I usually start these posts with "I am pleased...". I'm not pleased right now. I'm not sure I'll ever be pleased again. Like so many of us, I am sick and scared and sad. I'm wishing I weren't getting so many random apologies from people who found the villain in Feed cartoony and unrealistic, but now find him horrifyingly plausible. I'm wishing a lot of things.

But time passes; the Turtle moves; the work goes on, and my fear and my sadness do not mean I can let y'all miss things you might want to know about. So:

It is my privilege to announce that I (as Mira Grant) am doing another novella with Subterranean Press. Final Girls is a story about virtual reality, psychotherapy, corporate espionage, and figuring out exactly who you are. According to the website...

What if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?

Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they've been missing their whole lives—while running from the bogeyman through a simulated forest. But...can real change come so easily?

Esther Hoffman doubts it. Esther has spent her entire journalism career debunking pseudoscience, after phony regression therapy ruined her father’s life. She's determined to unearth the truth about Dr. Webb’s budding company. Dr. Webb’s willing to let her, of course, for reasons of her own. What better advertisement could she get than that of a convinced skeptic? But Esther's not the only one curious about how this technology works. Enter real-world threats just as frightening as those created in the lab. Dr. Webb and Esther are at odds, but they may also be each other's only hope of survival.

Limited to 1,250 signed, numbered copies, Final Girls is available for pre-order now, and will be shipping in April. This is going to be a gorgeous book. Julie Dillon, who did the cover for Rolling in the Deep, is doing the cover for this one too, and I am so excited. Remember that Rolling in the Deep sold out fast, and is now virtually unattainable unless you're lucky or have a book budget I really envy, and order yours today!

Better late than never, and I'm in England, which makes a little tardiness forgivable (because I don't live here, not because the English are chronically tardy, although if one judges by my friends, the English are maybe a little chronically tardy), so...

Rolling in the Deep, my story of mermaids and deep sea exploration and why maybe combining the two is a bad plan, is out! Yay!

The print edition is already sold out at Subterranean Press's website! I, er. Less yay.

But! There are other ways to get this fabulous tale of sirens and slaughter. The eBook edition is available now, from many fine retailers. If you still want to have a physical copy to stroke and love and call your own, I have called Borderlands and confirmed that they have five copies (5) on order. (They might be able to get a few more from their distributor. It's all a matter of timing. So.)

If you want to get a physical copy of your very own, please call—don't email, as email can take a while to be answered—Borderlands Books at 415 824-8203. The books are en route and are definitely coming to the store. If they go quickly, the store will attempt to obtain more from their supplier, but cannot guarantee any additional stock at this time.

Mermaids!

LJ Messenger.

So I've been experiencing a real uptick recently in people using LJ's internal messaging system to reach me. I don't know why? I don't know if this is a societal switch toward "let's use one site for absolutely everything, always, and if you ever have to switch tags, that's bad," or if LJ has started giving out free kittens with every message sent, or what, but I am here to beg you to please not do that.

One of the functions of my OCD is that I feel compelled to answer all comments that are not somehow covered by comment amnesty, such as being second-level (a reply to one of my replies) or on a post that's connected to the RNG. This can take a long time. I have over 1,300 unanswered comments right now. I do not mind this! Comments are very rarely time-sensitive, and when they are, such as with the WG orders, I either get help or I leave myself a post-it. But this means that anything that's not on those entries just gets buried. Your message can wait up to a year for me to notice it.

Please, if you need to reach me privately, use my website contact form. That's what my website contact form is for. I get all that mail. I read all that mail. I answer most of that mail (some things do not require an answer). I do not overlook that mail for a year. Please, do not message me here, or on Tumblr, or on Facebook. Use my contact form. Please.

Slasher Chicks shirts.

I have answered all currently outstanding inquires, and I still have pretty, pretty Slasher Chicks shirts for sale. So pretty! So totally random in terms of color and size! It's an adventure every time I have to look up a size/color combo, and the adventure can be yours.

Old ARCs.

I have two ARCs of Half-Off Ragnarok left over, and I would like to see them go to a good home where they will be turned into art. People periodically need books for art projects, so...anyone out there looking to do some fun papercrafts and need an ARC or two? Please do not ask if you want to keep the ARCs in book form for reading purposes; I'm looking for people who are looking to make things. US addresses only, since postage is expensive and I'd need to ask you to pay it and ARCs aren't worth it (unless you're emulating a friend of mine and making something like a bridal bouquet out of ARCs, because that's a really important and long-term papercraft, and justifies you paying for postage).

Go ahead and comment on this post if you're interested, so other people can see that the ARCs may have been claimed. Again, please, crafters only.

Media stuff.

Surprisingly good: the movie Big Ass Spider.

Also surprisingly good: Girl Meets World.

...and thus do I summarize my entire experience with media in two three-word titles.

More later, but these are the things that mattered right now!

Chris came over yesterday, and we spent basically the entire day watching terrible movies on SyFy/recorded off SyFy and preserved on the DVR. We watched The Uninvited, starring Emily Browning's impossibly Disney Princess facial proportions. We watched Drive Angry, starring Nicholas Cage's impossibly plastic face. And then we watched Lockout, starring Guy Pearce as a completely fucks-free zone. Seriously, his character in this film has so few fucks that he is in actual fucks debt to the Fucks Mafia, and it is glorious.

(I keep feeling like we watched another movie in there, but I'm pretty sure that's my hind-brain going "you watched ten minutes of Vikingdom, that's enough suffering to count as a whole film, no really. And in about an hour, I'm going to take a big bowl of ice cream and go watch Blood Lake on Animal Planet. I am a predictable creature, is what I'm saying here.)

Anyway, here are a few updates on things.

Posters.

All emails asking about Wicked Girls posters have been answered. If you received one of these emails, you may notice that it said "please PayPal address A, and then reply to this email (sent from address B) with your mailing address." What this means is "please PayPal address A, and then reply to this email (sent from address B) with your mailing address." I can't harvest mailing information from PayPal with the mail client that I use for address A. Meaning your poster will not be mailed, even if it is paid for, until you follow the instructions in that original email, and tell me where to send it. Fiddly? Yes! But clearly stated, so I don't feel too bad about it.

(If you were wanting a poster, the post with instructions is here: http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/570576.html, and as I just ordered a new box of poster tubes, I am fully capable of shipping more. I will run out of tubes before I run out of posters, so this is a great time to order.)

Considering a book sale.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, at least according to my origins in the fanfic mines. Elizabeth Bear, whom I love dearly, periodically does an "author's copies sale" to try to reclaim her house. I think I may need to do something similar, as I am losing access to my guest room. I will probably set this up shortly after Phoenix Comic Con. In the meanwhile, if you're looking for something specific, please feel free to email me through my website contact form. It never hurts to check.

(I do not have copies of Ravens in the Library, or indeed, most of the anthologies I've been in. Sorry.)

Updates to the Field Guide.

There have been some updates to the InCryptid Field Guide. You can find it here:

http://seananmcguire.com/fieldguide.php

There are more updates to come, as I'm trying to get all the existing entries posted before I go back to Kory for more. Hooray, the field guide!

Pokemon.

Efforts to breed a Shiny Eevee continue unabated. I am destroying the local ecology by releasing so many newborn Eevees back into the wild. Even if most of them are eaten by the resident Gyrados and Svipers, there should still be enough to cause a major ecological crisis. Whee!

And that is all.

My friend Chris came up yesterday, since we hadn't seen each other in way too long, and we spent most of the day doing what we do best: sitting on the couch, petting the cats, and watching fuck-awful SyFy Channel Original Movies that had been clogging up my DVR waiting for our next watch-a-thon. Movies watched over the course of the party included Shark Week, Boogeyman, Two-Headed Shark Attack, and Haunted High (note that for purposes of "watching," we "watched" it if we stared aghast at the screen for ten minutes before skipping to the next film because OH GOD LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR THIS CRAP). We finished the night with Notting Hill, because we needed our faith in cinema restored.

I feel good about my life choices.

There's something incredibly pure about a terrible horror movie. When I was in high school, one of my favorite pick-up RPGs was called It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show, in which you played, yes, the lead in a terrible genre movie. I "invented" combat cheerleading (which would show up from my PCs for years to follow) during a session titled "Teenage Zombie High School." I learned about setting tarantulas on fire in "Leeeeeeeegs!!!! The Crawling Terror." And I always had a wonderful time.

Authors have this tendency to write "deconstructive works" about the genres and media that they love. Scalzi's Redshirts, Stephen King's The Dark Half, and so on. I am deeply afraid that one day, I am going to write my deconstructive work, and it's going to be like Night Vale meets the Care Bear Cousins.

That day is coming.

Who here has read Cabal, by Clive Barker, or seen the movie based on the book (which was titled Nightbreed)?

Comment amnesty is on, this is a fact-finding expedition.

I love the SyFy Channel Saturday night movies. The goofy effects, the giant monsters, the sometimes wooden acting, it's all a delicious cheese sandwich to help me relax into the one night of the week where I don't feel rushed to accomplish ALL THE THINGS before I go to bed. I try to judge them by what they are, and not by what I want them to be: silly, shitty movies that accomplish what they set out to accomplish, no more, and no less. Sometimes they're even pretty good.

This past week, the Saturday night movie was The End of the World. It was about a group of geeks who owned/worked at a video store specializing in disaster movies, the judgmental SO of the geek who actually owned the store, the faintly evil cousin of the geek who actually owned the store, the disapproving parent of one of the geeks who worked at the store, the disaster guru idol of all the geeks, and a bunch of extras. The extras fell into three categories: evil looters who wanted to take stuff from our heroic geeks, assholes at the mental hospital where the disaster guru had been committed, and people at the military base.

Now. Looking only at what I've written above, how many of these characters were female? If you guessed "judgmental SO" and "disapproving parent," then ding ding ding! We have a winner!

None of the geeks were women. The SO even knowing what the Death Star was called was treated as a virtual miracle, and something so hot as to make the alpha geek temporarily forget about saving the planet, because she was speaking Forbidden Knowledge, yo. She was saying things that implied girls could be geeks too, and man, that was so impossible it was like she was demonstrating super powers! The mother figure was literally introduced calling one of the secondary geeks at work and asking him how the job search was going, because it was time for him to get a real job, in the real world, amirite girls? (The SO had a similar speech.) That's how we should interact with geeks! We should drag them kicking and screaming into respectability, because no one can ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever be happy and fulfilled just being a professional fan of things. And women can't even start being fans of things. It's not allowed.

None of the extras were female. None of the secondary characters, apart from the two listed above, were female. One of the female characters was there to nag and be a burden; the other was there to be a prize and to be enlightened about how Geek Things = Man Things and Man Things = Awesome.

And here's the thing. None of these characters—not a single fucking one—had such a gendered role that their character could not have been played by a member of the opposite sex. Testosterone did not unlock the key to saving the world. Estrogen did not cause the cataclysm. You could have literally flipped a fucking coin for every single role, and cast accordingly. "Whoops, female lead, male antagonist, female love interest..." Better yet, make it a d10, and if you roll a ten, roll again for assigned birth gender, and then go from there. "Female lead, male antagonist, ftm love interest..." It would have been the same damn movie.

But they didn't do that. They went with boys and boys and boys, and an exclusionist narrative that had me saying sadly "I like disaster movies. I exist, too."

I wound up stopping the movie halfway through because the lack of female voices had become so alienating to me that I needed to wait a while before I came back and finished watching. It was an okay movie. I won't be watching it again. There's no one for me there.

Men can identify with women, and should. Women can identify with men, and should. But there's a big difference between saying "Seanan, you should have been able to identify with the struggles of the protagonist, regardless of gender," and saying "Seanan, you should have been able to accept a world that cast your gender into the role of harpy and martinet, and not felt objectified or rejected by this setting." I did identify with Owen. I did care about his story.

It was everything around him that lost me. And honestly, I'm still lost, and I've been lost too many times.

Sometimes it would be nice to be found.

We here on the internet are a lot like intersecting flocks of crows: constantly chasing the shiny things, and then bringing them back to the nest to be pecked at, admired, and envied. These are some things I've been brought recently.

1. Singing mice. Yes! Mice can sing. I know this, and am delighted by it.

2. Mark Reads is doing Feed. Actually, Mark Reads is doing the whole series. I drew him a nun. We have a close friend in common, so I'm pretty well-informed.

3. Many people are making many types of horrifyingly flavored candy corn, including caramel, sour apple, and worse. None of these are The One True Corn. Only candy corn, flavored like candy corn, is The One True Corn. Chocolate candy corn is acceptable in Autumn Mix, and no other time.

4. Community is awesome and I should be watching it. Well, I listened, and I'm now most of the way through season two. Y'all were right. I salute you.

5. Amy Mebberson drew Disney Princesses as the various Doctors. I have dispatched people to try and get me a print at NYCC, since I'm not attending the convention this year.

6. The Bay features tongue-eating isopods eating an entire small community. I am so excited for this movie!

7. Steampunk Disney pins, coming this November.

8. That video of a bulldog puppy whining for five minutes. Adorable.

9. There is no new Glee until November. I hate the mid-season hiatus with a burning passion, but I did notice that it was happening.

10. The Monster High dance class dolls have been released. Yes! But they're not showing up in California yet. Boo.

And those are the things I know, because I have been told about them multiple times in the last week. I hope the world is as relevant to your interests as it is to mine!

I watch a great many horror and monster movies, and have since I was a very small child. This explains a lot. This has also taught me a great many things about what not to have characters do, 'cause it's dumb. I will share some of those things now.

***

10. Do not clone predatory dinosaurs and expect things to go well right out of the gate. Seriously, here. In the movie Raptor, they're trying to clone "dinosaurs with a brain*" to do heavy labor and generally become grunt workers for mankind. Okay, if you're a moron, I guess that's a plan. So they start with...velociraptors. And Tyrannosaurus Rex. Because, y'know, that ten-ton killing machine is totally going to use sentience to go "sure, tiny meat-snack man, I'll work my tail off for you!" If you're going to clone dinosaurs, start with a plant-eater.

(*Meaning "a human level of intelligence and reasoning." Because that's a good idea.)

( 9. While we're on the subject, do not make anything that already likes the taste of people super-intelligent...Collapse )

Item the first: remember that I currently have a random-number giveaway for Deadline and some swag gathering entries. I'll be picking my three winners tomorrow. For details on how to enter and what you can potentially win, please see the post I've linked above. Go ahead. I can wait.

Item the second: this has literally been sitting in my link soup for a year, waiting for me to find something that makes it topical. As I have failed, I am now providing the link in isolation, because it amuses me. Moshez comments on zombies and weapons, and why my Horror Survival FAQ is sometimes sub-optimal. Join me in giggling.

Item the third: while I'm linking to random crap that makes me smile, here. Have the Animal Review review of the deep sea anglerfish. They give the anglerfish an overall F for being horrifying and upsetting and not really very friendly at all. Amusingly enough, these are all the reasons I give the anglerfish an overall A. For AWESOME.

Item the fourth: I can't remember if I ever actually linked to these, despite their being, you know, mad awesome, so here. Have a link to some absolutely gorgeous icons that were made using lyrics from my latest album, Wicked Girls. The icons, which are by snowishness, cannot help but make me happy, and so I am sharing them with you.

Item the fifth: Megan Lara's art is pure hammered awesome.

Item the sixth: I managed to find the Dead Tired Frankie Stein doll last night, which means a) I now have all the individual Dead Tired dolls except for Cleo De Nile, who I'm hoping to find this weekend, b) everyone at my local Toys R Us knows me on sight, and c) I am a total nerd. I am, thus far, a total nerd who has managed to resist the lure of the ball-jointed Soom doll, however, so I'm calling this a win for me, even as I call it a loss for my shelf space.

Item the seventh: I am so tired it physically hurts. I have to sleep tonight, or I'm just going to dissolve off my own bones like an overcooked chicken or one of those airline passengers in the first episode of Fringe. I didn't sleep at all on Tuesday night, and last night was our first really hot night of the summer, so the cats kept waking me up to freak out. Please play nicely today, as I may start to tremble and cry otherwise.

What's news with you?

Hello, everybody, and welcome to my journal. I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

1. I have been blazingly ill since Sunday afternoon, and spent most of yesterday and Monday in a cold medication haze. I am thus behind on LJ comments, email, snail mail, passenger pigeon mail, Facebook mail (well, I'm always behind on Facebook mail), sending out the mail, opening the mail, and anything else that required actual effort on my part. If you're waiting for a response from me, please, be patient. If your request is urgent, please, mail again. If I do not consider your request to be actually urgent, like you're asking for kitten pictures or something, I reserve the right to delete your email and scowl in your general direction.

2. Despite being blazingly ill, I managed to make my word counts on Blackout both days, and am on track to hit 100,000 words on April 23rd. This is good, since it means I may actually finish the book, you know, on time. I love finishing things on time. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and slightly less completely deranged.

3. Saturday night was GP's birthday party! I did not come home that night, as it was late and we were all exhausted and sort of drunk (and yes, this may have dealt my immune system the fatal blow). Thomas showed his disapproval by climbing onto my computer desk, gently nudging aside the dolls on the second shelf, pulling down the jar in which I store my earplugs, opening the jar, dumping out the earplugs, and eating half of them. I do not know why he is so obsessed with eating the damn things, but he's why I bought that jar in the first place. Now he shits little pink bullets, and looks smug.

4. My vet has confirmed that this won't hurt him, but is also sub-optimal. I have moved my earplugs.

5. The first draft of "Crystal Halloway, Girl Wonder, and the Terror of the Truth Fairy" is finished and being hacked at by the Machete Squad. This is seriously the most depressing, nihilistic story I think I've ever written. Which makes it appropriate that I wrote it while I was sick even unto death. This thing reads like the prologue to a Vertigo comic series.

6. I am not writing a Vertigo comic series. Unless, of course, DC asks me to.

7. I also got started on the first draft of "Rat-Catcher," a Tobyverse story set in London, in 1662 (yes, only a few years before the Great Fire, and the Great Plague). In it, a young Prince of Cats named Rand must stop playing theater cat at the Duke's Theater long enough to find a way to deal with his father, keep his sister from doing something monumentally stupid, and oh, right, maybe save the Cait Sidhe of London from a fate worse than death. Is this Tybalt's origin story? Why yes. Yes, it is.

8. Things already pulled from my research shelf in service of "Rat-Catcher": The Writer's Digest Guide to Character Naming (second edition), London: A Biography, Sex and Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, and The Wordsworth Dictionary of Shakespeare. Make of this what you will.

9. Being sick did allow me to catch up on some of my cache of SyFy Original Movies, including the second half of Meteor with Marla Sokoloff. This was a disturbingly good, surprisingly high-budget feature, especially for a SyFy Saturday. Also, not only were women competent and realistic characters, they didn't all die. Well done, SyFy. Keep up the good work.

10. Zombies are still love.

What's up with you?

As a pop-culture junkie who treats monster movies as something barely this side of a religion, it was inevitable that I would wind up falling in love with a certain California blonde girl when she funky chickened her way into my life ("How loose is your goose? My goose is totally loose..."). My love for her impacted my view on life, my video collection, and even my speech patterns—you can tell when I've been watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by changes in my cadence and intonation. It's a little freaky.

So it was also inevitable that when I was invited to be a contributor to Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them, I would jump at the chance.

This star-studded essay collection is the second in the female-centric essay series from Mad Norwegian Press, and was edited by Lynne Thomas and Deborah Stanish. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but just the list of contributors feels me with geeky glee. I'm in a book with Emma Bull! My fourteen year old self can finally die happy! I mean, except for the part where then, I wouldn't remember why being in a book with Emma Bull is cool, so let's skip that.

One of the other contributors, Teresa Jusino, has written a lovely post explaining the book and why it's awesome at Tor.com. Just to further convince you that the book is made of win, the editors and Tor.com have conspired to let you get an early look at my essay, "The Girls Next Door: Learning to Live with the Living Dead and Never Even Break a Nail." (If you can come up with a more me-esque title, I'm not sure I want to know about it.)

Go forth! Read! Maybe improve your holiday season and chances of surviving when the Hellmouth finally opens by ordering yourself a copy! It's going to be fun for the whole family.

Grr. Argh.

10. It's Friday! And that means that tomorrow is Saturday, which further means that it's finally time for me to have a book event at the Other Change of Hobbit! Conveniently located next to Ashby BART, spacious, and full of neat things, this is one of my favorite bookstores. You should totally come.

9. Karen Healey (I know, right?) has a poll for the best moment of WorldCon 2010/Aussiecon IV, and yes, my squeaky acceptance of the Campbell Award is currently in the lead. Which is the sort of thing that makes me blink and cry a little. But in the good way, I promise! Also, John Scalzi licking stuff.

8. After our horrible "oh crap the house is full of fleas" experience this summer, everything seems to have settled down. Alice's belly-fur is growing back, no one's trying to claw their own flesh off, and our strict regimen of flea powdering the carpets and pouring poison on the cats is keeping the blood-suckers away. Thank the Great Pumpkin.

7. SHARKTOPUS! Tomorrow night on SyFy! Because Coyote loves me and wants me to be happy.

6. By the same measure, have you seen Jane Austin's Fight Club? Because seriously, this video is love. (Technically safe for work, if you're allowed to watch videos at work and feel like doing some potentially awkward explaining about why all those girls are smacking the crap out of each other.)

5. Resident Evil: Afterlife actually doesn't suck. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. Sort of tickled, too, but mostly just surprised. It's not as good as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but then, what is?

4. Jean Grey is still dead.

3. Things that are back on the air: Glee, Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Bones, and America's Next Top Model. Things that have managed to stick the landing in their season finales: Rizzoli and Isles, Leverage, Unnatural History, and Warehouse 13. Things that make me happy: watching too much television.

2. Despite my currently perennially delayed posting schedule (curse you, Australia, and your lack of Internet), the latest iteration of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show went well, and we all had a fantastic time. Plus, the bookstore now has signed books, and that makes everything wonderful.

...and the best thing about today...

1. Welcome to fall.

What's awesome about your Friday?

So there's this publisher, Leisure Horror, that prints, well, horror. Lots of it. At least one new paperback release a month (probably substantially more, given the size of their catalog), spanning everything from the classic movie monsters to the modern splatterpunk. I love them. They're my literary popcorn, and I devour them the way my grandmother used to devour category Harlequin romances. It gets me funny looks on the train, since if you run down the line of afternoon commuters-with-books, you'll usually get "woman with romance, woman with romance, man with science fiction with big guns on the cover, me," and Leisure's graphic designers don't believe in being stingy with the arterial spray.

Last weekend at Spocon, in the dealer's hall, I was lucky enough to find a man with an entire box of Leisure Horror that I hadn't read yet. Yes, that's right: a box. I went through it to pick out duplicates, squealing as I did about how unrelentingly, gloriously terrible some of the books looked. Brooke, who was with me, initially thought I was rating them. Then she realized I was buying them, and made the best "Oh God why have you allowed this to happen?" face I've ever seen her make. I got twenty-one brand new horror novels for twenty bucks, and he threw in the box. Total win.

(My total win only increased later in the weekend, when trektone expressed delight over my horror novel haul. Now I have someplace to dump all the ones I don't want to keep! FUCK YEAH, SEAKING!)

I have since devoured three and a half books from the haul. The first one, Snow, was an incredible reminder of why I'm not actually a very good straight horror author. See, these things come out of the snow, and they kill people. They stick their creepy snow-creature arms into peoples' backs, and drive them around like disturbing meat-suit zombies. And then they eat you. Unless you can kill them first, in which case, hey, points to you. That's it. That's all. No science, no justification, no "oh my stars and garters, the Wendigo myth was based on reality"—there are snow monsters, and they want to make you die. I loved this book. If I'd written it, it would have been twice as long, involved a lot more why-porn, and probably lost a few entrails in favor of a) the scene at the top-secret government lab where we learn about the aliens, or b) the scene at the top-secret monster-hunters' library where we learn about the folklore behind the snow-creatures. It always makes me happy when I get a reminder of why I'm not the kind of horror author I sometimes secretly wish I were.

The second book, Dwellers, was the first thing I've ever picked up from Leisure Horror that could actually be adapted into a Disney movie. It would be a sad Disney movie, sure, and it would lose a lot of, again, entrails, but it would work. Dwellers is like Harry and the Hendersons crossed with The Thing. It's sad and poignant and tragic and funny and altogether wonderful, and I really didn't expect it. Again, there's very little "why" in the book. Horror doesn't need "why." Horror needs entrails, and horror gets them, but oh, wow, is this a fabulous book.

The two I've read since then haven't been even remotely as good, which is why I'm not identifying them by name. Altogether, it's been a fantastic reminder of why I read horror, and why I'm not so good at writing it in any format longer than a short story. Why is there a monster in the closet?

Because.

It's time for today's TOTALLY SILLY CONTEST!

So I'm doing the web content for MiraGrant.com. Those of you familiar with my main website may have noticed that I have multiple bios, some of them deeply, deeply silly in nature, posted on the site. Since Mira doesn't have quite the history I do, and I haven't had the chance to solicit bios for her from my friends, I need something to guarantee the depth of content to which my readers have become accustomed (OCD cat is OCD). So!

You know Chuck Norris?

That.

I'm looking for UTTERLY INSANE statements about Mira Grant. Things like "Mira Grant isn't afraid of the thing under your bed. Mira Grant is the thing under your bed." Or "Mira Grant goes down to the quarry any time she damn well wants to."

Leave your suggestions as comments on this post. I will collect the best (and weirdest) for posting on Mira's website, because I have no hobbies that don't involve utter insanity. There will be prizes! I don't know what those prizes will be, but they, too, will probably be a little odd. (Sadly, I can't promise a copy of Feed until I've done some local accounting, but there will be something.)

Come on. You know you want to.

Some days, you think about politics, philosophy, and art. Some days, Pliny and Socrates are the defining stars of your existence. Some days, the question of which came first—the chicken or the egg—is all-consuming, worthy of endless contemplation and consideration. Some days, just the movement of the heavens is enough to take your breath away, leaving you locked in endless awe of the cosmos and all its wonders.

Some days, you're just not that deep.

Guess what kind of day I'm having?

I spend a lot of time locked in intellectual pursuits. Maybe "figuring out strategic survival tactics and social innovations following the zombie apocalypse" and "building a better pandemic" aren't your standard thought experiments, but they're time-consuming and they take a lot of mental processing power. I guess it's only natural that I'd occasionally get exhausted and want to spend a few hours gazing off into space, counting air molecules while Food Network amuses the cats. (Seriously, they love Iron Chef, although Alice has been known to attack the screen when Bobby Flay comes on.) This also accounts for my love of movies like Dinoshark*, one more gem from the SyFy mines.

Tonight, everything will change. Tonight, I have edits to process on two short stories, a battle plan to write for tomorrow's official opening of the San Diego International Comic Convention hotel block, and at least eight pages of The Brightest Fell to get through. Tonight, I need to sit down and seriously outline two potential urban fantasy shorts, one Toby-based, one InCryptid-based. Tonight, I must brush the cat. But all of that is tonight, and right now, it's daylight, and I'm just not that deep.

Thinking is hard. Let's have strawberry ice cream.

(*Over the course of a two-hour movie, Dinoshark eats a kayak, several swimmers, an expedition boat, a crocodile, and a helicopter. Dinoshark is totally metal, yo.)

I originally made this list a while back, after reading Maxim's list of "200 Movies Everyone Should See" and discovering that their horror movies seem to have been chosen through purely arbitrary measures, largely having to do with how much gore could be splattered on the screen. That doesn't work for me all that well, being as I am not a fan of the "gore porn" sub-genre of horror. Since it's been a year and a half since then, and since that year and a half has included a lot of horror movies, I've decided to update my better, more carefully considered list. IE, "the horror movies I say everyone should see."

( We cut because we care. Also because failure to cut results in a much higher bodycount, and nobody wants that. Well. I want that. But I'll be merciful, just this once.Collapse )

***

What did I miss?

I sometimes wonder if horror directors go to bed at night dreaming that someday, one of their movies will become a classic; someday, one of their movies will spawn an iconic monster that people will be screaming over for generations to come. Sadly, most of them won't make it. Even the ones who create a truly iconic villain won't necessarily get an iconic monster, because an iconic monster must be somehow generic enough to be used and abused by others, even as the person who first brought it to the screen is generally credited for its creation. The werewolf, the mummy, the vampire, even the mad scientist...they all had to start somewhere. Sure, most iconic horror movie monsters existed before the movies that gave them a terrifying life, but it's the cinematic realities that we remember. At least until the lights go out.

George Romero set out to make a creepy little movie with a social commentary and a shoestring budget. He succeeded in making history.

The concept of the ghoul or walking corpse has existed for centuries—maybe for as long as mankind has been aware that death exists—but it wasn't until Romero that it shambled into the modern age. Night of the Living Dead opened the doors to a new sub-genre of horror, a shambling, biting, hungry sub-genre that wouldn't rest until it had consumed the world. Zombies don't need sleep. They're already dead.

Without Romero, we wouldn't have Night of the Comet, Slither, Night of the Creeps, the Evil Dead trilogy, a large portion of Rob Zombie's musical catalog, or the Zombie Prom episode of Wizards of Waverly Place. We wouldn't have my own Feed, and that would make me a very sad girl indeed. George Romero changed the world. Maybe he did it on purpose, maybe he did it by accident. In the end, it doesn't really matter. He did it.

Here's to you, George Romero. And when you die, we're feeding your corpse into a wood chipper. Just to be sure.

I am not a Triskaidekaphobe; if anything, I'm more of a Triskaidekaphile. I love the number thirteen. I spent the entire year that I was thirteen wandering around feeling lucky (and even extended it into my fourteenth year by quite a bit, insisting that I needed to get thirteen months, weeks, days, and hours of being thirteen). I've always considered Friday the 13th to be "my lucky day," and I love years like 2009, where the stars align just right and we get three Friday the 13ths in a single calendar year. (This year, 2010, the stars have not aligned just right, and we're only getting one, in August. I hope to spend it in Australia, where I will use its potent payload of sheer good luck to not die horribly.)

But why is Friday the 13th unlucky? One could argue that it has become unlucky because so many people believe it is, and there's value in that position, but what started it? Here's the fun part: no one really seems to know for sure. It's a combination of unlucky thirteen and unlucky Friday, and it just bumbles around being baleful at all the other days on the calendar.

So why is thirteen unlucky? Some people claim that Judas was the thirteenth person to join the table during the Last Supper (which doesn't explain why "thirty" isn't unlucky, too, that being the number of pieces of silver he's supposed to have received). Others think it came from the Norse, where alternately, Loki was regarded as the thirteenth god of the pantheon, or just the thirteenth person to show up at Baldr's funeral, having also arranged Baldr's death. (So you know, if you arrange my death, you're not invited to my funeral.) There's an old superstition that says that when thirteen people gather, one of them will be dead within the year, which is statistically viable in certain cases, and not so much in others.

There are also a lot of cultures that hold thirteen to be lucky, one way or another. The Torah describes the thirteen attributes of mercy, and boys become men on their thirteenth birthdays. Italy considers thirteen to be a lucky number, as does Colgate University. Thirteen is when kids can see PG-13 movies unaccompanied, and believe me, that is incredibly lucky when it happens. Also, thirteen is a prime number, which always leaves me well-disposed.

So maybe it's all Friday's baggage. Sure, we tend to regard Friday as lucky in the modern era—it's the last day of the work or school week, it's the day when all the new movies open, and it's the day when bedtime is suspended—but for a long time, Friday was viewed as unlucky. Maritime folklore holds that it's a bad idea to start a long voyage on a Friday. Jesus may or may not have been crucified on a Friday, and "Black Friday" either means "day of horrible disaster" or "the day after Thanksgiving, when we create horrible disasters in the mall parking lot." Who knows?

The theories on why we've decided Friday the 13th is singularly unlucky range from the ancient (Frigga is pissed off about Christianity) to the political (the early Christians made thirteen unlucky because the pagans considered it lucky) to the osmosis of popular culture (Thomas W. Lawson's 1907 novel, Friday, the Thirteenth). Regardless of why it happened, it's unlikely to unhappen any time soon, especially not if Jason and his machete have anything to say about it.

Happy Wednesday the thirteenth! Try not to walk under any ladders.

...but the bad news is they're dead.

We all have those movies that we saw as kids and were horribly scarred-slash-influenced by. They aren't always good movies. In fact, I'd say a lot of them are bad movies, which we love because hey, when you're a kid, men in rubber suits chasing girls in bikinis after inexplicable beachfront musical numbers are pure gold. These are the movies that make us the people we become as adults. For me, these movies were split just about fifty-fifty between "really bad horror movies" and "candy-colored cartoon wonderlands." This explains a great many things, if you stop and think about it for a moment. Or don't. It might be better for you.

One of my most formative films was a creepy little horror-comedy called The Night of the Creeps [Amazon]. It, along with The Monster Squad, Night of the Comet, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, informed me on a very deep and meaningful level. And it has been totally unavailable for years now, due to rights issues and the fact that, let's face it, they needed to wait for those of us who remembered loving this movie were old enough to have disposable income.

Guess what came out on DVD today?

There is so much love.

This past Tuesday, a movie called The Thaw was released on DVD. Basically, Val Kilmer and a bunch of photogenic generic horror-movie twenty-somethings fight prehistoric parasites that come out of a really well-preserved mammoth corpse and try to eat everybody. From the trailer, they succeed in eating at least half the cast, which makes this film Highly Relevant To My Interests. Translation: I want it real bad.

Having failed to find the movie at Target—big surprise there, as they're not normally a real hotbed of hard-core direct-to-DVD horror action (unless it's a direct-to-DVD sequel to something that made mega-bucks)—I hied me over to Fry's, where I figured their low standards and massive selection would make me a happy little horror girl.

Issue number one: I couldn't find the damn movie. The horror section contained everything else that's ever been released and titled with something beginning with the letter "T," including The Tingler, which is pointless if you don't have someone standing behind you with a cattle prod (although I suppose you could lick batteries instead). Frustrated by the alphabet, I went looking for an employee.

I should probably have expected a problem when the employee called me "a nice young lady," as in "I'll be with you right after I help this nice young lady." Now, I don't object to any of these words, individually or as a group, and I don't even particularly mind them when applied to me. It's just that when I hear this phrase in a video store, it's almost always coming from someone who's about to try convincing me that I don't want what I want. But I was being hopeful.

"I'm looking for The Thaw. It came out Tuesday."
"Is that the new Sandra Bullock movie?"

Cue staring.

I eventually hammered it into his head that I was looking for a) a horror movie, b) a bad horror movie, and c) yes, I really meant it. He admitted that his computer was showing one copy in stock, and suggested I try the horror section. When I said I'd already looked there, he assigned one of the other clerks to help me find it (I think he didn't want to go himself for fear that they'd never find the body, as I was distinctly into "wishing you to the cornfield" mode). The clerk he sent proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes—as we went through the entire horror section, on the off-chance that it had been shelved wrong—trying to convince me that I wanted something else. Something nicer. From a different part of the store.

(Total aside: they put Ice Spiders out on DVD. ICE SPIDERS. Why the hell would anybody want to do that to an innocent blank disk?)

In the end, we didn't find my movie, I got tired of being looked at funny, and I went grumbling off to do something that didn't make me want to punch people. The utterly unhelpful clerk who'd been trying to shift me to the comedy aisle said I could special-order the movie. I told him that on Amazon, no one knows that I'm a perky-looking blonde.

Sometimes it's hard to be an old-school horror girl. And I still don't get to see Val Kilmer eaten alive by horrible prehistoric parasites.

Hmmph.

One of the few black spots on an otherwise shining weekend involved...a shirt. A shirt, and an attitude that went with the shirt in question.

See, there was a lot of stupid pre-con surrounding the fact that OH NOES TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! Never mind that Twilight, whether you like it or not, is speculative fiction, full of My Little Vampires, and has spawned a massively successful movie series. Never mind that this same complaint came up about the Harry Potter people, the urban fantasy people, and lots of other "not our kind" groups, before they became "our kind." TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! IT IS TEH END OF DAYZ!!!! Worse yet, they're girls! Icky icky girls! The mainstream press—which still views the female geek as a charmingly endangered species, one which is potentially a myth—grabbed this and ran with it; if you go digging, you can find some...charming...articles about "the female invasion of Comic-Con" and "girls meeting geeks."

I first "invaded" Comic-Con thirteen years ago. Pretty sure I was a girl at the time. My boyfriend at the time definitely thought so, and as he had more opportunity to perform practical examinations than anybody from the mainstream press, I'm going to place bets that he was right. But anyway.

The Twilight girls, understandably, took offense, since they were being presented as fluff-brained bimbos who wouldn't know a comic book if it bit them on the booty. The general populace of Comic-Con wasn't offended, per se, although some offense started brewing when the Twilight fans started speaking up, since the cycle o' slag went media -> them -> us. But there was still the chance that everybody would be able to just get along. I know that I'm a lot more focused on getting where I'm going, at-con, than I am at playing Sharks vs. Jets in the middle of the Exhibit Hall.

But then came...the shirts.

Shirts on Twilight girls all over the convention. Shirts which read, in large, easy-to-read lettering, "Yes I am a real woman / Yes I am at Comic-Con / Yes I love Twilight." As a "real woman" who's been attending Comic-Con since before she could legally drink, these shirts awakened in my breast the deep and abiding desire to force-feed them to the people wearing them. I did not do so. Be proud of me. Be especially proud of me since large groups of the shirt-wearers—not all of them, by any means; I'm sure there were Twilight fans who were having a fantastic time without trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios—chose to stand around near the Exhibit Hall cafes and out by the Heroes carnival, making snotty comments about the costumes, figures, and overall appearance of the non-Twilight girls who went walking by.

Not cool.

I am a girl who likes the X-Men. I am a girl who likes horror movies. I am a girl whose favorite comics currently in print are Hack/Slash, The Boys, and Creepy. I am a girl who has spent a long damn time fighting for respect in her chosen geeky social circles, because we are still the minority in a lot of places, and it's difficult to convince your average horror geek that the female IQ is not calculated by taking the national average and subtracting her bra size. Twilight aside, there aren't enough of us to start playing this sort of game. Yes! You in the shirt, you're a real woman! And so am I! And so is every other girl at this convention! I did not give up my right to femininity just by deciding that I like to keep my My Little Ponies and my blood-drinking monsters separate, nor did you get a double-dose by combining the two. Women have been fighting for respect in comic and media fandom for a long time. Undermining that fight, even if you're doing it because you were provoked, just undermines us all.

No one has to like what I like. I try not to judge the likes and dislikes of others, and even when I can't avoid it, I try not to wander around in T-shirts that say things like "Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten" or "Women Opposing More Bad Adapted Terror: JUST SAY NO TO STEPHEN KING MOVIES." All this could have been avoided if people hadn't been dicks to the Twilight fans in the first place...but I really do wish the Twilight fans hadn't felt compelled to be dicks to the rest of us in return.

So here's the thing.

I have three albums currently available. You can read about all three of them on my website's albums page. I'm very fond of all three. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, they each represent something different in my musical growth, and they each make me happy. Right now, only Red Roses and Dead Things is available through my website; the other two are available through CDBaby.com.

As of August 1st, Red Roses and Dead Things will be transitioning to CDBaby.com, and will no longer be available through my website.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and most of them have to do with time. I just don't have the time to monitor the order database, and people keep trying to order the other two albums, which requires even more time to unsnarl. So everything's being out-sourced, as part of an effort to save my sanity. Why am I announcing this? Well, because I'd rather not flood CDBaby right off the bat, thus forcing me to do still more mailing. So:

If you have been waiting to order Red Roses and Dead Things, now would be a good time. I commit to shipping all paid, pending orders during the first week of August, after which I will be contacting any unpaid pending orders, directing them to CDBaby, and deleting them from the system. The ordering system will then go down until we have to take pre-orders again.

So there's the thing. If you want to order Red Roses and Dead Things, now is a good time; it will be unavailable for the first week of August, while the transition is going on. Thank you for understanding.

Over the past week, my house has developed two new bathroom-based rules. First off, even if you just dropped a tissue into the water, you need to flush. I don't care if it wastes water. If you're that worried about wasting water, throw your tissues in the trash, not the toilet. Second off, close the lid. Not the seat; the lid. Why?

Because Alice, like so many Maine Coons, likes to play with water. And the toilet? Is full of water. Once your nasty tissue has been in my toilet, I don't particularly want the cat to fish it out and bring it to me, thanks.

Last night, when I got home from work, I performed the standard checks—are both cats present? Are both cats breathing? Have they managed to break anything large and/or visible? After confirming yes, yes, and no, I went about my business. At some point during the "business" part of the program, Alice wandered off to do kitten things. This didn't concern me much; kittens are mysterious creatures, and spend a lot of time off doing kitten things, which usually end with a loud crash and a startled-looking puffball racing back into the bedroom. No big deal.

After I'd finished unpacking my bags, scanning some art cards, and eating dinner, I proceeded to the bathroom. The toilet lid was down. Repeat: the toilet lid was down, indicating safety. I began to sit.

The toilet said, inquisitively, "Mrph?"

Having seen approximately eight hundred hours-worth of horror cinema in my lifetime, I was once more fully dressed in less than five seconds. Furthermore, I was standing in the bathtub, that being the furthest I could reasonably get from the toilet without having the presence of mind to flee the bathroom entirely. I looked into the toilet bowl. Alice, balled calmly in the bottom of it, looked back. Meet my kitten, the TOILET SHARK.

I got her to leave the toilet by putting a few inches of water in the tub and encouraging her to play with that instead. She happily submerged several of her feather toys and went off to coax Lilly into the bath. Lilly, being, I don't know, an actual cat, was having none of it. (Alice got her comeuppance later, when her aquatic adventures required her to have a good brushing. Somehow, I doubt this is going to make her learn.) At least I know why she's damp all the damn time...

You know, the horror movies of the 1980s taught me to check toilets before I sat down, because they might contain monsters. It took me years to break this habit, thinking it was a foolish fear. Shows what I know. In conclusion, when you come over to my place...

...look down before you pee. You might be sorry if you don't.

Chainsaws and killers and creatures that slaughter,
Signs that suggest you stay out of the water.
Killer bees bred to have flesh-eating stings.
These are a few of my favorite things.

Rust colored padlocks and barbed wire fences,
Horrible things tearing down your defenses.
Black bats that fly with the moon on their wings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Scientists laughing and playing with lightning,
Movies designed to be nasty and frightening.
Martian invaders that swallow prom kings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the sun shines,
When the bird sings,
When they've all gone mad,
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad!

So when I originally approached the readership of this journal and said 'lo, what should I include in my site FAQ section?', roughly half the people who responded said 'horror movie survival.' So yes, there's an actual section on getting out of a horror movie with your skin and sanity reasonably intact.

Feel proud of yourselves.

So now that the horror FAQ is underway, I ask you...what all should be included? What burning questions do you have about the things out there that want to make you die -- and maybe more important, what questions do you have about staying alive? Remember, only you can defeat the crawling terror from beyond the stars. Unless, y'know, it eats you first.

After an exciting evening chasing around San Francisco, visiting the freaky alien demon suede kittyfaces at Borderlands Books, and helping Kate get her glasses to fit right, I returned to the safety of the East Bay...where my mother promptly abducted me off to meet up with my baby sister, the trucker, in Brentwood. In the parking lot of an Office Max.

Did I mention that it was after nine o'clock by that point, and that I hadn't really eaten anything besides a McDonalds ice cream cone since lunch? Oh, and that my new CD finally arrived today -- at least according to the UPS website, as I hadn't yet had visual confirmation?

Yeah, it was a night.

But now I'm home, and I've confirmed the existence of the CDs. Yes! One thousand copies of Red Roses and Dead Things have joined the general clutter of my home. Actually, right now, they're increasing the specific clutter of my bedroom. Not precisely what I'd call optimal, but as it allows me to sign and number the pre-orders (to the degree that I can manage before a formal shipping party), I suppose I'll cope.

It's a damn pretty CD, too. It came out even better looking than I was hoping it would.

So that's my Friday night. Having signed and numbered the first ten CDs, I will now proceed to my bed, where I will probably dream of being crushed to death beneath a hail of disks. Because that's how this works. Good-night, world.

I've spent the past year idly working on a calendar of 'Pretty Little Dead Ghouls' -- twelve months, twelve pin-ups, twelve implications of horrific violence either just past or just around the corner. All accompanied with chipper quatrains. Because I am just marginally odd that way.

This post contains twelve fairly good-sized images, each of which links to an even larger image. If your connection doesn't deal well with such things, here's a link to the gallery:

http://pics.livejournal.com/seanan_mcguire/gallery/0000qt1b

Let's take a peek, shall we?

( Because nothing says the new year like a lovely calendar, here's a lovely calendar for you to enjoy. And be a little bit afraid of.Collapse )

Since I'm feeling better* today, I'm taking care of all those things which were permitted to slip over the past several days. Specifically...

* I've gone through and checked checks against orders in my ordering database, so that I could correctly mark off those people I don't need to harass into paying me. I'm a very polite harasser, really, but the major down-side of doing CDs the way I do -- IE, 'the pre-orders pay for the production costs' -- is that when people don't pay me, I have real trouble making the albums actually exist. In other news, I now have 212 pre-orders in the system. I feel special.

* I've reviewed the final mastered tracks for Red Roses and Dead Things, confirming that they are MADE OF AWESOME. I am, of course, hyper-critical of my own performances, but that's my nature, and everything I can be objective about on the album is fantastic. Michelle Dockrey, Maya Bohnhoff, and Tom Smith are all super-cool in their appearances, and Tony Fabris just blows me out of the water with his mournful Dave Davenport. I'm so glad this album is about to exist.

* I've also written the back page for the liner notes, which is sort of like the acknowledgments page in a book, only with a lot more references to James Gunn and his pressing need to call me. And yes, I will be sending him a copy of the album. He's on the extremely short 'freebie' list. (It consists of James Gunn, Stephen King, and Eric Kripke, for this album. Because I am a good little horror girl.)

* Since I like not being clubbed to death by The Agent for getting nothing done**, I've also been plugging away on The Brightest Fell. The goal du jour is hitting three hundred pages, and then breaking to hammer on The Mourning Edition for a little while. I find it hysterical -- and also annoying -- that I have, like, two books in my entire 'write this' list that start with the word 'the,' and I'm working on them both at once. Bah.

* Also, I keep stopping to poke at Facebook, and its addictive little clicky-clicky vampire game. You know you're hooked when you consider soliciting total strangers to join your clan. Again, bah.

More to come, after I find my desk under this pile o' crap.

(*Local values of 'better' include 'capable of moving around under own power without feeling the intense need to stop and yark up everything consumed in the past hour' and 'capable of stringing six coherent words together in a line.' We've lowered our standards, now up yours.)

(**My definition of 'getting nothing done' is a very specialized one. I know this thing.)

First, pick your genre. What, you thought you already had? Oh, no. There are four major types of horror movie:

1. The Psycho. A killer hunts and slaughters people -- usually attractive teens, although some killers have been known to branch out along other specialized lines. Usually difficult or impossible to kill, sometimes ironic in method of death, prone to sequels.
2. The Creature. This genre divides into 'big' and 'lots': either your creature is ginormous for some reason, or there's a swarm. Sometimes, the over-ambitious combine the two, and have a swarm of giant whatever-it-is trying to eat mankind. This is generally a winning approach.
3. The Supernatural. Ghosts, witches, warlocks, a killer Santa Claus taking back all the toys he's distributed over the generations, it all gets filed under the generic catch-all of 'supernatural'. Sometimes, your psycho or your creature is supernatural, too.
4. The Outsider. Aliens and extra-dimensional entities go here. Sometimes, your psycho or your creature is from outside, in addition to being, y'know, bad for your health. Mostly, though, aliens get their own designation.

Now, pick your setting. Your options are:

1. Rural. Small towns are great for zombie invasions, crash landings of carnivorous alien lifeforms, and anything involving a meteorite.
2. Urban. The big city is good if your zombies are viral, or if you want a serial killer. No cornfields, though, which kinda sucks.
3. Wilderness. If it makes you happy to have crazed killers chasing co-eds through the woods, this is the place for you.
4. Transit vehicle of some sort. Big boats, RVs, trains, spaceships, and orbiting space stations, those get filed here.

Every category contains a multitude of options, from 'houseboat' to 'swamp', but these are the basics. And, of course, you're going to need a hero:

1. Teenager. Cheerleader, jock, geek, hacker, whatever.
2. Authority figure. Local sheriff, local cop, President of the United States. However, don't cross into...
3. Military dude. This covers male and female members of all branches of the military.
4. That guy from 'Clerks'. There's a good chance your hero wasn't even supposed to be here today.

( Let's make a horror movie!Collapse )

...I learned from Marilyn Munster.

There is nothing wrong with being a little bit unusual. * It doesn't matter what other people think about what you love; it's what you think that really matters. * It's okay to be the blonde one sometimes. * Monsters are people, too. * Being black and white doesn't mean you can't be pink inside. * Loyalty counts. * The people who really care about you will continue to care, no matter how much of a freak you are. * Start every day with a smile. * There is magic in the petulant head-tilt. * Always run towards the explosions. * If everyone is screaming, things are probably about to get interesting. * You can hide lots of knives in a ruffled gown. * No one gets to define what's normal for you. * Stereotypes are funny. * Life is good, so enjoy it while you can. * Other people's prejudices are not actually your problem. * Some people only see appearances. It's best to feel sorry for them. * When someone leads an angry mob to your doorstep, it's okay to scold them for carrying lit torches in a residential area. * Be comfortable with your surroundings. * It is perfectly possible to be a horror movie girl while wearing pastels. * White pancake makeup is totally optional. * Blood is actually good for hair; it strengthens the follicles. * Never underestimate the power of big blue eyes. * Or having a seven foot tall uncle who looks like he was raised from the dead. That doesn't hurt either. * Family counts for everything. * Running in high heels is a life skill. * Hydrogen peroxide gets blood out of almost anything but taffeta and white cotton. * A good wardrobe is key. * Be yourself. In the end, that's what actually matters.

What important lessons did you learn from your personal media icons?

I watch a great many horror movies -- enough that my DVD shelf looks somewhat like an extension of the mind of Wes Craven -- and this has left me with a firm list of do's and don'ts on the topic of 'getting out alive.' I will share some of these handy-dandy tips now.

***

10. Genetically enhanced snakes can get everywhere. Seriously, an underground bunker guaranteed to protect the resident scientists from nuclear winter and biological attack, not going to do a damn thing about the genetically enhanced snakes. As snakes can apparently be engineered to do everything from 'grow to the size of a subway train' to 'give you Ebola with a single bite,' this is bad. Wear sturdy shoes, do not walk in tall grass or let yourself be convinced to enter any body of water that isn't completely transparent. Avoid outhouses, bubble baths, camping, and the old coal mine that was abandoned due to thermal venting.

( 9. Most monsters can be, if not killed by firearms, at least slowed down or convinced to go and eat somebody else...Collapse )

Remember our horror movie trivia challenge? Well, the most challenging trivia is useless without a functional key. So I give you...

...the answers.

( Click here to find out whether you were right! Also to get a glimpse at just how strange my brain can be. Fun for the whole family!Collapse )

Let's have fun with horror movie trivia, perverted to my own demented sense of 'trivia.' Also, because I am rarely a timely blondeheadgirl, I'm not going to wait for Halloween.

The game:

Hollywood is a busy place, especially when it comes to producing horror movies. Can you figure out the movie from the synopses provided below by bored and underpaid copy writers who never actually saw the film?

Example: Following a chance encounter, a spoiled daughter of nobility chooses to abandon the traditions of her native land in order to pursue a relationship with a member of another ethnic group, although doing so may lead to her early demise.

Answer: The Little Mermaid.

Ready? Twenty questions, no asking -- rock yourselves hard! Answers are not screened.

( We cut because otherwise, you're drowning in horror movies. Literally drowning. Very bad.Collapse )

Hey, look, I'm in Dear Author! I'm assuming I fall under the category of 'leaves me completely unmoved' for the blogger, but that's okay, because it just gives me a lot more room to be a total DINO NINJA SURPRISE ATTACK. For serious. I will come out of nowhere and blind the world with science!

Oh, and hey, I found my official genre acquisition announcement. It reads:

"Seanan McGuire's ROSEMARY AND RUE, the first book in a new urban fantasy series featuring a half-human, half-fae private investigator, to Sheila Gilbert at DAW, in a three-book deal, by Diana Fox at Fox Literary (world)."

...have you ever noticed how almost everything sounds bland when you boil it down to a single sentence? Must. Blind. World. With. Science. Well, in this case, must blind world with folklore, magic, and an insanely intricate plot. But still. I have an announcement!

From seferin: Animated icons of my horror movie alphabet. Because dude, there is no world in which that is not awesome. Also because dude, there is no world in which this is not all very good advice. (Mike wants to make a calendar of the horror alphabet. I admit to being enormously tempted by the idea of an illustrated comic. And the beat goes on.)

What's new and awesome in the world of you?

A is for...AMMO. Make sure you've got plenty, or you'll have plenty of problems.
B is for...BLAST RADIUS. Know it, love it, try not to stand inside it.
C is for...CHAINSAW. Screw diamonds. This is a girl's best friend.
D is for...DISTRACTION. Let the chirpy little twirp who keeps screaming provide one, and run.
E is for...ESCAPE. Better hope you can make one.
F is for...FIRE. Most of the things that want you dead dislike it.
G is for...GRENADE. Come to momma, little pineapple of death.
H is for...HOUSE. It wants you dead. Live with it.
I is for...ICHOR. It's gonna get in your hair. That's how this works.
J is for...JUMPER CABLES. Learn how to use them or you're probably toast.
K is for...KNIFE. It won't run out of ammo, and it's fun to stick in things. Size does matter.
L is for...LASER. If you have it, use it; if someone else has it, avoid it at all costs.
M is for...MONSTER. Do I even need to explain?
N is for...NIGHT. That's when they're likely to attack.
O is for...OCTOBER. Just stay in bed for this entire month. Seriously.
P is for...PISTOL. I recommend learning to shoot one as soon as possible.
Q is for...QUICK. People come in two flavors: the quick and the dead. Pick one.
R is for...RABIES. That's probably not what you're dealing with, here.
S is for...SNAKE. They come in 'giant' and 'poisonous,' and neither is very good for you.
T is for...TANK. If you have one, keep it. If you don't, get one. Mmmmmmm, tank.
U is for...UNSPEAKABLE. Half the things you'll deal with will be unspeakable. Therapy is your friend.
V is for...VICTIM. If you can't cope, this is what goes on your name tag.
W is for...WEREWOLF. Once the moon comes up, that's not Johnny anymore.
X is for...XENOMORPH. Because apparently our Earth monsters just weren't dangerous enough. Space assholes.
Y is for...YESTERDAY. Remember when reanimated rats weren't gnawing your ankles? Good times, man.
Z is for...ZOMBIE. Oh, you knew that was coming.

It was surprisingly easy to do this, and I had to reject a lot of good alphabet entries because their letters were already filled. (T is for Terror: give in and you get a second 'T' for 'Toast.'; G is for Gun: for the love of God, get one..., etc.) As it has made me giggle without cease for about an hour, I proclaim it a rousing success.

Got any suggestions?

I watch a great many horror and monster movies, and have since I was a very small child. This explains a lot. This has also taught me a great many things about what not to have characters do, 'cause it's dumb. I will share some of those things now.

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10. Do not clone predatory dinosaurs right out the gate and expect things to go well. Seriously, here. In the movie Raptor, they're trying to clone 'dinosaurs with a brain' to do heavy labor and generally become grunt workers for mankind. Okay, if you're crazy, I guess that's a plan. So they start with...velociraptors. And Tyrannosaurus Rex. Because, y'know, that ten-ton killing machine is totally going to use sentience to go 'sure, tiny meat-snack man, I'll work my ass off for you!' If you're going to clone dinosaurs, start with a plant-eater.

( 9. While we're on the subject, do not make anything that already likes the taste of people super-intelligent...Collapse )

So recently, I bought an issue of Maxim, only to discover that they had included their list of '200 movies everyone should see.' Naturally, I disagreed with a great many of their selections, especially the part where their horror movies seem to have been chosen through purely arbitrary measures, largely having to do with how much gore could be splattered on the screen. That doesn't work for me all that well, and so I have decided to present a better, more carefully considered list. IE, 'the horror movies I say everyone should see.'

( We cut because we care. Also because failure to cut results in a much higher bodycount, and nobody wants that. Well. I want that. But I'll be merciful.Collapse )

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What did I miss?