Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
The Z-Word with Special Guest Lindsay King-Miller | Zombie Book Club Ep 65
In this episode of Zombie Book Club, we are thrilled to welcome Lindsay King-Miller, author of The Z Word, a queer horror novel set against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse during Pride weekend. Lindsay shares her journey of blending horror, humor, and queer identity in her work, offering a unique twist on traditional zombie tropes. We dive into the inspirations behind her characters, explore the symbolism of her zombies, and discuss the real-world challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community that influenced the narrative.
Join us as we chat about the joys of mixing campy horror with heartfelt commentary on queer liberation, reproductive health, and community resilience. With plenty of laughs, thought-provoking insights, and a peek into Lindsay's upcoming novel This Is My Body, this episode promises a fun and engaging conversation you won’t want to miss.
Lindsay King-Miller's website:
https://www.lindsaykingmiller.com/
Lindsay King-Miller on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/askaqueerchick
Where to Buy The Z-Word:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-z-word-lindsay-king-miller/20397148?ean=9781683694076
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is in fact, a book. Imagine that, and the book is in fact a book. Imagine that, and the book is about a delicious beverage that everyone should drink and never worry about the unintended consequences. I'm Dan, and when I'm not drinking delicious beverages, I'm writing a book that, at this point, is over 100,000 words, and I still don't know how it ends Badly, I think.
Speaker 2:And I'm Leah and my Salesforce user guide is done, so I'm just going to introduce myself as a fellow chaotic bisexual, just like Wendy, the protagonist in Lindsay King Miller's the Z Word. It's my favorite book I've read this summer and the queer zombie land everyone needs in their life. It is.
Speaker 1:I would say it's the queer Sean of the dead.
Speaker 2:Even better. Today we're chatting about our official book club assignment for episode 65, the Z Word, and we are so excited to share that the disaster bisexual horror author, lindsay King Miller is here today with us to talk about it. Lindsay is the fabulous author of Ask a Queer Chick a guide to sex, love and life for girls who dig girls, and the Z Word. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Fireside Fiction Baffling Magazine, the Deadlands and numerous other publications, and she has a second novel coming out in 2025 called this Is my Body from Quirk Books. Welcome to the show, lindsay. We're so excited to have you here.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Leah and Dan. It's really awesome to be here and I appreciate you inviting me.
Speaker 2:Oh well, when we found your book and then started reading it, I was like we have to talk to Lindsay. This was my dream come true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I forget when I found the book, but I immediately loved it.
Speaker 2:It was Pride Month, of course, yeah.
Speaker 1:We discovered it a little bit too late. I was reading it during Pride Month and I'm like, oh, this would have been perfect. Let's start with some rapid fire questions. We like to question our guests and make sure that they're not zombies or not zombie. I guess I don't know. I don't know where I was going with that. Anyways, first question 40 hour work week or the zombie apocalypse what do you choose?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. I don't think I have ever in my adult life had a 40 hour a week job. I honestly I think I might be more comfortable with the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in this case you you only work 40 hours, or the zombie apocalypse Like this. This week was a 60 hour week for me and even if they were like you only have to work 40 hours, I'd still be like bring in the dead people, bring in the cannibals.
Speaker 3:I mean, honestly, I've been a parent. I've been that's been really my day job is stay at home parent since 2015. So, thinking about it more, if I, if I genuinely only had to work 40 hours like, and then the rest of the time I was actually off, I don't know that might be preferable, that might be.
Speaker 1:I mean the zombie apocalypse looking after kids in the zombie apocalypse is going to be no fun time either.
Speaker 3:Honestly. Well, I do already have some skills in like avoiding getting bitten. Oh really, I guess you would, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:Never had a toddler, huh, no, just dogs, no Fending off.
Speaker 3:Fighting is a job requirement for sure. So yeah, I might thrive in the zombie apocalypse. I've got the, like you know, the arm block against fighting.
Speaker 1:You know how to hold biting fiends back at an arm's distance. Yeah, exactly, all right. Well, it's the zombie apocalypse right now. The 40-hour workweek thing it didn't happen. It it's the zombie apocalypse right now. The 40 hour work week thing it didn't happen. It's now the zombie apocalypse. You get to eat only one unlimited shelf stable food item for the rest of your life. What do you choose?
Speaker 3:Peanut butter pretzels.
Speaker 1:That's a good choice. We haven't gotten one before.
Speaker 3:I like that choice, you know there's a lot of peanut butter pretzels. That's a good choice. We haven't gotten that one before. I like that choice. You know there's a lot of the ones from the ones from that you get in giant jar from costco. Yeah, um, they're, they're, you know, tasty and I also feel like they're fairly. I mean I'm gonna die of scurvy if I can only one shelfable food for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3:Like scurvy is in the clouds no matter what, but I feel like peanut butter pretzels would have at least a decent amount of nutrition There'd be some protein.
Speaker 1:You know, I think most of the people we've asked this question would probably die of scurvy.
Speaker 2:All of us would die of scurvy if we had no vegetables.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like uh. One guest said macaroni and cheese um a very specific place, but I don't think that has vitamin c in it.
Speaker 3:Of course, I can't be sure how are you gonna do mac and cheese without like?
Speaker 2:I just like mac and cheese with made with tap water, like with no milk I don't know if you have tap water and in zombie apocalypse you're lucky if there's tap water so yeah yeah, that's true, it might be, that's true it
Speaker 1:might be mud, puddle water or just dry macaroni maybe that's how you get your vitamins is from the mud. From the mud, yeah. Um. If only one person could be your survival sidekick in the zombie apocalypse, who would it be?
Speaker 3:wayne the rock johnson.
Speaker 1:I just stand behind him I was not expecting that yeah, you're probably gonna eat a lot of your chocolate, your peanut butter pretzels, though.
Speaker 2:Oh that's true. That's okay.
Speaker 1:It's an unloaded lifetime supply I hope he likes peanut butter pretzels. We should ask him. Maybe one day we'll have dwayne the rock johnson as a guest and we'll ask him on your behalf if he likes peanut butter pretzel pretzels.
Speaker 3:I don't know if he's allowed to. I read a thing about his food regimen one time. It's incredibly, insanely strict. Peanut butter pretzels might be an incredible novelty for him.
Speaker 1:He's probably never had that That'll be the most decadent thing, right and last rapid fire. Question um, where did your love for the zombies, zombie apocalypse start?
Speaker 3:um, I have always been a huge horror fan zombies specifically. Trying to think what my first like there's like real zombie um media that I fell in love with. I have to give a lot of credit actually to my spouse. I've always been a big horror fan and my partner is not super into horror but he is pretty into zombies specifically and when we first got together he introduced me to this amazing little movie that I'd never seen before. That um, far too few people have heard of. It's a trauma movie from like the eighties. It's called chopper chick, chopper chicks in zombie town. Billy Bob Thornton is in it.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 3:And it is about, uh, an all girl biker gang that is just like kind of driving around causing havoc and they end up in this town that is being overrun by a zombie apocalypse. It's so campy, it's so goofy, the special effects are absolutely terrible. Um, billy bob thornton again is in it for some reason. Um, and I have a lot of people have compared the z word to either Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland, and I'm just waiting for the day when someone will be like this is an homage to Chopper Chicks and Zombie Town, because that's actually what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have to watch this movie now. It sounds amazing.
Speaker 3:But you will not regret it. It is terrible.
Speaker 2:That is what we're looking for sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting Like older movies, especially like before the 90s. It's like if it was a low-budget movie, you could pretty much count on it being absolutely terrible. Like bad acting, bad special effects, bad writing, bad film, yeah, and like now you get halfway through the movie before you know it's bad that's true.
Speaker 3:That's true. They can really make bad movies.
Speaker 2:Look like good movies these days but your book would actually be a very good movie and I will say, as somebody who is, uh, unpopularly, not a huge lover of zombie land, I don't think that's even a fair comparison. I think that your book, the Z Word, would blow Zombieland out of the water For one. The characters weigh more dimensions to them, especially the female ones. Yeah, lindsay, oh, my pleasure. I seriously like when I read the back of your jacket cover where it says that this is the queer Zomb land you didn't know you needed and I was like I need this. What are you talking about? I knew.
Speaker 3:I needed this.
Speaker 2:So for those of us I mean many of our listeners have read the book, because you're our feature book club book. But for those who have not yet, can you give us a quick rundown about what the Z word is all about?
Speaker 3:Sure, it's set during pride it's pride weekend. In a fictional small town in Southern Arizona called San Lazaro. Our protagonist, wendy, is kind of struggling to get through pride because she broke up with her girlfriend six months ago. They have all the same friends. She keeps running into her ex, who she's completely not over, and kind of kicking herself for the way that she screwed up their relationship, at the same time having a little bit of an infatuation with a goth drag queen that she meets at a pride party and then everyone starts acting kind of weird and throwing up blood and trying to bite each other. And so Wendy and her friends are in the middle of the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and they have to team up. It's kind of chaotic cast of characters, including Wendy's ex and her new crush, and they have to team up to fight zombies and save pride. What a beautiful disaster.
Speaker 1:I was going to say that sounds like a nightmare I actually somebody, um some.
Speaker 3:Who was it? Uh, it was well. I'm so worried about saying his name on a recording because I'm afraid I'm gonna mispronounce his last name, but calvin kasulky, possibly, is how you pronounce his last name. Um, he was one of the he's the author of. Several people are typing and he was one of the people who blurbed the z word, and I was one of the he's the author of.
Speaker 3:Several people are typing and he was one of the people who blurbed the z word, and I think one of the things that he said that I don't believe made it onto the cover was that, um, the z word shows once and for all that the only thing more terrifying than the end of the world is dyke drama. I'm like, yes, thank you, that's exactly what I was going for. Like, oh god, I either have to fight this zombie or I have to talk to my ex-girlfriend that resonates my own experience of life, one thing that I was thinking about, as, as you were talking about the, uh, the, the book and specifically about the, the drama between the x and uh the main character is I.
Speaker 1:I love how in the book it kind of alternates between who you, as the reader, think is the bad guy in the scenario. Like I started off not liking the main character and then I'm like, oh, oh, the the x is actually pretty terrible, and then it kind of goes back and forth yeah, they they both are kind of nightmares.
Speaker 3:They they were not. It was not a healthy relationship at all. They both really screwed up. They both kind of treated each other pretty badly, um, and yet that attraction is still there, know, like they shouldn't get back together. You, as the reader, hopefully know they shouldn't get back together, but they also, like you can see, that they really kind of still want to, or it's still. They're still under each other's skin, even though they both know it would be a terrible idea.
Speaker 3:I wanted to to kind of write about terrible idea. I wanted to kind of write about. I didn't want to write a book and this maybe starts to edge into spoiler territory, so tell me if I should stop but I didn't want to write a book where it was like, okay, love fixes everything in the end and you end up together and it's happily ever after. I wanted to write about a relationship that is kind of doomed, that isn't healthy, that isn't going to make you happy in the long run, but they're still drawn to each other and just that kind of inconvenient lingering attraction that keeps making things complicated. And hopefully you know fairly early on and this isn't a spoiler that Wendy and Leah aren't going to have a happy ending, they're not going to end up together riding off into the sunset, but it's still, I think, an interesting dynamic to explore, an interesting relationship story to tell I think.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really good way to tell a story, because it's so, it's so easy to tell the you know, the guy, the guy, the guy wins the girl and rides into the sunset story that we've seen a million times, um and uh.
Speaker 1:You know, I think, I think at this point our society kind of sees through that veneer of of those movies and stories where they realize that, like after the happily ever after of the romcom, these, these two people that came down to it, were psychotic. You know, if you, if, you've ever seen them.
Speaker 3:I won't say which.
Speaker 1:I was actually thinking about like the romcoms of the 90s and 2000s, like straight up serial killers almost these people, and it's like they didn't end up well at the end. So like this is a much more realistic story in that sense that it's telling a story about people that exist.
Speaker 2:I will say, though, lindsay, that there was a moment I won't spoil them but there was a moment where I was like, oh, maybe, maybe, like, maybe this could go well, uh, and then clearly it does not. That's all I'm gonna say, and I know that you you wrote a love advice book for girls who love girls and like girls, called ask a queer chick, which is also your handle on instagram, and I'm wondering if wendy had written to you asking for advice about how to handle the breakup with Leah, what would you have told her?
Speaker 3:Oh my God, I would have told her to delete her number and never, never, interact with her again. They were so bad for each other. If she had, if she had written to me with, like all the the list of all the things that she and Leah did to each other oh my gosh, no, yeah.
Speaker 1:Also maybe you don't go to pride with, uh, with your ex, who's there to hook up with two other people that are your friends.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's sort of not a good situation, yeah yeah, it's unfortunate, it's unfortunate that leah got their friends in the breakup. But, like, sometimes you just gotta, sometimes you just gotta cut your losses, yeah, can't, you can't keep trying to make that work. And I did also want to, you know, especially like as a queer story. I wanted to write a queer story where, like, yes, there's romance going on, yes, there's sex going on. That's not the like, that's not the most important thing, um, and it's and it's also not, you know, I think I think a lot of queer. It's still very much like reifying.
Speaker 2:What really matters is the friends, the community, people that are not sleeping with, but that you can count on when shit goes down off that I was brainwashed as a child to think that the penultimate purpose of my life was one to be with a man and make sure that I was pleasing for him, but two, that that was going to be it and the end. And the older I've gotten, as much as I am grateful to be in the partnership I am with Dan it's become very clear that if you don't have community, that's really how you survive. Whether it's the apocalypse with zombies or the current dystopian nightmare that we live in, community really is the key.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah you need friends. Yeah, I think that, especially as a young queer person, especially like if you're newly out, if you're kind of trying to find your place in the world, which is kind of where wendy is. She's in her late 20s, so she's not like that young, but she's still kind of figuring out is. She's in her late 20s, so she's not like that young, but she's still kind of figuring out what she's going to be when she grows up and she's still kind of finding her place in the world. And you need queer friends more than you need a girlfriend at that stage in your life and maybe any stage in your life. You need a community more than you need a romantic partner.
Speaker 3:I thought a lot while I was writing this book, actually about a movie called the Broken Hearts Club, which is probably my favorite not horror movie in the world and it's just about. It came out in like 2000 or 2001, something like that um, and you can have there's like cowrie shell necklaces and hilarious dated stuff like that um, but it's it's basically just about a group of gay friends, um, kind of trying to same thing trying to figure their shit out, figure out what they're doing with their lives, and the main character has a romantic subplot, but um, but it doesn't. I'm going to spoil this 25 year old movie. It doesn't end in them getting together.
Speaker 3:It ends in them realizing that neither of them is ready for a serious relationship yet yeah um, and that they need friends more than they need boyfriends, um, and it's like I imprinted on that movie at exactly the right time in my life and I just completely love it, um, and have no ability to like objectively judge whether it's good or bad, but I just there's so few movies that have that takeaway that that have like, yeah, romance is great, but when? But when you're, when you're young and unstable and and just totally unsure of where you fit into the world, the most important thing is to have that community, um, and so I I kind of like part of what I was trying to do, writing this e-word, was like I want to write the Broken Hearts Club, but with zombies. I want to write a love story that's about the love between queer friends more than the love between girlfriends.
Speaker 2:And that's what saves a lot of them. Unfortunately, not all of them. I hope that's not a spoiler.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that's the thing, not everybody's story to the end.
Speaker 3:You know, I think that's the thing, not everybody's story to the end.
Speaker 1:I think that's the thing that I loved most about your story is that this was a story about people who are very close together and they felt real. They felt like people and like I mean so many stories I've read. It's like you know the lone wolf, the guy that does all the things and knows how to do all the stuff, and he can do it all alone. But this was a story that I much prefer, which is like this is a story of finding your real family amidst the struggle of the apocalypse, and one thing that I really loved especially is that, while you do have this story about the, the people that you find along the way, you also paint your zombies in a very human light, like in a few situations, we actually see the world from the perspective of these zombies and you're like, oh, they're, they're not just mindless cannibals, they're like they're losing their mind, but they're still people.
Speaker 1:And, uh, it was. It was something that a lot of, a lot of movies, a lot of books, a lot of whatever, uh, whatever medium you choose um, sometimes fails to accomplish is like, you know, once, once somebody gets bitten and turns, they almost disappear sometimes and like, all you have are these faceless hordes of rotting, decaying ghouls at your doorstep. But these people stayed people. They were still like the you know and they were a part of the community that is also so important to the main characters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what was it like to write? Because it was one of the most horrifying moments, lindsay. What was it like to write a first-person perspective of transforming into a zombie? Because that was like beautifully written one, but like very visceral, made me think about what it might actually be like to have that happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for saying that, cause those are some of my favorite sections of the book and they were actually the last things that I wrote. The book had already been through like a couple of rounds of edits. I was about to send it in I was, I think, a month out from my final due date Like it's going to copy edits, it's out of my hands. And I had this idea and emailed my editor and was like what if I added a couple of additional chapters from the perspective of some characters other than Wendy, so we can kind of see some stuff that's going on outside of her point of view, outside of her point of view? And one of the things that I wanted to do with that was include some perspectives of people as they turned into zombies. And my editor was kind of like this book is due in a month. I guess if you really want to do that, you can, and so I did. I wrote six more chapters in that last month and we ended up using five of them. So it wasn't part of what I had originally envisioned for the book. It was something that I added at the last minute because I just felt like it was missing. Yeah, I just felt like it was missing some additional perspective. I wanted to be able to show what was happening, not just through Wendy's eyes, and I really loved writing those sections, thinking about what it would be like to be losing your grasp on who you are in all but the most kind of elemental way. So thinking about what's sort of the last, the last thing that you think the most vital part of who you are, before the lights go out, like what is your mind focus on? For it doesn't exist anymore and it's different.
Speaker 3:I wrote that scene for a couple of a few different characters and I it's different for each of them, but I I did really um enjoy doing that as just kind of an an an exercise in thinking through what really makes a person who they are and what um like.
Speaker 3:How does it feel to start to lose who you are and be overwhelmed by this kind of mindless, violent urge? And I thought a lot while I was writing those, those scenes about, um the girl with all the gifts, um, both the movie and the novel, which I'm assuming as zombie fans, you guys have probably either read or seen both. But for anybody who's not familiar with it, um, it's about basically people who were infected with the zombie plague in utero and were born as part human, part zombies. So they have human cognizance, but they also have this zombie urge to hunt and kill and eat humans. Um, so the balance between, like, being a real thinking, feeling, sentient person with a conscience and also having this overwhelming, um, this overwhelming biological need to kill people, um, how that feels, the tension of that, the kind of tragedy of that, and so, yeah, I thought a lot about that book and that movie while I was writing those last sections and I hope that I was able to channel a little bit of that into this character's point of view.
Speaker 2:I feel like you really did. And again, without spoilers, I'll just say that it was fascinating to me how different people's last sort of conscious thoughts were based on who they were as people and it sort of gets to their very core and base and it made me really love some characters more. It made me a little more okay with others, not sticking around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, the at the very this isn't much of a spoiler, because it happens at the the very beginning. But, uh, but mike, I I kind of felt for mike, even though I didn't know who he was at the beginning. Um, because it's like at first I just thought he was like really drunk, like feverish, sweating, kind of like not all there, like having having angry thoughts. I'm like I've had days like this. And then when they find them inside of a truck later on in the heat, I'm like oh, that's got to be the worst.
Speaker 1:That's like the worst place you want to wind up after a night of drinking like that, but you had other stuff going on. Yeah, speaking of zombies, so your zombies are a little bit different from your. You know your, your standard fair Romero, cut and paste zombie, cause. You, you don't have a zombie virus. Yep, you have a. You, you have a beverage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I am, and also my zombies aren't dead. They're um, they are technically still alive, even though they're kind of in the, in the midst of sustaining, um, like horrible brain damage that erases their identity and basically all their impulses besides aggression. Um, and that was that was also part of like. I wanted to, um, to hopefully grapple a little bit with, like what, what does it mean to kill someone who has no sense of of who they are, who has no like sense of right or wrong, no real sentience, but they're still a living human being? Um?
Speaker 1:like you might think that they can be helped right, right, exactly um and yeah.
Speaker 3:So I wanted um. A couple of things, obviously. At a certain point when I was writing this book. A couple of things, obviously. At a certain point when I was writing this book, I kind of accepted that the zombies were becoming a metaphor, which wasn't really what I sat down to do initially. Seed of an idea for the z word was just I was thinking about chopper chicks in zombie town and I was thinking about um, I was thinking about pride and I and just kind of like what if there were some dykes on bikes like chainsawing zombies at pride, that would be super fun to write.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, yeah, I'd watch that movie and yeah, right, right, and so I started writing that.
Speaker 3:But the more I wrote, the more I thought about it, the more it started to feel like the zombies were kind of taking on this symbolism. And I was kind of writing about something else, which I suppose this is a mild spoiler, but it ended up being a lot of my kind of feelings about pride, about like contemporary pride parades and the commodification of pride and the commodification of like allyship as a brand, um, and like know, rainbow branded merch and all of that stuff, um, and having a corporation's name in giant letters on on all of your pride stuff. That that all kind of made its way in there and um. And I didn't really set out to write like a heavy handed, like political analogy, but it kind of ended up there and yeah, so I needed like a mechanism of infection that felt symbolically appropriate to what I was trying to say about pride, and so I won't spoil what that is for the people who haven't read the book. I don't think it will probably come as a great shock to anybody what it ends up being.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of other twists, though. Even if we gave that away, which we won't there's other things that happen in this where I'm like I, whoa, didn't see that coming, maybe because I oh yeah, I missed it, but I that was actually. One of our questions is like what do they symbolize in the Z word? And what I came away with when I was thinking about the corporate influence over pride is I was thinking about how this is my interpretation, so I'm curious what your response to it is, or, dan, what you think.
Speaker 2:But I was thinking about how we as like just regular people, get zombified by corporate slogans and, uh, fancy things like I remember being at kroger and we live in vermont now, but we lived in, or I lived in georgia for four, no, ten years, uh, and I got so excited one year when it was pride month and kroger all of a sudden had like pride bouquets and pride, all of these things. And then target had stuff, and we all see what's been happening lately, where suddenly they're pulling back, the tractor supply company is like literally just ended. Their diversity, equity and inclusion program will no longer be celebrating pride.
Speaker 1:Now we have to find out a new place to buy wood pellets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do have to find a new place to buy wood pellets. My point is that I think it's really easy to get lulled um and see corporate endorsement of movements like the pride movement. Uh, just be like this is great, but it is actually kind of insidious.
Speaker 3:so I don't know if that's, if that was sort of where, what happened for you when you were thinking about it or what your response to that is yeah, I mean, first of all, I would say like, however you want to interpret, like I don't, I don't really believe in like being the voice of god about something that I wrote. You know, like I wrote it, it's out in the world. Um, and however you interpret, it is kind of up to you. So I would never want to say like this is this is the correct interpretation or I mean it could incorrect what I mean. I don't, I don't want to. You know, I, I think I believe in the death of the author to some extent. Um, I definitely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was thinking about that a lot while I was writing the book and um, and I was thinking a lot about a specific I live in denver a specific beverage company um is very large on all the pride merch here and um that has just an absolutely horrific history of union busting and corporate contributions to horrible causes and um, you know, just kind of like, how much do we, how much do we give away? How much of our ownership over our community and our movement do we give away in exchange for, in exchange for corporate sponsorship, in exchange for the money and the resources that they bring in, and those things can be really positive you know obviously yeah, the and the merch and the um, you know just the visible, tangible um support.
Speaker 3:But then you see stuff like this year with Target, like walking back their pride section. Anything that a corporation can give to a social movement, they can also take away just as easily. And if your idea of victory, if your idea of queer liberation, is Target has rainbow stuff on the shelves, then that can change so fast from year to year and it's totally out of your control. So so, kind of like, how much do we give away without realizing it when we let corporations turn our movements into a brand or a slogan or a cool t-shirt? Um, and and what would it take to regain ownership of, ownership of our own liberation, what would it take? That sounded like this when I said that out loud and then I kind of regretted it no, this is.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I personally am on this podcast as a mask to basically just talk about how much I hate capitalism and how we need to find a new way to exist. Yes, uh. So I'm curious if, like I know, none of us have the answer in like big capital letters. But I am curious what you think might be one thing we could do that would move us closer to queer liberation, which is liberation for all. Ultimately, that is not relying on corporations. What's one thing we could do?
Speaker 3:I think community, I think community is so important, having bonds with queer people that you know in real life, that you can support in real life, that you can show up for each other in person when things are fucked up and, um, you know, provide, provide material support, help people, um, you know, help people get to their doctor's appointments, help people, um make food for people when they're recovering from surgery. Um watch people's kids when they go to a protest, like that kind of thing, that kind of like on the ground, um, like real mutual aid, not in the sense of of, like crowdfunding, but in the sense of like. I will support you in the ways that I can and you will support me in the ways that you can yeah, and maybe get the um, the, the pride merch at pride from local artists right instead of from oh my
Speaker 3:god, buy your rainbow shit from real queer artists. Yeah, you know like there's so many people making awesome stuff um yeah, I mean target doesn't need.
Speaker 1:Well, they think they need that, but like somebody else could get that money instead of Target.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, exactly. Spend your money on queer people. Spend your money with you know creators of color. Spend your money with trans creators, because those are the people who are really like coming under the most scrutiny and the and the most attack and like those are the people who need the support more yeah, and like pizza hut might have their rainbow pizza but like you could also order it from pizza.
Speaker 1:Apocalypse who actually when the apocalypse happens.
Speaker 3:They're out there in the street people, yeah yeah, um, yeah, my, my brother actually asked me because I wrote this book in 2020 and 2021. Um, my brother asked me if sunshine out there, like delivering pizza in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. He was like, are they, you know, a metaphor for people being forced to go to work during covet? And I was like I didn't consciously think of that, but certainly that's what was going on while I was writing this book. So, yeah, that probably slipped in there around the edges.
Speaker 2:Sunshine is a hero. I've got to say, and I have to ask this question because some listeners have asked is there going to be a sequel with Sunshine in it? Some listeners have asked is there?
Speaker 3:going to be a sequel with sunshine in it. They're a beloved character. People love sunshine. Um, and I have I have gotten that question a lot. I will say I. I will never say never. Um, I I don't know what. You know what fancy might strike me down the line.
Speaker 3:Right now I don't have any plans to write a sequel to. Right now I don't have any plans to write a sequel to, the Z Word. I don't have much of an idea of what that would entail or what kind of story I would want to tell in that world. My next book is turned in just about to go to copy edits and then I have a vague shape of the book that I'm going to write after that, and neither of them are related to the Z word. So maybe someday down the line, but I don't have any plans for it right now.
Speaker 3:I also think a lot of people say they want a Sunshine book. I'm not sure that people would enjoy a sunshine book as much as they think they would. Honestly, I think that sunshine as a character is great, as, like, I think sunshine is like cilantro. They are, um, I think they're fantastic for like, adding, adding some contrast and adding some flavor, and they're a fun garnish to put in a scene. But I think if I made you a, if I made you a salad that was nothing but cilantro, you would be like Whoa, that's too much.
Speaker 2:I agree, and then it would turn into the like single hero trope. If it was just sunshine.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly. You can't lose the other characters.
Speaker 2:I just maybe some people will write some fan fiction.
Speaker 3:I would lose my mind. I would be so thrilled. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I not to stray too far off topic, but I kind of feel like I've been trying to place how I feel about the Walking Dead's Daryl Dixon and I feel like it's the cilantro salad what you're talking about. It's too much sunshine, it's too much Daryl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then they're insulting Carol by calling it the book of carol. Don't get me started.
Speaker 3:I'm so mad about that, but we're here to talk about the z word with you and uh, this is a slight turn from uh talking about pride, necessarily, but one of the things that I really liked about the book was how not only is wendy and her friends trying to figure out how to survive pride from the zombie apocalypse, she also has a personal, like life and death sort of issue, which is that she's searching for plan b and encounters a number of obstacles along the way that that were very real, like having a pharmacist just say no in Arizona, and I'm curious what inspired you to include that as like a subplot in the storyline that was something that I had wanted to write for a long time and it's actually kind of ripped off from a story I heard about a friend of a friend, um, who who I guess I'm trying to remember the exact details but like hooked up with somebody at a party, um, either the condom broke or they didn't have one, or whatever it was, and then they spent the whole next day trying to track down some plan b, um and same thing, kind of just like encountered a bunch of like wacky obstacles and hijinks, um, and and then, like by the end of the day, they like realized that they were really into each other and what had started out as a hookup turned into the two of them dating um right, like years, um, and I just thought that was such a cool story and I loved it and I have had been thinking about it, um, for a long time and um thinking about for a long time. I had been thinking about using that in the zombie apocalypse, because that's one of the things that I feel like apocalyptic fiction. Like you, sometimes you see people giving birth in apocalyptic fiction. You know, like I'm thinking about um like blood quantum has the pregnant woman in it.
Speaker 3:Um, a quiet place has a woman giving birth after the apocalypse, but you never see, like the alternative to that, which is like how do you get an abortion or how do you find plan B or how do you find birth control during the apocalypse? Because maybe you don't want to be that woman who's like giving birth in a soundproof basement while alien monsters rampage outside. Maybe that's not your goal in life. So, um, so yeah, I had heard that story years ago and I thought about it'd be really interesting to do something with that, but like during the zombie apocalypse, um, and then I had this other idea, which was what if zombies at pride?
Speaker 3:And then, um, it occurred to me that I could combine those two things together and I thought that would just kind of be fun and interesting and I wanted to. I feel like that's not something that we see a lot in any kind of stories, but especially in genre fiction is somebody trying to find emergency contraception, which is a big part of life for people who can get pregnant, and all the more urgent in a life or death situation like that. So I kind of just wanted it was just an interesting line of thought to pursue for me. What would you do if you were in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and you needed Plan B?
Speaker 1:do if you were um, if you were in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and you needed plan b. Yeah, I mean, so much of zombie apocalypse fiction is like almost like a, like a conservative um fantasy dream where it's like, it's like no, we're not going to talk about contraception because, uh, your purpose is to repopulate the earth that's what people with uteruses are required to do but this.
Speaker 1:But yeah. But like you're right, like this is such a important part of life and like like millennials like us where we've lived through so many crises and apocalypses, it's like I don't think that we should be making babies in the apocalypse, because that's dangerous.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:But like you also don't want to like just resign yourself to death either, you still want to live your life, so that would that would be super important.
Speaker 3:Oh, no problem, Bagels when has some spicy waters in it, and then the rest of the spicy water is in there, and there's cream cheese in the cooler too. So thank you so much, darling. Thank you, sorry, just had to check in. You have spicy water? Um, yeah, we uh it. It just means bubbly water. It's like seltzer. One time years ago a kid called it spicy water, and now that my like whole group of people that I volunteer with, call it spicy water forevermore.
Speaker 2:I think we're adopting this spicy water yeah, this is.
Speaker 1:This is my new thing now spicy water when you're reading a spicy book, like the z word.
Speaker 2:I yeah. So before we wrap up, I just had to briefly tell you this story, lindsey, which is uh, the, the my workplace. We're remote, so we have a Slack channel called. We have like a Slack channel book club where we do read books together or we just talk about books, we're reading, and it was pride month and they're like what are you reading? And so I answered the Z word and then they were like why don't we all read that as part of the book club? And I was like it's spicy. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this content with my coworkers but it is.
Speaker 2:I just want to say is so well done the intimacy that you create. It was really beautifully done. But yeah, it was a moment where, like if I had been in person with my co-workers, my face would have gone beet red and been like I don't. I don't want to discuss those parts of the book with Bob.
Speaker 3:I have. I actually have a friend, my my dear dear friend, mandy, she, before my book came out even, and before she had read it, sight unseen, she recommended it for her, for her workplace, like LGBT book club, and and then she told me that and I was like, oh, do you know that there's like several sex scenes in that book? And she was like, oh, no, it'd be awkward.
Speaker 1:I kind of forgot about that when we started recommending people to read it. Uh, I forgot to mention those things and uh uh, a friend of ours informed us that it was very spicy and they were not expecting that yeah, so we're giving you five spicy, five of five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like oh, it might be like three pepper spice and they're like no much spicier than that I have.
Speaker 3:I'm so, so lucky to have a very, very supportive family who, um, they, they all you know support my writing and read my work and all of that stuff and it's wonderful and it's also like I feel. So I just feel a little like I need to hide my face Cause I know that, like my great aunt in Michigan has like read my sexy I think that's really awesome, and also why Dan has a friend who's a a smut writer who will not tell us what their writing name is yeah, I've, I've friend he's kind of the person who like influenced me into like getting serious about writing my book and he's written like 80 books, all of them, all of them smut.
Speaker 1:That's how he makes his living. I don't know what his author name is. He won't tell me. He won't even tell me the context, like the cut what, what genre it is that he writes oh wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 3:I love that. Wait, you're writing a book. What? What's your book about?
Speaker 1:Is it zombies? Yeah, there are zombies. Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, right now it is word vomit and every day it's like I change my mind about things and make changes and add people and delete people. Yeah, if I left everything in that I've deleted so far, I probably have 400,000 words at this point. But yeah, it's coming soon. I really think that I'm closing in on the end of a rough draft. A rough draft one day, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Thank you, lindsay. Rough draft of rough draft. One day yeah, lindsey, awesome congratulations. Thank you, lindsey. I know that you have exciting things uh happening next for you in your day, and I want to make sure that we close by getting you to tell us a little bit more about the next book that's coming up for you.
Speaker 3:This is my body yes, so this is my body will be out tentatively, august of 2025, just about a year from now, and it is my take on an exorcism story. It's about a lesbian single mom who begins to believe that her daughter is possessed by a demon and that the only person who can help her is the mom's Catholic exorcist uncle, from whom she's been estranged for 20 years Whoa. So it's about religious trauma. It's about family secrets. It's about parenthood. It's definitely darker than the Z Word, not as lighthearted, probably not as sexy. I had so much fun writing it. I really love it. I'm really proud of it. It's pretty different from the Z Word, but I hope people will give it a shot anyway.
Speaker 2:I'm definitely going to because I understand religious trauma and I'm really curious to see how that filters in, but in the form of the exorcist vibes. I'm excited for that.
Speaker 1:You know, zombies take a lot of different forms and you've written a zombie book. Now you're writing an exorcism book. Forms and you've written a zombie book Now you're writing an exorcism book. Do you think it's possible that somebody who is possessed by a demon could actually be classified as a zombie?
Speaker 3:Maybe. I feel like what we think of as a zombie is defined by a lack of higher intelligence. Yeah, of like higher intelligence. Yeah, well, if the, if the possessing entity was intelligent, then I would say, no, it's not a zombie, that's something else. But if the possessing entity was like animalistic and and just driven by you know, like violence or hunger, the need to consume, I, I, I would say maybe, I would say you could call that a zombie all right, good enough I'd be open possibility sounds like we can read this book on this book club, maybe, depending on what kind of uh possession this is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's been a real pleasure to get to chat with you, lindsey. Thank you for making the book that I always wanted to exist on the planet.
Speaker 3:It was my favorite read of the summer. Yeah, so, so nice of you, thank you. Thank you both for reading it. Thank you for inviting me to be on the podcast, and it was really, really wonderful to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. It was very. It was great. I really enjoyed this conversation and hopefully, hopefully, we hear in the future that there's big things for Sunshine. I've got my fingers crossed you can post it for sure, let us know if you find that fan fiction.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. If somebody writes fan fiction about Sunshine, please tell me. It would make my day.
Speaker 2:I have a feeling there's at least one person on this or listening to this that may do it, so we'll let you know. Thank you so much, lindsay. I hope you have a beautiful. There's at least one person on this or listening to this that may do it, so we'll let you know. Thank you so much, lindsay. Have a beautiful rest of your day.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. You, too, have a great rest of your weekend, and this is airing in October, I think. So happy Halloween, happy Halloween.
Speaker 1:Happy.
Speaker 2:Halloween. Yeah, october 13th, this is coming out.
Speaker 1:And I'll tag you in the post when we make it. You can be a collaborator if you like. Amazing. Thank you so much cool. Have a great day. Well, that was a really great episode with lindsey. It was, um, you know, we we didn't have a whole lot of time, and which is probably a good thing, because we kept it snappy yeah, we're not along.
Speaker 1:We're not known for snappy but uh, but I I really enjoyed that episode and you know we covered some bases that I had. I didn't know we were gonna go there. It was, it was pretty great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what surprised you oh man, you know they wouldn't really surprise me is that we really didn't spoil much of the book. A lot of times when we talk about the book, it's like and then this happened. Spoiler alert after we say it. I'll warn you after I say it. You know, there was a comment a couple episodes ago, and I don't even know that we were talking about the walking dead. But somebody was like whoa, if you're gonna talk about the walking dead, at least give us a spoiler alert. Like did we talk about the?
Speaker 2:walking dead. I mean we do casually all the time. I think we make an assumption that everybody who's listening to this has watched the walking dead, which actually we know is not true, because at least chris has admitted to us that they have never watched, or they they finished at season three stopped after, after the herschel's farm, I think yeah, chris, get on it just watch it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll love it same with everybody else, maybe you won't. I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who knows? But I'll just say that was a great episode. I knew as soon as I started reading the book that it was a pretty exceptional zombie book, very unique, and that I wanted to have Lindsay on the show, so I'm super glad that it worked out. We're actually recording this y'all at the end of August and it's coming out october 13th this is called being prepared for the apocalypse that is our lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what? What kind of a world are we living in, guys? Let us know. Do we still have a planet? Yeah, are we, or have we all moved to mars?
Speaker 2:we have less than a month till the us election I how are we doing?
Speaker 1:come. Yet are we all undead, walking shambling corpses yeah, I don't know, aren't we already?
Speaker 2:who knows?
Speaker 2:I am for sure I will say, the one thing I didn't get get to mention, uh, in that episode, but I think is important, is that I've been thinking, like when I read about wendy's need to get plan b and the fact that she was refused it and then it became the apocalypse and so there was just like very, very difficult to access it at all. Yeah, I mean, you think about all the people who live in states where that is their reality, yeah, right now, and they have to cross state lines, uh, and they can go to jail, and it's just really actually an apocalyptic nightmare for people with uteruses, because I can tell you right now, I don't want a baby. That's my personal choice, and if I was accidentally impregnated by you and I lived in a state where I didn't have that choice, that would be really, really upsetting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've recently heard some Life-changing. In a way, I don't want my life changed. Pregnant women who just can't get care because what they need is an abortion in order to not die, and the doctors don't want to go anywhere near it because it's a legal hellscape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're just bleeding out in an emergency room parking lot, yeah. Or just having doctors refuse to see a pregnant person in the first trimester because they don't want to be involved in case something should happen. It's really wild out there, yeah, and that is why we need to keep pushing for a better world and the liberation of all people, because if you think it's not going to happen to you, you're not good one day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're coming for you. Next they are. That's, in fact, that's your zombie homework for episode 75. Find a way to build a little bit community in your backyard. Slash globally whatever feels right to you. Like Lindsay pointed out, it doesn't have to be big. We've been all deluded, zombified into thinking that we're individuals and that we can't do anything for anybody else, because most of us are just barely holding our head above water. And that is true.
Speaker 1:But most of my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our head above water, and that is true. But most of my life, yeah, imagine if we were all you know, just helping a little bit in some small way. That's real for you. It doesn't have to be money. Yeah, we can help each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, set up a secret back alley abortion clinic. That's your homework.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I should say that we're kidding, for legal reasons, don't do that a bad idea. Yeah, also, it should be somebody who's a licensed doctor and able to actually perform those things, uh. But I do understand and empathize with anybody who's had to make those choices, because many, many, many people with uteruses have for hundreds of years, thanks to our incredibly, uh, oppressive world that we're in for for people with uteruses, okay what are we doing for episode 75?
Speaker 1:I have no idea, because we're changing everything yeah, we, we kind of, we kind of want to try something new where it's a pilot test flight. Um, we've we've been doing this, you know, featured book, since the since the beginning of this podcast, and I think when we first started we didn't expect to talk to so many authors. We thought we only have time for one book every couple of months because we're very busy. And then, I don't know, we just started meeting more and more people. I don't know, we just started meeting more and more people and we kind of just want to just talk to authors when it's time to talk to them and I think it'd probably be better if we just bring them on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bring them on the show. And then, dan, you're reading zombie stuff literally any day that you can be on the road. Yeah, so we're going to incorporate into Casual Dead's little section was like damn, what are you reading? What am?
Speaker 1:I reading.
Speaker 2:What are you?
Speaker 1:reading. I'm reading. Uh, what is I forget? I forget exactly the title. Um it's, is it called how we end? Yes, by lm juniper yeah, how's that going? It's great. I love it. Speaking of a zombie book, that's about community and coming together and being together and surviving as a chosen family. That is also a fantastic book to read, much like the Z Word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe we'll get lucky and LM Juniper will come on the show.
Speaker 1:I'd love that because I think there's so much to the book to talk about.
Speaker 2:It's a whole series. Yeah, there's at least two more books and they're working on something else now. Yeah, how we Survive. I think it's how we End how we Began. There's another one, I don't remember, and then I think how we Survive, but think how we survive. But, yeah, read that book. We're not making an official book club book because we're not doing that right now, but definitely check out how we End. If you Haven't, you can get it as an audio book or as a printed book, which is an awesome option.
Speaker 1:It's a pretty great audio book. A dual narrator type situation Ooh, that sounds very fun yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to be starting to listen to that one next. So we'll definitely talk about that book, whether we get the awesome opportunity to talk to LM Juniper or not. That will be in our future and we'll keep you posted on what we're reading. A lot of folks have said like, hey, give us your top five books, your top 20 books, and maybe what we can start doing is posting on Instagram at least like what we're reading now and then do some roll ups of those things in the future, of our favorites for 2024.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let us know. Let us know if you like this idea, if you're angered by our changing of our ways, which I can't imagine anybody is. But if you are, let us know. But also give us a five-star rating, yes, and a great review, yes, but also give us a five star rating, yes, and a great review, yes, but also tell us why you're mad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the only thing I would say is I'm hoping we can find other ways to bring different guests and listeners of the podcast on to talk about books that are not just in that like formal format that we had, and we'll figure it out. But in the meantime, you can call us with a burning zombie question. Ask us anything, tell us a survival story, tell us about the book that you're writing, have written is already available, or you could pre-order and we will post it, or not. We will air it on the show and people can listen to it. We do that because we like to make a platform for indie authors especially. You can call us at 614-699-0006, or you can email us at zombiebookclubpodcast at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can send us that sweet sweet elevator pitch and like you're trying to pitch us a movie that we're going to finance or something I don't know, but that's a quick way to let people know about your book. But thanks for listening everybody, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and don't swallow any of those corporate beverages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't drink. Don't drink the spicy water, but until next time. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:Bye everybody, the end is nigh, it is Bye for listening. Bye everybody, the end is nigh, it is Bye-bye, bye-bye.
