Warning! Zombies ahead! Run!

That above title was on a flashing highway sign, courtesy of a hacker.  Research shows that when economic times are really tough, zombies come back in vogue. I'm a huge zombie fan (I loved the book, The Serpent and the Rainbow, about the Harvard anthropologist who ventured into Haiti to investigate--also made into a dreadful film.)  And of course, I was a zombie for my son's school's Halloween party and succeeded in unintentionally scaring a few kids.

But unlike vampires, zombies don't seem to have a lot going for them other than a scare factor.  Vampires are sexy, just like werewolves, but zombies need a good genetic mutation to get them into a good Romeo and Juliet story, which I am toying with, for a lark, for a script.  NOT my usual thing to write about. (Of course, there is also the deliriously haunting I Walked With A Zombie, a Val Lewton film.  Lewton also did the sublime The Cat People.)  He was given all these ridiculously silly horror movie titles and told to go off and make films, which he did, and almost none of them had anything to really do with the title, but were instead, psychologically astute and beautifully made.  

On another note, I have been struggling with backstory issues.  I had crammed so much into my first two chapters that I showed it to another writer and she said the same thing--get it out.  So after much fretting, I think I will give it its own chapter, and put it in the present.  You want to see your characters in motion--which means I need to get in motion and rewrite.

Sigh and alas.  The life of a writer.