, but I think I can see how it works. The narrative itself does push them more towards "life-mates" rather than "sibling pair." A lot of their dialogue/interactions did ping my settled-couple-radar in the first book. And I trust you as a writer, so I'm sure you'll keep this rolling. I am hoping there's some more illumination into their family relationships/various flavors of broken in this last book, though, to really cement the departure from a traditional family.

Now for the rest of the book! I really enjoyed the plot and pacing. There were a lot of squee moments at the witty moments (like Maggie's calm death threats :D), and even more freakouts at all the plot twists you laid down. I had to put the book down for a bit and mouth "no" silently to myself after the "new strains of KA" revelation. I don't care if they have "good reasons." That's just plain EVIL. And the insect vector! Oh dear lord that was scary. What makes it even worse is that I finished the book right before going to hang out near a swamp. BAD IDEA. Every fifteen seconds I'd squish another mosquito and have an "OH GOD I WILL BE ZOMBIED" twitch.

Can't wait to see the stone-cold bastards behind this. (And hopefully to see them burn). And Georgia 2.0. And more science! I am very looking forward to next one.

(Oh, and is Dr Abbey you? She "felt" like you a LOT.)

I think for me, the double defining factor for my being okay with Shaun and George is that they are neither physical NOR familial siblings, in that they didn't grow up in anything that would have felt like a real family. It's more like two kids in a very small orphanage, despite the brother/sister label they put on it for convenience.

I am well seasoned by this point, and damn if that ain't GREAT. Proof positive you can't spoil me. No, not quite done yet - they just killed Kenny, er, Kelly - and I'm sure the last bits are going to be just as fab as the rest. This book is an absolute joy to read - I'm not stumbling back and forth, reading and re-reading bits to get the cadence or bits of info. The biggest problem with FEED, for me, was rushing to get to that next bit of info - I just couldn't get to it fast enough. With a little seasoning, reading this was something one can savor slowly. About 200 pages an hour. ^^ (No, I'm not getting hours together to read anything right now.)

I knew that retinal KA was going to be key beans - it wasn't just virology being believable for the story, it was Very Important Stuff specific to moving the story at some point. And when it belonged to the first person narrator? Gonna die. I have no illusions about your ability to deal with characters as the story wills it - so no, throwing book across room not happening here. This one neither.

As far as the Shaun/Georgia thing? If I could have said it to them, it might have been couched as 'I know you're doing it, you know you're doing it, we all know you grew up together - it's not the incest, it's continuing to cave and use the wrong words, okay? We know you're in love - own it. Come on - the truth is worth dying for, right?' I've known too many cases of actual full sibs coming together, separated all their lives by parental drama - that met, fell in love and went on to do the horizontal bop, produced progeny (with the predictable results) and so forth - for this to make me squick.

I am certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt that if anyone went out and polled the infant-at-the-time survivors of the first Rising, they would find other couples like them. Certain of it. (And hence, even more reason to identify first parents, neh? There's a twist.)

BTW, a word about the parental thing? These books are murder on people identified as parents. They are nearly all uniformly malicious idiots. Maybe successful in business, like Maggie's - but still, uniformly indifferent, absent, egocentric to the point of oblivious - twits. The only taste of the elder Masons we get is at arm's length, hardly concrete except for 'that shit is OVAH' and we're kind of left to write them as ugly and awful as one wills. Yup, zombies - and nasty, nasty people using zombies to further personal agendas at the expense of EVERYONE. But if you're still short on awful people, there are all those parents to hate on - deservedly so. Maggie is spoiled beyond belief - but is that love? Without even so much as a phone call without some bill prompting it?

(I'm left with one example that doesn't fall into this category - and hmm, is it possible the President is immune too? No spoilers for Blackout, okay?)

Bug vectors. Of course! But KA doesn't care about retroviruses? Aww, man - we still got herpes & shingles to worry about? That's mean. Then again, where *does* KA go to sleep, anyway? *winks*

Feel better - the fact you have promised a last zombie in the next book is intriguing all on its own. No, I wouldn't want to live in this world - and a big part of the appeal is the happy ending. We all want a happy ending, right?

In defense of some people's parents, Becks mentions that Alaric and Mahir's parents are supportive of them. We just don't actually SEE any of them on screen since they live elsewhere.

I had to put my copy down and cry for a while at "She would have gotten better". And it hurt almost more than losing George in Feed, because that one was inevitable given the circumstances and now it was preventable...and then oh hello, there's George at the end of the book why is it not next year already!

I miss Dave (dangit we barely met him and he's gone already?), I miss Rick and Ryman and Buffy and I'm v. displeased at Dr. Wynne for turning out to be such a bastard. Maggie is awesome, Mahir is biting in the best ways, and Dr. Abbey and her love of octopi (octopuses? octopodes? damnit.) is brilliant. I wanted to yell at Shaun for being oblivious, Becks for being obvious, Kelly for being...Kelly and I just about threw up at the blog entry for the opening of chapter 22 because I was so afraid. I cried for Shaun because he was dying and then because he wasn't. I cried and flailed at the end of the book because we get George again. I spent 4 hours quoting bits at my husband and trying not to spoiler him and as soon as he's done reading it I'm taking it back and re-reading it again a lot.

Other people who are smarter than me have already left the intelligent comments, so all I can say is this: You are brilliant and this is a brilliant series. You make me cry and hurt and bleed and love your characters, in the way only the best authors can. This trilogy has a permanent place on my "best books ever" list. Thank you.

Well, today I did my re-read, and I have two questions.

First: Kelly says her mother is Deborah Connolly, but Mahir's blog says that William Matras's eldest child is Marianne Matras-Connolly. Multiple sisters married men named Connolly, or something else more complicated, or I misread something? (Related question: is the William Matras mentioned in Deadline the Ian Matras of Countdown? I remember you saying you weren't being edited there, and I understand, just wanting to try to have things straight in my own head.)

Second: Mahir says he wanted to be a sports reporter initially. After I read Feed, I kind of figured that the coming of the zombies would mean the end of professional and major college sports, or at least giant live audiences. (The security kabuki of getting into an NFL venue is irritating enough without the threat of zombies. Imagine if everyone had to pass a blood test - gah. I am a sports geek and so of course it occurred to me to wonder about this.)

Thanks for answering everyone's questions so far - I understand if you don't make it to these. (I believe I've read all your comments in the thread here to see if anyone asked them, but if they did, I missed them.)

And edited to add: on this second read-through, I enjoyed all the Wizard of Oz references.

Yeah, noticed that with the Connolly's too.

I wonder how sports are done in this era? There's some kind of rock-em-sock-em robot movie with Hugh Jackman coming out, maybe sports are done via robots and remote controls these days? Or it's all done over video and Wii? That's still up there with my wondering how the film entertainment industry is doing now.

Okay, four pages and days later, my question:

For a voice in Shaun's head, George sure as hell knew a lot more about everything than Shaun could have possibly known. If she's not a ghost (and yeah, I know in Mira Grantland ghosts can't exist what with the science and all), then how does she know? What IS she? 'Cause I think her advice goes way beyond just some part of Shaun's head picking up on what he's too oblivious to notice. During my immediate reread (and I normally don't do that with series) I'm gonna go flag those bits, but I definitely got the feeling that that was an external force rather than just a version of George he made up in his head.

I did love Ghostly George, though. Didn't want to see her gone from the series. AND NOW SHE'S NOT. Go clone! I wonder what happens when Clone meets Ghost?

Page 349-350, Shaun and Georgia are somewhat arguing, because George has reminded Shaun she's a figment of his imagination, and he's asked her to quit reminding him of that.

*proudly displays new icon*

*loyal flying monkey grumble*

There's a review on Goodreads that's under my skin.

One of the readers is saying that she hates writers who write grief when they don't know jack shit about it. That is really irksome to me because it's impossible to get through LIFE without knowing grief, and that's really a complaint that Mira is not writing grief the way the reviewer would prefer to read about writing grief.

I mean, we saw Georgia's grief about Buffy, and that was different from the Masons' grief about Phillip, and different from Maggie's grief about Dave. Shaun's grief wasn't just grief. It was grief in a horrible melange with guilt, rage, frustration, fear, and loneliness, and it was more than his sanity could take.

Another of the readers is complaining that Georgia should've mentioned her relationship with Shaun in so many words, and that "she's a private person" isn't enough of a reason to have not mentioned it. I thought about it for a while, and I finally said that it seems to me the Georgia/Shaun relationship is in the same category as Dumbledore being gay. It's an interesting tidbit about the character, but it's not relevant to the main story. What does who Georgia's sleeping with have to do with her coverage of the Ryman campaign? What does who Shaun's sleeping with have to do with him going out and poking zombies with sticks? The same thing Dumbledore's sex life has to do with Harry and the Order defeating Voldemort -- not much.

Okay...so I resurrected my rarely-used LJ account because I absolutely had to comment on this thread. (Also, my apologies in advance for what is probably going to be an absurdly long comment, but I don't usually get the opportunity to gush to an author about her own book.)

First of all, I loved this book. It was awesome muchness.

George's death in Feed broke my heart. I loved her as a character, loved seeing a heroine whose primary strength was her intelligence, not her ass-kicking abilities. (Not that I don't love ass kicking, but as a decidedly un-ass kicking female myself, it's harder to relate.) Also, I drink Coke like it's going out of style, so that's another point in George's favor! I didn't think anything else you could throw at me could be harder than that. But I was wrong.

Deadline broke my heart about a million times over. Shaun's grief was just so tangible. Unlike Feed, where it was only really the end that got to me, I was crying through about half the book when I read Deadline--and then some! I was walking home from getting lunch this afternoon, and I had just finished reading the part where Shaun asks George whether she'll always be with him--and he's conflicted, because he wants her there but he kind of doesn't. I started sobbing, just thinking about it. Luckily, I was wearing sunglasses--not because I have retinal KA, but because it's June, and June in DC tends to be quite sunny :) Anyway, so yeah...emotionally, I think it's a harder read than Feed.

The revelation about Shaun and George's relationship was kind of a surprise-but-not to me,. Throughout Feed, I thought, "Wow, my brother and I would *never* be like that. But for Shaun and George, it made sense. They were everything to one another, the only people in each other's lives they could really count on, given that their adoptive parents were so negligent and, as such, they both tended to be pretty distrustful by nature. In retrospect, it made sense that George, as first-person narrator, never came out and said it. I think she believed it was no one else's business, but also...I think she was a little bothered by other people's reactions to her and Shaun's relationship. (Shaun obviously was as well, as evidenced by his reaction during the conversation with Becks.) People gave them weird looks just because they were sharing hotel rooms. I'm guessing that the relationship between them was well-established long before Feed, and at some point they pretty much decided, "We're gonna do what we wanna do, and the hell with everyone else," and let people draw their own conclusions. It seems like, between themselves, they're pretty accepting of the whole thing. (Though I would LOVE to know how they got to that point. I can't imagine it was that simple for them in the beginning. Does that make me weird?)

If anything, the revelation of their relationship made the story that much more tragic. Shaun hadn't just lost a sister, or even a girlfriend...he lost his everything.

And of course, there was, "She would have gotten better." Oh my God. I had to stop reading for several minutes after that. (But I couldn't wait any longer to pick it back up again.)


I was never entirely convinced that mindGeorge was merely a manifestation of Shaun's grief/craziness. The fact that, when mindGeorge manifested physically, her eyes are no longer dialated from KA, and that cloneGeorge was the same way, makes me think even more that it wasn't entirely Shaun's imagination.

As much fun as the suspense/thriller aspects of the series are, it's the interpersonal relationships--especially the one between George and Shaun--that really hold me. Whether mindGeorge was just a figment of Shaun's grief-striken imagination, or she was something else altogether, I'm so glad George's presence was still so tangible here.