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
"Pink Zombie Rose: Major Arcana" with Dia VanGunten | Zombie Book Club Ep 137
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Dia VanGunten joins us to crack open Pink Zombie Rose, her decade in the making magical realism series where zombies don't eat brains; they walk off the job, listen to trees, and fall in love. Structured like a tarot deck, Pink Zombie Rose: Major Arcana is a rhizomatic, genre-defying mashup of queer love stories, Cotard's delusion, anti-capitalist rage, and prose so alive it hurts. Dia reads from "Sweetest Kill", a glitter factory that sells sentiment while poisoning the earth, and we dig into the real history behind the fiction: enclosures, anatomy theaters, and the radical power of simply putting your hands in your pockets and stopping.
We also get into the making of Major Arcana and its collaboration with illustrator Beppi, the confrontational magic of writing in second person, what the Detroit auto industry has to do with the undead, and Dia's upcoming comic project Little Gores.
Guest Links
Dia VanGunten
- Website: diavangunten.com
- Instagram: @pinkzombierose
- BlueSky: @pinkzombierose
- Linktree (all links): linktr.ee/diavangunten
Zombie Book Club Links
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Welcome And Anti‑Capitalist Vibes
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is an anti-capitalist fever dream, but also a tarot deck. I'm Dan and one of my vibing to my fuck I slash anti-capitalist playlist while on the way to pick up groceries. I'm writing a book that also hates capitalism. Uh, but it's taking a really long time to write, and that makes me sad.
SPEAKER_01It makes you sad because you have been indoctrinated to think that you must be productive and things must happen fast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01By capitalism.
SPEAKER_00Be productive. Be productive for capitalism.
Meet Dia Van Gunten And Pink Zombie Rose
SPEAKER_01And I'm Leah, and today we are joined by one of my very first online zombie crushes when we first started this podcast. And I was wondering: is there anything out there other than blockbuster type Brad Pitt stories, which is what I really don't want to be talking about every day? I found Dia Van Gunton, who is the writer and creator of Pink Zombie Rose. And Pink Zombie Rose completely upended every expectation about what I had around what a zombie story could be for the better. Dea is a magical realism writer and the creator of Pink Zombie Rose. I just said that. She is a frequent contributor to literary magazines and anthologies and serves as editor-in-chief of the online arts and culture magazine Crean Scene Carnival. Her writing spans genres and formats, from graphic narratives to essays on culture and identity, and is marked by a blend of incredible magical realism, existential inquiry, and queer perspectives. Welcome, Dia.
SPEAKER_04Hi.
SPEAKER_01I can't believe you're here.
SPEAKER_03Finally.
Ten Years Alone: Craft, Editing, Deleting
SPEAKER_03Speaking of finally, Dan, you know, I worked uh on my on Pink Zombie Rose for 10 years in isolation.
SPEAKER_00I feel that.
SPEAKER_03And then and then and then cracked out with it. And then it's been another four years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it does sometimes take a really long time.
SPEAKER_03It does.
SPEAKER_00It's a little bit relieving to hear that because I know we I know a lot of people that can crank out a book. We have a lot of those. They seem like superhumans. Um but you know, when you when you when you say that you worked for it on uh worked on it for 10 years, it really shows because the your level of writing is uh I mean it it makes me feel like I really need to up my game now. Um my my writing is like first grade level and you're like um Shakespearean.
SPEAKER_01I don't oh more beautiful. I don't love Shakespeare.
SPEAKER_00That's why I don't either. Probably not a good I couldn't bring I couldn't think of anything comparable. You're beyond compare.
SPEAKER_03The garish son of Shakespeare. Uh but I will take better than Shakespeare.
SPEAKER_00Better than Shakespeare. Got it. I'll make sure we put that in my review. Yeah, that's perfect. That's a perfect tombstone right there.
SPEAKER_03Um, so I didn't, you know, it wasn't just the one book over these 14 years. I'd I would say I'm probably four books into the eight. Wow. I felt like I was solidly four, but then I went I went back recently to redo, I'm getting the first one ready for publication, and it is not as not as as solidly done as I thought it was.
SPEAKER_00Um asking for a friend, how many books have you deleted if you added up all the words? That you've deleted.
SPEAKER_01That I've deleted? Yeah, like in your writing, every time you delete a word, how many books do you think there would be if you had not deleted all those words?
SPEAKER_03Oh, um, well, you know, my sister's my developmental editor's always my developmental editor, and she'll come in and just cut whole pages. So, you know, and because the way Google Docs works, like we can double team the document on in real time and like she'll I'll just do this. We got I got really good at like seeing her axe through something and then just hit and delete just reset and move on. I mean, yeah. I highly recommend like having an editor come in in like real time, just cut, cut, cut, you know, you can always go back if you change your mind later, but it's good to get into the habit of just like rolling with an editor.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I I'd be curious to like to uh talk to an editor and see like what things they would have deleted. Um, because like I feel like nobody can beat me on deleting things. Like I go through there with a machete. It's upsetting. It's upsetting to watch deer.
SPEAKER_03Because sometimes I have, and this has happened too with Zoe, she used to get annoyed with me. She would say cut something, and it'd be like a whole section, and then I'd take it instead of just hit accept delete, I'd like take it, cut it, and move it to a little parking spot. Yeah, and then she'd be annoyed, like I told you that to cut that, but then it would show up later in a different chapter, and she'd be like, Oh, this is perfect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Sometimes that does work out like that. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Sometimes you write the thing, you're just writing along, and sometimes your consciousness sort of puts in a paragraph that does not belong there, it belongs in a different chapter or a different story. And you have to get good at recognizing when that happens. The story I read on live last night was an example of that. I saw so many Yeah, I saw so many pieces. As I was reading through, I was like, oh, that belongs. Oh, there goes that. You know, I must have been just really tapping into all these different parts of the story when I was working on that story, because like I that story needs a lot of a lot of m moving of parts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Rapid Fire: Workweek Or Apocalypse
SPEAKER_00Um we have we have some rapid fire questions. We're gonna find out find out who you truly are. Um based on four questions. Uh we we ask most of these questions.
SPEAKER_01These are highly scientific, but we're we're collecting data.
SPEAKER_00Uh you have a choice. Um, so choose wisely. You could choose the 40-hour workweek or the zombie apocalypse.
SPEAKER_02Oh dear.
SPEAKER_00And everybody will die if you choose the zombie apocalypse.
SPEAKER_01But not everybody, but like 99% of humanity will die.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, I would actually this that's a good that's an interesting question for this project. Yeah. Because I would actually argue that the 40-hour work week is the zombie apocalypse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't see that. All right.
SPEAKER_03When the zombie apocalypse is existential in nature as mine is, then yes, this it is the that's where we're at.
Shelf‑Stable Ramen And Survival Roles
SPEAKER_00You get to pick uh one unlimited shelf stable food item that you're going to eat for the rest of your of your life in the apocalypse. It's an unlimited supply. I don't know where you found it. I don't judge. But what is the one thing that you would choose to eat for the rest of your life?
SPEAKER_02Oh boy.
SPEAKER_03Um, so this is actually kind of gonna be an embarrassing answer. But a couple years ago, this is this is autism for you. I just ate like I was a teenager, ramen for the entire year.
SPEAKER_00I think that's a great option.
SPEAKER_03Right, for literally an entire year, every single day. That's what I ate. I ate ramen with the um crisp chili crisp.
SPEAKER_00Did you have a specific uh brand of ramen that you went for?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I was eat I I in fact, I my best friend said, come and watch the dogs for a couple weeks, I'll buy you whatever you want. And I gave her the list. And then she went, she was like, that's unacceptable. So she went and bought me all this like nice gourmet ramen, and then she had we had to make another trip. It was like, I just needed this cheap dollar store ramen, I just needed it simple, I need I needed it easy, I needed to know what I was gonna get. I was just like in that mode at that time, but I had to get I had to wean myself off. But that is something I mean, I don't even like it that much, but it is shelf stable.
SPEAKER_00It is that there's very few things more shelf stable than ramen.
SPEAKER_01And you could totally like forge some great things to go with it if you got tired of it at some point. It's interesting you had to wean yourself off versus like what I what will happen to me is like eating something for a really long time every day, and then there's a point where I can't, which is still not happened with peanut butter toast. I don't know if it will ever happen.
SPEAKER_03I I that usually happens with me too, but I kept waiting for it to happen with ramen, with this ramen obsession, and it just wasn't. And I mean it wasn't even particularly good. It was like I would make it, I would drain it, and then I would put the the chili crisp on it, so it was just the noodles, it wasn't wet, and then I would just eat that every and then at a certain point, you know, my friends started going, like, I don't think this is a good idea. This is like a bad plan.
SPEAKER_02So I got up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I've I've had I've had my fair my fair share of ramen. Um I know the feeling when it's been a while since you've had some ramen, and then you get some ramen, and you're just like, I can eat this for the rest of my life, and then you know, on your third bowl of ramen, you're like, hmm, I should probably stop.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03Except this literally was I mean, it was at least 375 bowls of ramen.
SPEAKER_00I I always had like this idea.
SPEAKER_02I was getting over like a you know, like a crate basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're just getting it by the palate. Well, I think you would do really well in the Brad Pitt zombie apocalypse then, because you could be just you just find your ramen supply.
SPEAKER_03Maybe. You know, I used to always I used to have this friend that played this game called the Apocalypse Game. So we lived in the Midwest, so at and this was like late 90s, the chain restaurants were off the chain. Yeah. And um, they would always have like sleds, like an old washboard, um like these ridiculous objects hanging on the walls. And my friend would play this game where she'd be like, okay, we gotta remember that here at the Applebee's on Reynolds Road, there's a sled.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I see. Yeah, you're you're making notes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and then she'd be like, We gotta remember, Cracker Barrel has a barrel. We'd be like, she'd be like stockpiling in her mind. And then everybody started playing it. They loved it, they'd be like, Okay, we're gonna do this. They'd and they have like it all mapped out, and I would never play. And they were like, Why don't you play the game? It's like so rude that you just sit there and don't play. And I'm like, oh yeah, because I don't intend to serve if I don't like you clearly you people are planning on like marching around, like hauling barrels. There's a sled involved. I mean, this is like an on-put situation, and I think we can all agree I'm like gonna be the first to go down. Yeah, like I'm not gonna make this. I mean, this is this disabled person's part in the resistance, right? It's the same as the disabled person's part in the apocalypse. What what role do we have? Where do we fit in? You know, what can we do? Because this plan, even and I was like in my 20s at the time, and their plan for the apocalypse, I was like, I ain't gonna make that. I'm gonna have an epileptic fit three miles in and then they, you know, were like really annoyed by this idea. Because I I would always say, if the if my plane goes down in the Andes, just eat me first. I volunteer myself because I'm not going to like that. I'm going to be uncomfortable in the end.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I watched the movie. It didn't seem like a good time. No, it did not.
SPEAKER_03But they eventually said, you know what? We've figured out your role. You're gonna be the queen of apocalypse. We're gonna put you in feathers and a crown, and we're gonna uh we're going to pull you on the sledge away. Like you're perfect. And you're the you're hope. And I was like, I I can do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're the storyteller and the artist. Like that's a very important role.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There's so many roles that are like um in in a in the survival community, there's so many roles that don't need to be like the direct action. Like you don't not everybody needs to be a Daryl. Um, but like there needs to be somebody that's like keeping track of the inventory or somebody who's like getting putting a class together so that people know how to do like CPR.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there also needs to be beauty in the world so that there is more of a likelihood that I will want to stick around too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because before Dan, I used to be in your camp 100%. I was like, I'm just like, let's just end this. And uh Dan has convinced me that we could stick around maybe, but there should be no running, because I've been told since I was 16 years old to never run again. No.
SPEAKER_00I don't run, Leah. I ain't running. And no, no running. It sounds like I'm just being tough, but really I'm just not I I'm not fit for it. I'm not gonna make it very far. No. I stand my ground.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that would probably I'd I'd probably have to hunker down with a giant case of ramen and an old typewriter.
SPEAKER_00I love that.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I feel like that's how I get through. And and honestly, that's that's very close to how I'm getting through the current situation.
SPEAKER_01Hunker down with your with your typewriter.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think that's a really important skill, anyways. Like you're you like some people cannot eat the same thing every single day. But if you had a giant case of ramen and you were like you're mental you're mentally stimulated and enjoy the ramen every single day for like an entire month and don't eat anything else, like you're one step ahead of most survivors that like can't eat the same thing every day.
unknownYeah.
Pandemic Lessons And Quiet Joys
SPEAKER_03Oh, I remember when COVID hit and we had the lockdown and everyone was like in such a panic. I was like, this is the best thing that's ever happened. I mean, besides the dying and like the the washing. I mean, I remember washing my Doritos, like a Doritos bag.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, before we knew how things were, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And we still, you know, foamites might have been, we didn't know. So I was like washing it with a sponge and then moving on the can of the next and then the next thing. Um, besides all that anxiety, I I was like, this is, you know, this is like I loved that all my people weren't at work. Yeah, it was like so relaxing to me. I was like, oh, they're not on the road, they're not suffering at jobs, they're like watching TV as God intended.
SPEAKER_00The air pollution went down.
SPEAKER_03I was just like amateurs. You're amateurs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love the introversion aspect of it. Unfortunately, I worked remotely, so there was no no work. There was actually more work for me in the pandemic than like I was working 80 hour weeks. It was terrible.
SPEAKER_03Um I've heard that from you know, my friend was is an electrician and she had it did not stop for her. She was out every day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's rough. But I did love having an excuse to say no to social engagements and not feeling bad about it.
SPEAKER_02Um and everyone was taking art.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I loved it.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it gave us Bo Burnham's album, um, where he sings Jeffrey Bezos in lots of different ways. I love that album. Yeah. Dia, one more question before we get into our specific stuff
Bunker TV: Sense8 And Love Stories
SPEAKER_01for you. It's still a zombie apocalypse, and you happen upon a DVD box set of your choice, and it's going to be the only thing that you can watch the rest of your life. You're hunkered in your bunker and you've got a solar-powered DVD player and TV and one box set. What do you choose? Sensei. Really? Yeah, I like it. That's the first. I've never gotten Sensei. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I wish it was longer.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it would be better if it was longer. Maybe it's not the best choice because it's not long enough, but I freaking love Sensei. Yeah, I love Sensei. And right now I'm I'm really enjoying like heated rivalry.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But Sensei, you know, hits all the points for me. It's it's like that, like that's just my dream. You've got like seven other people to like dance with, sing with, have like telepathic orgies. I mean, what more can you ask for in life? You're you you just you have these buddies from all over the world. You can just check in. So I mean, you know, there's some sci-fi drama going on too. But like that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I think if I was gonna pick out of the two, just because you said he did rivalry. I'm literally wearing a t-shirt right now of uh our buddies Shane and Ilya. That's my level of fandom of heated rivalry. I could just talk about that, but I won't, because there's more important things for today.
SPEAKER_00I actually have one more question.
SPEAKER_03I just didn't do it either, but yeah, I am enjoying it. I will, you know, it's I just re-watched it last night. It was my Valentine's Day thing. And the first time I thought like Shane was really, you know, it was like Ilya was just he was just a pain in the ass. He was and Shane was just like trying to be close, and but you know, Ilya just couldn't get there. And then the second time I'm like, no, no, Shane is like repeatedly the one. I'm interested in that because I'm telling a similar story where it's like they're trying to get there. Yes, it's it's two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, two steps back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I have I have one more question.
SPEAKER_01Um and then we're done the whole interview, JK.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, just no more questions from me. I will question nothing after this one.
Tarot Decks And The Unveiled Tarot
SPEAKER_00So uh your book is you know, it has it has a tarot theme going on. Um so I assume that you were a person who has many decks of tarot cards. Uh I'm not I'm not going to ask you to out yourself and tell us how many. However, my question is uh, you know, it's the zombie apocalypse. You're packing your backpack to go to the safe place. Um there's a safe place, but you gotta pack your backpack and go there, and you only have room for one deck of tarot cards. Which deck are you taking with you into the apocalypse?
SPEAKER_03Okay, so I have um probably a couple hundred decks.
SPEAKER_00I knew it was gonna be a big number.
SPEAKER_03I have probably a couple hundred decks. So, because I've been collecting them since I was a teenager, and then I had a store where we carried them.
SPEAKER_04Oh.
SPEAKER_03So I got to keep every display deck. That's awesome. And it's just like it's my special treat. It's like my little treat. Some people get coffees. I'm like, you know what? I'm having a crappy day, I'm ordering a new deck. Um, right now my favorite is called the Unveiled Tarot. And wait, is that what it's called? That's right. Yes, the unveiled tarot. And part of the reason why I love it is because almost Advent calendar style, it doesn't actually be open, but almost Advent calendar style, it has like, it'll have like the hero font in his like modern priestly garments, but then over his face, showing back so that part of his face is this old like pagan shaman. And every card is kind of like that. Every card, the the person has this other world somehow incorporated, whether they're stepping out of the other world, whether they're facing. So yeah, I just love that because it's like showing that you know, it's it's with with the Hierophon, it's especially interesting because it's like this is not just this one thing, it's also this other thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I'll have to check that one out. I only have maybe four decks. So I got a long way to go in my collection.
SPEAKER_00And I have runes.
SPEAKER_01Oh, actually, well, if I count your volume one, I guess that's five. Yeah, Dan's a rune guy.
SPEAKER_02We don't have the cards yet.
SPEAKER_01It's true, but I will be. Oh, I will when they're available. When that comes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Obviously, if that was done, that would be the deck of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
Origin Of Pink Zombie Rose
SPEAKER_01Uh so for those of our listeners who have not had the joy of reading Pink Zombie Rose of 4, can you give us a little intro to what it is all about?
SPEAKER_03Okay. So when I'll give you, I'll tell you how it started.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um w I was working on a s story about Alexander, the great at the time, of all things. Um, and it was called He Too is Alexander. It was a similar thing because it was about him and his love. And I was working on it obsessively. I woke up one day and uh started Pink Zombie Rose. Just, I mean, literally, it was so strange how it happened. But what had happened was I had been thinking about Qatar's delusion, which is a real life illness that makes people think they're dead. They experience themselves as dead, they think their organs are rotting, they think their people are body snatchers. It can present in different ways, but that's what's happening. And I was just thinking, I have sort of always kind of been judgy of zombie stories. And whenever I'm judgy of something, it's like I gotta figure out my way in that. If I'm judgy, because I think that's true that when you're when you're judgy of someone for being cringe, you're probably hating on something in in yourself or that it's some kind of envy or something. So when I was judgy of zombie novels, I somewhere in the back of my mind, it's like, okay, I guess you're gonna read a zombie novel now that you've done this and been a judgy asshole. And the idea of the Qatars delusion. What if it's rare, but what if it wasn't?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03You know? And in some ways, you know, everyone that sees this story is like, oh, I have it. I think I have it.
SPEAKER_04I've caught the vibe.
SPEAKER_03I think that's because it really is kind of the modern condition, you know, to some extent. Not to the extent we see in the book. I wish I wish it would get there, actually.
SPEAKER_01Tell me more why. Why do you wish it would get there?
SPEAKER_03Um, I mean, I think it's a great wake-up for, you know. I think those kick those the undeads in the book, even though they seem like they're kind of falling away from the world, and so in some ways they are, they're leaving jobs, they're leaving their lives, they're leaving homes, they're leaving partners. But they're like kind of tuning in.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And you know, I think we need that. Like
Cotard’s Delusion As Modern Condition
SPEAKER_03we're not getting there, and we have to get there. We like we absolutely have to.
SPEAKER_01Where's there?
SPEAKER_03Um, you know, to just to the to the to the not 40-hour work week, to the not um like the biggest thing is that our planet is will not sustain us at the rate that we're at.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It just it just simply won't. And I mean, even if we do the right things, we still might not have a chance. But we're definitely gonna not have a chance if we keep going on like we are and we keep letting you know, billionaires own the entire world. Because, you know, it's just not gonna happen. So our our actual very survival depends on getting it together, figuring out a more community care approach to it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that starts with acknowledging that maybe we're all a little dead inside. And why what is the cause of that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and how can we fix this? And what is it, what's it gonna take? And and also recognizing that you're not that we're not alone in this, that this like we're not the center of the world. In fact, we can all fall away, and these trees and rocks and sky and birds might still be here. We're at the disposables in this scenario.
SPEAKER_00When I when I was a kid, I you know, I was kind of just uh witnessing the world around me. And I was I was kind of convinced that what happens when you get older is that you kind of give up on life. Um and that, you know, I I I grew up in a rural area, but not like the quaint like Hallmark town that you know a lot of people think rural life is. There's more like run-down houses and people like peeking through their blinds at you while you walked past on the side of the road. Uh you know, mills that used to employ lots of people shut down, and then those people were kind of just lost and kind of stuck in these houses that they bought um while they had really good jobs, and now they're just kind of scraping by and like life kind of just became like you go to work, you come home and you fill your mouth with whatever food is inside of your refrigerator, and then you watch TV until you go to bed, and then you wake up and you keep on doing it over and over again. And like relationships are just things that you know people found their way together when they were young and they stay together until they hate each other. That was my view of the world is in it, like when you talk about Cotard's condition, like I'm like I feel like delusion. Um I I feel like as as a kid I saw that in everybody around me, and I was terrified of it.
SPEAKER_03Right. I mean, they might not have had you know it clinically, but there's definitely a deadness that and that's what I do in Bing Zombie Rose, I explore many different kinds of deadness. Yeah. And yeah, that's definitely one of them.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03I in some ways they might feel more alive when they get the contagion.
SPEAKER_00I I tuned into some of
Bodies, Enclosures, And Power
SPEAKER_00your uh your live streams early on um when you were reading some stories. And I remember one specifically where you were talking about um uh somebody who worked at some factory running a machine. And um hold on, I wrote I wrote something about it because I'm now involved. He doesn't know what you're gonna read, just so you do. Oh yeah, so this is probably what you're going to read. Lee had already told me, but um Did I? So I'll I'll just spoil it. But no, uh I remember you describing the the person running the machinery and the factory, and like it perfectly perfectly encapsulated how I felt about capitalism and how it instills itself in workers and also almost like self-enforces its own authority within the person that is being subjected by it. Um but also I was really high and I when you were listening when he was listening. So I don't know if that's actually what it was about.
SPEAKER_03Well no, and and I think you might even be talking about we're we are gonna meet Gurley later. You're talking about Gurley.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And we are gonna meet, um, we're gonna meet him later. But you're we're not gonna read the factor that his the parts where he's on the line.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um we're gonna read a different part of his story. But the parts where he's on the line, at one point he says something um like his the hit his hip is smarting, or his his his knee is smarting, uh his bum leg, I think is what he calls it, yeah, is smarting, but he can't go to medical, he can't do anything about it. And then he says, um, it's their leg. Yeah, yeah. It's their leg because they they bummed it, they injured it, they paid for him to go to the doctor to see it, see it, and it's theirs. It's just another part of their capital.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I mean, I think that that's unfortunately far too true. And we'll we'll probably get into that a little bit later, the I the idea of, you know, what the the the taking over of the body that happens w w within the capitalist system and has been happening, I mean, basically since the advent of capitalism, with the you know, go going as far back to the enclosures when they started to take over the land, the common lines, and divide them all up. And suddenly this place where you used to be able to go and hunt a deer or forage some mushrooms, you know, make a broth, make a ramen.
SPEAKER_00Some deer ramen.
SPEAKER_03Right. Suddenly you can't do that anymore because that's some lord's deer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And he might live hundreds of miles away, but it's his deer. And if you get caught with that deer, then you're in the pillory, or worse.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And you know, they just they were literally cutting up the land, and then they were cutting, and then when the people said, wait a second, you're cutting up the land, this is our land, and I mean, and they weren't just cutting up the land and saying you can't hunt here, they were displacing people, yeah, you know, that were had lived there and had been living there, and living there, of course. That's the story of America, as you know.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Um but and and and they're going, but this is the land, and they were cutting it up, they're mapping the land, they're portioning it out to the rich. And if anybody is bucking that, you know, straight to the dungeon for you, yeah, death for you, hanging for you, and then they hang them, and then there'd be riots after the hangings because the peasants, the common people, the rabble, us, would be like, no, you're not gonna do that to their body. They would fight and riot after these hangings to get the the bodies to claim these bodies, because they knew they were gonna do the same thing to the bodies as they had done to the land. In fact, the way they knew it is because they were doing it publicly in these anatomy theaters. And and and the the surgeons would come and the rich would come and gather around and watch. Look, here we're going to take this thieves' heart out of his chest. Here's his heart, everyone. And this would last for days, and they'd feast at night after they watched this. They'd gather in their little rich gatherings, and then they'd come back the next day and see the thief's brain laid out on the table, and and he'd be naked and subjected. And the the people knew this was happening, and that's why they fought for it. But, you know, it wasn't some kind of like, oh, God, it's not right what you're doing to the bodies. It was like, you're doing to the bodies the same thing you've done to the land, you and that in fact they had got they won Dick Turpin in one of these riots. Who would steal from the rich.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't sound too different from what's going on now.
SPEAKER_03No, it doesn't sound scary the same. I really sound scary the same. And they they hung Dick Turpin. I mean, they they hung Dick Turpin. The the crowd fought for him. They got him, they won him, they buried him, and then rumors went around the surgeons came and got him. So they went and dug up Dick Turpin to make sure that he was still there and he was. So then they went, ah, hooray, he's still there. We won. They hoisted dead ass Dick Turpin up on their shoulders and went. I don't know how much alcohol must have been involved in this evening. And carried his body, his corpse, victoriously through London. Look at it. We still have Dick Dead, dead, Dick Turpin.
SPEAKER_00So is this what we need to do?
SPEAKER_03I mean, yeah, on some level, yes, because what what they were doing with the anatomy theaters and the pillaries and the in and the land and the taking of the bodies, it all of that is to alleviate the anxieties of the ruling class.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, probably also to spread fear as well.
SPEAKER_03And that's what they're doing now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And that's why I'm always like, I encourage the whole eat the rich thing. I'm like, yeah, eat them, eat them.
Fear, Healthcare, And Resistance
SPEAKER_03These people have like elaborate conversations about how they should be prepared and how offset their richness. Yeah, they're not gonna be tasty. People always unfollow me, you know, because it's so independent.
SPEAKER_01I'll be follow- I'll follow you for these things.
SPEAKER_03We let them feel some of that anxiety.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because that's what they're doing to us. That they're doing that to us when we're not allowed to have health care. They're doing that to us when they're working us down to the bone. There's they're doing that to us when they're executing us in the streets. What happened to Renee Good? What happened to Alex Prady? That was to alleviate the anxieties of the ruling class, make no mistake about it, and just look at who's in charge, and you can see who he answers to. And he's like, Don't worry, little babies. Little rich people. Yeah. Oh, the whole ice thing, that's all a pageantry to to alleviate that their anxieties.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I hadn't thought about it in exactly that way. Like I knew I mostly thought about it from the point of view of just uh what I've heard the most, which is just like, look over here. Let's focus on these people as the enemy. When obviously I mean, at this point, everybody's the enemy to ice.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01But you know, but the but the racialized aspect of it um and the like who belongs and who doesn't get to belong in America. I always thought it was more about the distraction. I hadn't thought about it from the point of view that it makes rich people feel better to see us afraid.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. They l I mean, and you can see even in the comments that they make. And one of the upstream files recently was like, oh, hey, I've been thinking about your question about how we can get rid of the poor for good. Not I've been thinking about your question to Bill Gates about how we can eradicate poverty.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It was, I've been thinking about your question about how we can eliminate the poor for good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe that is eradicating poverty by by getting rid of the people.
SPEAKER_03Well, but right, but you know, then it like right now here, here in in my part of the country, New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi, crop crops are rotting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So, you know, it's like, but maybe that's part of the plan too.
SPEAKER_01Make us hungry and desperate.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Having recently been unemployed, uh, and seeing how bad it is out there, I know personally, as myself, that I will probably make choices to do things to survive in my job and have less boundaries than I might if I felt like I had safety and security and and how I was going to eat. But I don't. Right. I mean, we're we're doing our homesteading, but like I feel that because I see how many people around me that I personally I've never known so many people who are unemployed at the same time in my life from all different aspects of my life ever. And I see how hard it is that there's there's you know, some people going on two years haven't been able to find something. And so it's like people who have their jobs are now death, we're desperate, we're like afraid. And that's intentional too.
SPEAKER_03For sure. Oh yeah. And and and I mean, I see, because I have a lot of people from all over the world that I talk to, and people are always telling me, I mean, I must hear it, I must hear it at least a dozen times a day. When are you Americans gonna get it together? When are you Americans gonna go out into the street? When are you Americans gonna pull him out of the White House? And it's like, okay, look, here's the deal. We do not have a health insurance, we do not have health care. And those of us that do, it's probably dependent on jobs. Yep. So, sure, let's go out into the street and get at the very best beat down, blinded, traumatic brain injuries, murdered, broken, you know, let or or they're in the middle of the street. Let's do that, and they'll deny us health care right on the spot, even when doctors and EMTs are begging to get to the body.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And because, you know, they don't like how how do you resist a corrupt regime when like just to do that, do the acts of resistance is gonna cost you your job, and that's gonna cost you your health care, and that's gonna cost your kids your health care. I mean, because people are dying over this healthcare issue. And this was happening before ever went to office. So this isn't on him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is this has been going on forever. We've we've we've never had a healthcare system.
SPEAKER_03Right. It's easier for someone in Australia or London to say, why aren't you getting out on the streets?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Also, uh you know, when you have uh an economy that's created such a uh mass of desperate people that need to pay their bills, you know, what what are you gonna do? You know, like you're gonna go on strike, they're gonna replace you. They're gonna replace replace you in a second. And then that person's gonna that person's gonna show up every day because they need the money. They they they're behind on their bills, they haven't paid their rent. They need the health care because they're you know, they've got pre-existing conditions that they have to lie about when they when they sign up for their health care so that they can get the health care. They're like, no, I'm perfectly, perfectly healthy now. Anyways, let me get that health care.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have a friend who was previously unemployed, now isn't employed, and they were just saying to me about how they they're somebody with disabilities, and like they have to pretend that they're like you have to kind of play a game of like, oh, I'm gonna be this most hyper-productive worker, so effective, but they're really just trying to get health care. That's why they're trying to get employment at the end of the day, so that they can do that. And then they're gonna have to disclose, like, oh, I can't actually work the 70-hour work week you expect me to, even though I'm technically paid for 40, because I'll die. Like, literally. So, ugh. Uh I feel like we should we could to we could do the fuck capitalism discussion all day, but I want the lyrical, beautiful poetry of fuck capitalism from you, Dia. Um, this is the first time we're having an author read to us live, but I feel having read out loud the stories to Dan and having listened to your lives, that there is no better way to get an introduction to Pink Zombie Rose if you have not read or heard it yet than to hear it from your voice.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
General Strike And Hands In Pockets
SPEAKER_03But you know what? I do want to say one thing before I start.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So we were talking about what Americans can do. Sorry, my hair has got my lip gloss. Um, we were talking about what Americans can do. And I think that my zombies who have existed a long time before, I really even thought we needed to do this. I th it's they kind of got me there. Um I mean, on some level I must have been there since they popped up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But they kind of got me there. I think that what they do is probably the answer. They just um they ha I mean, basically essentially, because they stopped going to work and they just stopped participating.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's essentially what it is is a general strike.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean that's that's kind of also how um how the the revolution that Gandhi led in India is they just took to the streets, they they were nonviolent, they allowed the police to bash their heads in uh without even raising their hands because they they knew that it was going to happen anyway, but they would they it would it would m morally destroy them if they had to attack people who weren't even holding up their hands to balk them.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's interesting because I don't I think that we don't all need to be in the street to participate in the general strike, though. Like that is that visual, like what's happening where we're seeing in from five different video angles the murder of people like Alex Preda Predi and Renee Good is certainly radicalizing people, which like thank God, and then obviously it's making it very clear the people who are going to just swallow this uh until the very end. But at the same time, like not everybody can be in the street and just just stopping is also really powerful. Just stopping and participating.
SPEAKER_03Right. The working man has so much power, all he has to do is put his hands in his pocket.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think we should use COVID as a model and just go on to lockdown and let the animals take over the streets again for a little while and see. But I understand that's you know, uh, like we were talking about, like Dan was saying, the um someone could, you know, just as easily replace you tomorrow. So it really takes a lot of people to do this.
SPEAKER_00I think I think you're onto something with the hands in the pockets thing because like if you want to measure the anxiety of the ruling class, like we can see it in the headlines. And one thing that really, really got a lot of headlines that like seems like so small was this idea of quiet quitting where people just work their 40 hours and then after that point they're just like I'm I'm not I'm unavailable.
SPEAKER_01Or work less.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, work less. Don't don't strain yourself.
SPEAKER_01You know don't advertise that you're working less, just do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or malicious compliance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if you're stacking the shelves, maybe you just stack those shelves a little bit slower. Maybe it takes you longer.
SPEAKER_03But I do think the drama of just completely putting the hands in the pocket. I mean, take they will this is what they want, they want our bodies, take it back.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But we'll get to some, we'll we'll read uh we'll read some of Gurley here. That's definitely uh Gurley's approach. Not yet. He's caught he's coming to it. Here we go.
Live Reading: “Sweetest Kill”
SPEAKER_03This one, we're gonna read part of this story. Can you guys still hear me? Perfectly. Okay, it's called Sweetest Kill, and it's about a holiday that we celebrate in Ohio called Sweetest Day. And here we go. And this is early on in um Gurley's infection. Uh, he doesn't even really know yet that he's one of the end deads. He hasn't totally figured it out. So sweetest kill, 8 p.m. clock in. The factory is visible from the highway, pulsing neon casts the lot in a pink glow, the felt skirt beneath the Christmas tree, a benevolent UFO, a beating heart a lie. Like a happy birthday and mother's handwriting, the sign's cursive lettering elicits the consumer's obedience. American sentiments, you trust us with your family. Made an America, Heart of Ohio. Affix to the side of a concrete monolith, the sign is on the fritz and newly honest with the dead R. Heat of Ohio. In the dark month of October, the steel door is propped open with a concrete block. In the entrance is a hot, hellish maw, steamy tongues swirl into the night. You'll be sweating bullets. You're down to your last seven bandanas after a fortnight of doubles, and there's been no time for laundry. So you'll have to wring them out during lunch and put them back damp, folding the oversized square into a thick band that you nod at your breast. With a little bow like a toy poodle. That's the nickname. Girly. You fail to see the insult. If something's too tough, it's a cun. If it's weak, it's a pussy, bitch, please. Vagina is a straight up compliment cave at the center of the world. Slippery medium that makes us cosmic egg that hatches this whole haronymous bosch mess. Coworkers can question your masculinity and your sexuality. They can call you girly, Nancy, or Rosie the Riveter. You do not care. They're douches. Useless tools that disturb the balance of a delicate ecosystem. You park in lot A but look b longingly to lot B by the warehouse because dammit you're back on the line. Nearing the entrance you clear your throat, reaching deep into your lungs like a cat leaving a hairball on master's pillow. A hawker left fairly on their doorstep. You've deposited some girly loogies on this slam up slab of concrete, shimmer phlegm like rainbow oil stains. Your lungs sparkle after pulling doubles through the pre mass decades. Even with PPE, your nostrils are crusty and your teeth are gritty. Glitter prickles in your coal and glimmers in the toilet bowl. So you this isn't a um a greeting card factory that uh curly works on that. Six AM lunchtime. You take your dawn at lunch you lunch you take your lunch at dawn as the sun rises over the overpass, cathering the concrete blocks with a queer greenish yellow, a butterscotch candy and an oxidized change purse, glittering the pond that is surrounded on three sides by farmland, and on the fourth this festive factory. Well, you used to think it was a pond, but you were mistaken. It's a collection basin for chemical runoff, pesticides from those neighboring farms, glue, residue, dyes. Now old Picker knows the pond is owned by American sentiments, which you must have figured as much, right? It certainly seemed so by the way the building looms over the cornfields like Emerald City, even the cows blinking pink. The giant neon heart is attached to the model with like a threat. Back then it was romantic. You were raised up just past the sober pass, and it was you who had the bright idea to drag your first love into these fields where you romped and rumped through long ears of corn those voyers. You skinny dipped in the pond, and it seemed like that blinking heart was inside your chest as you held her, entered her, two new lovers surrounded by glowing water and a blue moon. The whole world had bent its upadizen just for just the two of you. Fireflies decorated the pines, the corn was high blocking you from view. Cars from the overpass must have seen, but you laughed at how much they must envy you. Youth, love and wild abandoned magic. Towling off you were pale blue ghosts, and Catherine's poet's soul named it a moonburn. Nah, Cobalt nineteen in Scion seventy seven. You know that now having scrubbed the dyes from your wrists with hard bars of lava soap. You're permanently blued where the gloves end and your sleeves begin. The worst part, the first worst, was just the realization that it wasn't magic. You lost touch with Catherine after school until Facebook came along. She friended you nothing hanky just to say hey. She'd recently reread Bones of the Moon, remembering that summer when you were both sixteen, when you snuck to the pond under cover of darkness. You didn't have the heart to tell her about the moon burns. Seven years later you phoned. She'd been diagnosed with uterine cancer and you felt responsible like you'd driven it into her. You didn't say that, of course, that's gross. You simply told her what you know now about the runoff, and offered to testify on her behalf. She forgave you, she's even willing to forgive the Wizard of Oz. You dial her again and she answers on the first ring. I'm not suing American sentiments, Charlie. Oh come on, you gotta Picker's got all the data I can get you anything your lawyers need. There were very clear, very legible signs, remember? Of course you do. You can't stop thinking about how she cowered before them, private property, no swimming. But that meant nothing to a farm boy like you. Muscular and bright with tan shoulders and a strong back, a strong will. You grew up reading stories about the wild west, arduous journeys in covered wagons and settlers who ate each other one long cold winter. Indians were the villains, though never to you. Land belongs to no one. Private property, no swimming. They were practically begging you to hop a fence and take a dip. The signs should have been more menacing, a radioactive shade of neon orange skull and crossbones. They planted flowers, Dad. I'm not your lefty Lucy whistleblower fantasy. We'll sue them and we'll buy the best doctors. Listen to you, big man. You don't even believe in doctors. It's just another miracle machine. It was a hospital error that left you bereft and yet hope haunts you. Your voice still squeaks with childhood desperation. You're the lapsed Catholic who begs his forsaken God for mercy, or an atheist who drops to his knees at the first hint of impending doom on the off chain. She says money can't fix us, I have money. Catherine's old man grew up in Gross Point, Michigan, a wealthy suburb of Detroit, and they were wed in a Chicago skyscraper. You've seen the Facebook o investment baker, banker, day trader, race car driver. Guy probably wants to build a rocket to Mars. When they first met, Catherine taught kindergarten like Princess Diana, but now she drives the Ren X survival safest car on the market and a red hot commodity rarely seen on the road. Her husband's clearly invested. Of course he'd already sourced the best option, then of course they'd exhausted them. Death is the final frontier, you say, almost flippantly. Not realizing that you've just managed some small miracle, some real solace, which even the race car driver has failed to offer. Well, he m he must be busy, fighting the good fight, battling the insurance company, wheeling and dealing in some mad dash last gasped attempt to keep her here on Earth.
SPEAKER_01While you've already let go of Earth. I was high. Dan was high. Dan has been high every single time I've read something to him. Yeah. Or you've listened. Yeah. Um, and I think that might even be the moment where I wrote you. I don't know, actually, if we'd already had this planned. I think we did. Well, I'd already had it. I mean, I'd had it planned to interview you eventually for literally years until I like started to get to know you and felt comfortable enough to ask. I need to find the episode. It's gotta be like episode two or three, where I was like, there's this thing called Pink Zombie Rose. What is this magic?
SPEAKER_03I love that. And it just goes to show people don't know that I think that's a really good lesson for artists because you don't know that you have oct opportunities out there that are already in the work. Because I didn't know that. You know, when you s when you felt that and you thought that and you said that, I didn't know. I was just like, they're struggling, like, I hope someone likes this.
SPEAKER_01I know I think I'll make it my mission to find you the clip of me losing my mind about discovery.
SPEAKER_03I would love to see it, but you know what? I was the one who suggested.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_03You had commented on something and it was a it was an anti-capitalist post actually. And you had commented, and and then I said, Hey, we should talk about, we should get together sometime. Because I had a feel by then I had started to figure out. No, you know how you're like, who is this?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think maybe that boy likes me. So I was like,
Why It Works Read Aloud
SPEAKER_03are they gonna ask me? Are they gonna ask me? Are they gonna ask me? And then that day the opportunity presented, I was like, we should do uh we should get together and talk about the inherent uh anti-capitalist nature of the zombie. And you were like, We would love that.
SPEAKER_01I have no memory of this because I have the worst.
SPEAKER_03If you get the feeling that something is out there for you, just ask.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, on this podcast, uh, I I feel like we've kind of turned it into a place where we're trying to create opportunities, not just for ourselves, but also for other people. Um, you know, that kind of kind of becomes part of the work. Like the, you know, everybody who starts off in an an endeavor wants to be uh successful in it, of course, but like part of like trying to reach new listeners sometimes feels like that's part of what we owe to people who come on, is like more opportunity for their stuff to be found.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's shyness, right? Because I'm like, obviously, like I said, I've been zombie crushing on Pink Zombie Rose. I didn't even know who you were, Dia, for a long time. I just in fact, in my brain, I call you Pink Zombie Rose Until at some point I was like, wait, they they have a name.
SPEAKER_03Well, I used to keep myself off of it. That's that's part of what was happening with that account. I for the longest time I did just a project. I was just a project. I was pink zombie rose. And then I noticed people started messaging me as pink and and stuff like that. Like, hey pink. Hi, pink. They were still getting to know me through the stories feature. Yeah, because like I mean, never underestimate a meme's ability to um let people know who you are. So I was sharing heavily in stories, so people were kind of getting to know me through that. But I would used to only do the account like it was only Pink Zombie Rose, and my posts were only excerpts from the book or Beppy's art, and I kept it very pure. And then I um opened my account over on I call it I call it the Be ski, but Blue Sky over on Blue Sky. And I was trying to do it the same way, and I realized really quickly like that was not going to work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It was dead in the water, that was just never going. I mean, I I couldn't make that account move. I couldn't do anything with it. Even even as I started to like get follow people and people would follow me back, I still couldn't really gain any traction over there. And I was like, oh, I have I'm gonna have to show up as Dia. Like that's I and I really think you can't make a project page, a project account work effectively there, espe like especially on microblogging sites. Yeah, you have to show up as you. But once I did that, and then it started that account started blowing up and it's like become my biggest account. I was like, okay, well, that's apparently the way it's done. So I just like moved that same method over to all of my accounts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah,
Second Person As The Voice Of The Undead
SPEAKER_01and Instagram is where we mostly hang out. Although one of these days I will wander more seriously over to Blue Sky. But back to your story. Um, I don't even know where to start. It's first of all, can we talk about the choice that you make that prose is poetry? Like listening to your words, they they hold the meaning themselves, like what's the story you're telling? But they're also just on it their own face, beautiful to hear in the way you've strung them together.
SPEAKER_00Which is what I noticed when I was high.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I couldn't string together the entirety of the story and keep it fresh in my brain. I'm like, I am enjoying all of these words when they come. That's uh that's how high I was. I was not you weren't retaining. Yeah, I was not retaining. That's fine.
SPEAKER_02They were probably written by someone who was high.
SPEAKER_01Same wavelength. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Let's be perfectly honest. Uh but I think, and I told you this yesterday, I think that probably it was written to be read aloud. Like, and I don't, I'm not, you know, I'm not totally sure I s I fully got that myself until I started doing the lives and reading it uh regularly on the lives. And people that weren't couldn't connect with it before, they they disliked my account, they liked the stories feature, but they didn't really care about anything that I was sharing about the project at all. Yeah. Started going, oh, wait a second. It just hits differently, I think.
SPEAKER_01What do you think that is? Like, what is the magic of hearing it? Um spell work.
SPEAKER_00I think part of it's also your delivery of it because like uh like the way that you read your story sounds like the voice of the story. Like it sound like it has a like a genuine delivery that like if if there was an audiobook, I would be getting that and it would be on in my ears. Um which of course the the the gets rid of half of the experience of your book, which is the visual format.
SPEAKER_03Uh because there's there's it's it's uh I guess I guess is it a graphic novel or well I don't know if I would call it a graphic novel because it's a c the uh this particular book, Pink Zombie Rose Major Arcana One, um is a collection of stories that have been pulled from the novels.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it doesn't, you know, read like a novel with its you know, perfect acts. It doesn't stay with A ton. I mean the novels stay with A ton. Yeah. Adam and Angie.
SPEAKER_00I'd I'd also no notice that like this is uh I mean it it alternates because there's like a main story that's going on with with Aton and uh and Adam, but there's also these um in-between stories that are more related to the tarot cards that you're illustrating in these in these books, which are second person. And I haven't really read a whole lot of second person stories, so you know, imagine my high brain trying to comprehend what's happening. I'm like, why does this sound different?
unknownDamn.
SPEAKER_00And then I'm like, who is talking?
SPEAKER_01Let's get into that because I would love for you to share why you choose second person for some parts of it and not others.
SPEAKER_03So right, so the the third person characters, that's that's um, that's Aton, Angie, Adam, Eric, Shane. Um they in theory are the uninfected. So theory.
SPEAKER_01Oh, interesting. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Uh well, and I say that because like just yesterday we read a uh a story called Petite Mort. I'm lives for Valentine's Day, and it was a it was an Angie story, but she was in second person. So right there it's like, what the heck is Angie doing in second person? Well, the story was called Petite Mort. Little death. The fun ones just a little a little passing death. Um but yeah, you know, if if if it were to happen where suddenly we started instead of getting those main characters, if you were just reading the novel and and instead of it being A ton this and A ton that, it's you you well uh oh. Uh-oh. Something's going on. You know, and and maybe it's like a passing thing, or maybe it's this or that. But what yeah, the the the you you you, that's when the the they're in an undead state. So you can always tell whether you're with a um and an un like I said, there's different kinds of undead states, but you know, that you is um is generally almost always 99% an immediate sign that that character is an undead and isn't has been has to contagion.
SPEAKER_01It also has the function of of when you read from the second perspective, like putting you in it the body too. Right, you're the undead. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it it it allows, and I don't I don't think I necessarily saw this coming, but it really allows for you to get a little rough with the characters.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, like in that that piece that I read aloud with um uh girlie, at one point it goes, listen to you, big man. You you you're gonna, you know, you you you're gonna go down, you're gonna tear the hospital apart, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. No, you're not. You're gonna stay on the loan like you do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's weirdly much more um more honest of uh like an internal monologue. Because a lot, you know, when you get somebody's internal monologue, you get what they think about themselves and how they perceive the situation, whereas like in second person, you're getting somebody that knows this person inside and out, and they're just gonna roast them. They're they're gonna roast girly in in all the in all the most honest ways. They're gonna tell girly how it is instead of how girly sees it.
SPEAKER_03Right. Like you did this, you failed here, you messed up here, you didn't have enough courage here. You think that you're this person, but you're not, you're this person. But then at the same time, well, we also get to see a lot. I mean, I think through his various stories, we can come to love him. So, you know, there's a lot, there's love in it too. Um one of the reviewers, the poet Emily Emily Galindo said something like, I think she
Banned Pieces, Hyenas, And Mythic Gore
SPEAKER_03called it the the confronting you. She was like, This is not a passive you, this is a confronting, like, get your shit together, you, like we do. I think she might have called it Brett Breton-esque or something. I can't remember the exact words, but I've kind of gotten addicted to writing like that. I have occasionally I'll be like writing uh one of the other characters and I'll find myself doing that. And then I'll be like, wait a second, are they infected? No, I just I'm just addicted to it. Because there's something really liberating and fun about writing those untets. Because you just like you don't owe the character anything, you're allowed to rough them off, but you come. I mean, it's like who who exactly is is saying all of this?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03I don't really know. Is it like some you know, god like shaman-like character? Sometimes I think it's the world, the natural world. This is definitely having the trees tell you you're a piece of sharp.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, if the trees told me I was a piece of shit, I would have the deepest crisis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, they are.
SPEAKER_00You know, it kind of goes along really well with the whole um tarot theme because like in in tarot, it's like the magic is telling you.
SPEAKER_01And it's very confronting, let me tell you. In fact, there's lots of times where I'm like, you know what I'm not gonna do is consult the tarot because I don't want to have my ass handed to me today.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01I don't actually want to know. So like let's not, let's yeah, let's not, I don't want to see the tower today. Like, I I know, I know, I don't want it.
SPEAKER_00I I feel like it could be a really good like exercise for a writer. Like it regardless of how they're writing their story, it might be worth it for them to just write in the second person about their character, a lot like in your book, how you write about your characters, like because they're they're gonna tell you you're going to confront your character and know exactly who they are instead of who they say they are.
SPEAKER_01But they also can't be I because they're dead.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03They're separating from that. Yeah. They're separated from that, the cohesion of the uh the societal cohesion, the societal rules. So they don't really identify as an I. And then their names, you know, the third person, like Eton this, Anji that, you know, doesn't work for them either. And that's sort of how I caught I came to it. But then the first story that I ever did is one that has gotten me banned from several minutes. The worst undead that I ever did. And then I and it was almost like a complete run-on sentence, and it went, it would, and it's a female character, and you don't even realize till like three-fourths of the way in that she's female. That's the other thing that you allows you to do. Yeah. You I mean, you do not know that this is a female character until like three-fourths of the way in. And then she starts to get really like she talks about having a porn addict. I mean, she doesn't talk about it.
SPEAKER_01They don't talk about a porn addiction.
SPEAKER_04You have a porn addiction. So the problem is, the trees are informing you.
SPEAKER_01The trees who can see you through the windows are telling you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think people, part of the reason, I mean, it does go some dark places, that's the first undead. Um, it's called uh body without organs. But the the that first one kind of like a lat, I was like, oh, oh wow, this is interesting. And then when it did the thing with the the the porn addiction thing and the dark places that it went, I really think if it had been not a woman, they people wouldn't have had as much of a problem with that care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's probably the truth. Because I I I do remember when you were like you were talking about that on a on a live stream. Um, and I think you read it. And the whole time I'm just like, how these people are missing out. Like this is this is no reason to be banned from a magazine. This this is quality writing.
SPEAKER_03I'm doubt I read body body uh body without organs on the law. I mean, I might. I I can't.
SPEAKER_00I was high, so who knows?
SPEAKER_03It does go some some pretty dark places. Uh maybe maybe I read it in a and um and gave it a little gave it a little snip snip here and there to get to keep the to keep the the the the more um but I have shared it on the uh you know at one point in that story, because that's the other cool thing about the undeads, you can have And like go to all different places and times. And she ends up um wandering into ancient Persia because she's trying to get rid of her organs. So she's like gonna give her lungs to a hyena to eat. But the hyena is ancient, he doesn't know anything about the internet. He's not prepared for it. And it's and it says something like, um, oh, I wish I had it. Wish I had it all pulled up. Well, you guys can edit it, right? If I find it. So here we go. Three times you've thrown your gallbladder into the Detroit River, floating in a pot bottle with a cat that could have won someone $10,000 if they'd bothered to look on the underside before tossing it out the window of a speeding car. It's too late for you because money means nothing to the dead. So you liquefy yourself from the inside and pee your gallbladder into a bottle and you whoop as it swept into the current flowing away from you. But you find yourself downriver with a scarred gallbladder because the cat is alive or not, no one is sure until they open the box. But the cat comes back the very next day. So you strap your gallbladder to a cement block and you practically come when it sinks into the muck. You're sure he's a goner, but the cat comes back as stinking cludge on the inside of a washed up tire, which you roll down the road for three miles and throw from a bridge, but he just can't stay away. The cat keeps remembering himself. You're the guy nailed to the rock. You got an evil eagle that pecks at your liver. But as soon as the sun rises, the liver grows back for a new peck peck peck peck peck reck reck peck peck peck punk punk. Or maybe you're the other guy with the rock. All he does in life is push the rock up a hill, but always at the top, the rock rolls back, falls over him, and he's flat like wily coyote on the asphalt, but as he peels up like a caliform and he gets back at it one breath to the next, you roll in boulders. The lungs have to go those phlegm flex stones, so you travel back to the deserts of Persia before Christ, since you're getting good at dead, and you must surmise that time is absolute utter nonsense. So you walk the ancient desert until you come upon the hyena, but before you can feed the animal your lungs, first you gotta earn its trust, because the beast is skittish
Nonlinear Form, Art, And Tarot
SPEAKER_03and it knows all about magic, so it's not falling for the old lungs trick. It's not looking to breathe the future. It would die a smog right away, or worse be infected with a computer virus, and you know this, but you don't care because you're desperate to unload these lungs. Poor hyena has had enough trouble with the Greeks who want to skin him or eat his eyeballs or turn his anus into a pouch for amulets, but he likes you. Hyana knows a hyena knows a corpse when he sees one. So hyena comes to trust you once you claw at your own derma and rip at your rigs, ribs and hand feed him the meat, though you've been wasting. So it's not much, but it's the thought that counts. The future is hard on the hyena, you knew it would be, but you weren't expecting it to be so gory. The hyena's seizing and rattling with such velocity, such technology that his brain melts and drips out of his nostrils like hot lava, and the hyena's vomiting blood and microplastics and a Valerian sword engraved with glittering glyphs and the sixteenth season of Gilmore Girls, and the hyena has alpha about now, so it screams in seven hundred languages. Siri, Siri, how could you do this to me? Siri, order the dish soap. Siri, we don't care if it comes in Russian doll boxes from Amazon. Oh God, Siri, that feels good. Siri spit in my mouth, sit on my face, Siri. The hyena moans ecstatically, swells, bulges like a python, and explodes in a goo of oily ducklings born of mind mountains who quack, quack, quack in algebraic madness. You gather bits of hyena skin, each shred of striped fur in a coshic record. Only the hyena is whole again, back for more suffering, esophagus blocked with a crossways ship, a violent death, electric spasms.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was my 2007, basically.
SPEAKER_01Oh, shout out to Gilmore Girls.
SPEAKER_03I don't even know if it got 16 seasons, but I just thought it was funny. I think it did.
SPEAKER_01I never even bothered to find out the Well, it's great. I mean, it's so again, like the sound. I think you have an intuitive sense of like 16 seasons. It's just Right. I needed I needed sounds about right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It feels like how long Gilmore Girls went on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Sometimes listening to you feels like being punched in the face, but I want you to punch me again.
SPEAKER_03But you know, sometimes I do want it to feel like that, and sometimes I want it to feel like a campfire. So I I kind of like aim for both.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, that was that's too much for the magazine, huh?
SPEAKER_03Well, it probably was a different part.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna be real.
SPEAKER_00No, I think they missed out. I think they didn't they they couldn't see it. They couldn't see the greatness of it. Or just afraid of being too out there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Actually, the the um experimental journal for NYU wanted it. The editor wanted it and fought for it. And then I got a message saying that he had resigned.
SPEAKER_00Oh I mean that's that's how powerful it was. That's how powerful it was. The the editor was just like, like, this is the hill I die on. And then they're like, You're dead. Get out of here. You're done.
SPEAKER_03He was a senior, so I at least feel okay about it. He was already, but yeah, it was it was like a sticking point. But they took another piece, so I still because he it had been accepted and then it was unaccepted. I still got to see it in the journal. So I was that's good.
SPEAKER_01I mean, experimental is the word, and I I like that you call it well, you call it magical surrealism. Is that right?
SPEAKER_03Oh, well, I call it magical realism.
SPEAKER_01Magical realism, sorry. Yeah. Um, because it feels like more than just the zombies that are in your stories are a commentary on capitalism, uh, but also the choice to be nonlinear. Like there's no there's no page numbers in Pink Zombie Rose Volume 1, Major Arcana. Which is a choice. I know that.
SPEAKER_00No, you can pick it up anywhere you want to. No, there's no page numbers. You gotta start at the beginning and end at the end. You can't can't stop anywhere. You're committed to for the whole afternoon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but why do you like to play with time? Um gosh, that's a good question.
SPEAKER_03I don't know, you know, ta time is kind of like it's it's sort of the the the goo that we're all in, you know. And then and then and and it's always sort of like a mystery, like whether, you know, it depends on on how you think of time, you know. Like our do you think of it like Henri Bergson thinks of it, that it's everything's always sort of happening, that you know, we we have this awareness of it. I mean, I know the undeads definitely get to unhinge from that mechanism and go back and, you know, and then they but then like on the story I read last night, Angie was saying, because she kept going back to childhood and she kept saying, like, this is not fair. I want to be in Valentine's Day weekend with my man. I'm having a good weekend, just let me stay here. And I think a lot of them do feel that way when that they're in that state. Of course, hers was temporary.
SPEAKER_01Let's be clear. Well, you mentioned Angie, and we've talked a little bit around Angie, A ton, and Atom, but I would love if you would just tell us a little bit about who these characters are and how they weave in and out of the first volume and why.
SPEAKER_03So the the I would consider like them the very most main characters to be Akon and Adam. And I s it could probably be argued that it's Aton.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with that. But most people seem to think it's A ton.
SPEAKER_01I just love Angie, so I'm sh I'm shoving it in because I really want her mosaic stairs.
SPEAKER_03They all get POVs. So I consider especially the that top five, Aton, Aton, Adam, Angie, Shane, and Eric to be to be the core, to be the core. But Eric, because Eric's black, all everything that we publish of Eric has to go through like multiple rounds of sensitivity readers. So I don't get to do him, I don't get to publish him as much just because it's a lot, you know, it's a different process. But the twins are Aitan and Adam, and then they for kind of the not kind of, for basically the first time in their lives, they are trying to have love, you know. And it just so happens to be coinciding with this crisis. They're, you know, they they have just so happened to like meet the their people at right the same time. And you know, Adam at one point in in Major Arcana One in the story, Just a Brother, says, Okay, let's do it. Like it has already moved into the house with Angie. So apparently he's decided to do it. But Adam's like, Well, I will I will give you permission. Let's do this, and you know, let's actually do it. I finally met someone and I actually like him. And he likes me. Let's do it. And then he says, It's experiment, it
Project Pages Vs Showing Up As You
SPEAKER_03it's an experiential thing, it's like a drug, you know, because they have they they take this sort of like um psychonaut uh experiment approach, but you know, whatever gets you there. But yeah, I mean, at its heart, it's a love story. These these core characters are trying to figure out love. They're still in society, they're still, you know, at going to the jobs, they're still like trying to make their little lives work. And then that's contrasted with the undeads who are like, I'm out of here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and a couple of them are trying to solve Cotard's delusion. Which it's interesting that you say that they're yeah, Dr. Aton Verne. I don't know if you said they're twins, just for anybody who's listening to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they're identical, Aton and Adam.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh and I think it's interesting to hear you say that the core of the story is about them figuring out love while they're also trying to solve the undead. There's something there.
SPEAKER_00Right. Well, I mean, you know, it kind of reminds me of like my vision of what life was like as an adult, is like I don't feel like the adults around me really had like true love. I think that they were together. I think that they had jobs and they bought houses. But uh I like it's hard for me to look at the adults that were in my life and be like, oh yeah, those people are in love. And I feel like I didn't really understand what it felt like to be alive until I found love with Leah who uh you know, it felt it felt alive, like it felt like maybe I wasn't going to spend my life just going through the motions and just like waiting to die. And maybe that's that's the uh the difference between the characters who are alive in your book and the ones that are not is that they are they are feeling love and they're open to it and they're open to living. Whereas maybe the people who are dead aren't open to living anymore and too much too much bad has happened, or maybe just too much has like worn them thin or damaged them to the point where they're just done.
SPEAKER_01Again, it's the context. Like I think about when I hear you talk about your childhood and your picturing of adulthood, like it's the context those adults were living in, which was awful, right? They're sort they're just surviving.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You grew up in like a pretty impoverished part of New York. Your family didn't have money, you're just trying to get by. You're living on these scripts of what you're supposed to do, but they don't actually love each other. Um But I'd love to hear what your your reactions to what Dan said, do you?
SPEAKER_03Well, I you know, I think that that's true, but I do think that the in some ways in some ways the undeads are more alive because they're tapping into the larger world of of life. They're more they're more aware of how much living is happening that is being ignored. Yeah, that's good. They are aware of like the organic sounds of you know the world.
Love, Twins, And The Contagion Of Enlightenment
SPEAKER_03And so are Acon and Adam to some extent because of some experiences that they had in childhood. So they sort of, you know, Aton has some understanding of what the the undeads are experiencing. Um but when he at the beginning of the story, because because Major Arcana's a collection, so it that's pulled from different places, but at the beginning of the of the actual novels, novel one, Aton doesn't have Angie yet. He he uh may or may not know she exists, but he has not like met her, he's not living with her, he's not trying to do that. In fact, he's trying to avoid doing it. He's like actively, she's searching for him. She's like, who is this man that I keep dreaming about? Where is he? Like, she's very aware, she's trying to reel him in, and he's like trying to do anything to avoid being reeled in, because then he's gonna have to show up. Yeah, and he's gonna have to come alive, and he's gonna have, you know, and he's not an undead at the beginning of the book, but he very much is in that mindset. And as he starts to to live with Angie, um, people in his life are going, like at one point, Eric says, you know, you walked in here as King Zombie, and now you're like, got the spring in your step. You're like more alive than you've ever been. And of course, that's you know, him trying to do this, and he has like setbacks where he retracts again, you know. But yeah, I think he's he's trying to get more alive through love. And then the zombies are sort of leaving love, but they're connecting with the past, they're connecting with the organic world, they're so you know, it's like two different sort of the the the the the undeads, I would call it a contagion of enlightenment. So what you were saying earlier about magic, and you were like, I don't want to talk, I don't want to hear what the tarot cards have to say today. Like that's sort sort sort of it, you know, like enlightenment is hard, it's painful, it's you know, not gonna be easy, and it's gonna be dark at times.
SPEAKER_01Do your zombies, your undeads, have the power to uh eat all the rich?
SPEAKER_03You know, they don't eat people. They don't eat people, but they do at one point eat them all.
SPEAKER_01The place we go to, the mall?
SPEAKER_03Yes, the mall. They surround the mall, and then at one point they just start like chipping off little bits of the mall. Wow.
SPEAKER_00So they eat a building.
SPEAKER_03They eat a building. They start to eat a building, yes. And it's and it's not like, oh my god, we can't have that. That's a that's a terrible health crisis. Yeah, but they choose like so many things in trying to take care of them that he can't foresee in eating them all as well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's not true.
SPEAKER_03They don't know of course, like what are they doing with the mall? Because they don't threaten people, they just surround it. They surround all the malls, even the malls that are no longer malls that are closed down. Toledo has a lot of what we call zombie malls.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03They even gather around those those malls.
SPEAKER_01They're called zombie malls.
SPEAKER_02They're actually called zombie malls.
SPEAKER_01Say more about zombie malls.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I had to bring the malls into the story. I couldn't read this.
SPEAKER_01So these are malls that have been like abandoned?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I didn't come up with that for malls that are like abandoned or that are like so cold like barely functioning.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, we've all been in those. Like where we go in, you're like, okay, everything's closed here. Maybe I'll get a hot pretzel over there. Okay, well, maybe not.
SPEAKER_00Am I gonna get robbed at the NEMs?
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Are you um are you a fan of Dawn of the Dead, the movie? Have you seen it?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Wait, Dawn of the Dead? Dawn of the Dead, yeah. Yes, I love Dawn of the Dead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it just connects for me about the commentary around consumerism um with what you're doing and where things come from and the like illusion of them, like American sentiments, just going back to that story, um, won't name the potentially comparable company that I'm thinking of. But anyways, American sentiments is glitter and it's supposed to be love, uh, but it's actually at its source is death and suffering. People, yeah. Yeah. And you where do you go? You go to buy it at the mall. I don't know. I like like your stories, I feel like some of the revelations and insights I have are not easy for me to articulate. Well, that's good. For like a conversation on a podcast. I'm like, how do I even like say what I'm feeling? It is good. I think when we're beyond words a little bit, something is something is uh stretching inside.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I I think and I I think also the the the the rhythm of it, the poetry of it, because that is so ancient to us. And then also, you know, just the the the those themes talking about time and talking about our our organs, like, oh God, let me get rid of this freaking lungs. What can I do with it? Where can I, you know? Um sometimes I'm like over the top. I I bring so many like different things that I'm into, like of metaphysics and mysticism and philosophy. But I'm like, just let it all be in there and people can take what they want. And you know, in that sense, it's not a successful novel, you know, in terms in terms of like, like you said, being linear and staying on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I had uh someone ask me actually on Instagram, I was gonna read this because I had shared that we were gonna be talking to you, and um, let me just find it briefly here, and they were like, What is this? Um okay, so I had read written, uh, because this is how I feel about your work, Pink Zombie Rose, Volume 1 is one of the most beautiful and surprising things I've ever read. It's like being inside a series of other people's dreams, but they're all somehow connected, and some of them are undead, not in the way you expect, though. And so I posted that, and uh one of one of the most voracious zombie readers I know was like, oh, what is this? But they're they're reading the linear, it's the zombie apocalypse, there's a love story, it's very like it's very much in the tradition of like a typical Zori or Zori story. Zori story, zombie story, and they're like, What's this book? And I said, throw away every expectation of what you think it is. And then you get Pink Zombie Rose. Uh, it really does feel like reading a dream is not linear, where the prose is absolutely beautiful and it has really deep feeling. I really struggle to describe it, but you can pick it up and anywhere will be meaningful. And she was like, sold. But I think it's
Zombies Who Eat The Mall
SPEAKER_01important that people know when they come into Pink Zombie Rose to let go of expectation.
SPEAKER_03Right. Right. I would agree with that. And one of my beta readers actually gave us, she went into the reviews for Goodreads, and she was like, Look, here's the deal. If it's second person, you're with the infection. And she was like, and don't expect it and don't try to figure it out. Let it be a game, let it be like a toy.
SPEAKER_01Let it be an experience that's like very un.
SPEAKER_03Like she was like, just let it, just let it happen to you. And like, you know, I was like, hey, thank you for that. That was like a really helpful review because she she sort of gave people a manual for how to read it and how to enjoy it. But I think it can be enjoyed on, you know, Dan was saying earlier about how the reading aloud takes half of the part because it's the art out. But, you know, a lot of us we learn to read aloud from picture books. Our main experience of reading aloud is from picture books. So I think you can still do it that way. And I have I I have people, that's why a lot of times if I'm reading um a piece from Major Arcana, I'll announce ahead of time. So because some people want to have their little book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Look at all the art. When did you know that there had to be art?
SPEAKER_03Um, so I was a pretty deep into the project actually. I um had just started, this was uh I had just started, it was early 2022 and no, I mean mid-2022, and I just started to try to pull some of these because I still didn't know if anyone would be interested in in into this, what I was doing. So I started to like pull chapters out and submit them to magazines as stories, which you know that's kind of frowned on. I don't necessarily recommend that, but I was so far out of the scene that I didn't well, I didn't fully know it was frowned on, although some mags would literally say, do not do this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I'd be like, eh, I'll have them do it anyway.
SPEAKER_01I don't take you as a rule follower.
SPEAKER_03No, right, exactly. So I just started like sending all of these stories out there. And then um uh I sent it to open source out of Berlin, who we're serialized with now. But so I sent it to Mars Sappler. Open source and Mars Sappler was the fiction editor, and they wrote me back and said, This is crazy. I don't even know what what this is or wow, what to think of it or how to feel of it, except I love it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03Want it. Let's let's like let let's do this. And then it wasn't even I don't think it was even by the end that we knew. I mean, I think before the first issue was already out, we already knew I was gonna be serial it was going
How The Art Happened And Collaboration
SPEAKER_03to be serial there. But one time in the middle of the night, it was probably day for Mars, um I sent this letter that she sent this letter that said, um, you do know you've written a graphic novel, right? Interesting. You do know you're writing a comic book, right? Maybe you don't know that, but you should probably know that. And and um they were like oh I might have some friends who would be interested in it. Let me ask around and I was just pretty much immediately like I don't need to ask around. I don't need to look anywhere. I know who that artist is and I just took it right on over to Beppy and said apparently I'm writing perfect novel.
SPEAKER_01And who was Bepi to you at the time?
SPEAKER_03Um so I'd known Bepi for years like I'd probably I had probably known Beppy for like 20 years at that time. And I was a huge fan. I actually had seen Beppy in a newspaper like way back late 90s and an Austin newspaper her one of her comics was in it. And I won I was like oh this is amazing and I was trying to put together a um body pause fashion magazine at the time and I reached out to her would you be willing to do because she knows she does these really like curvy you know chubby faced girls and stuff would you be willing to do a comic for this magazine that would be in every issue she said she would love to and then that project didn't get off the ground surprise surprise about making fashion magazines just like prohibitively expensive. Yeah and I wasn't online minded about it. You know I think I should have been more creative and went and took it online because I had so much done in it. But then um she did one of my Frida stories she did a story about Frida Kalo almost right away we we like fussed around with collabing and then we didn't collab again for like two decades until I took um Pink Zombie Rose to her and said hear this and then she said okay well let me take a look I mean it all happened really quickly. And the same thing's happening with little gores. Yeah tell us about your little gores because I've been following that online by the way well I call for years I had to go to speech therapy because for one word well actually Kellers is the other one and I still want to spread it out. I just refuse I'm like no Kellars it's Kellars um but yeah I had to go to speech therapy for girl and I just I mean I just w I remember like fighting not wanting to give that up and then like explaining to me no you can't use that word for girl because it actually means this and me being like well that works me from it at all like it still totally fits. So yeah for years people would be like are you uh oh you're a pretty little girl and I'd be like I'm a gore I love it I'm a gore yeah like I just and finally finally I relented but in I it's it's always like stayed with me inside my head I'm still a gore.
SPEAKER_01Does that connect in any way with your story of girly?
SPEAKER_03That's interesting because I had never actually put it together but there's probably something to that girly and I actually have the the gore story at at one point uh Angie and I'm probably gonna take it from her now because I'm getting I'm using it for this other thing but Angie says I used to I for years never couldn't say girl I only said gore and Eton says well that's it it fits. And then she's like I like you have this like understanding um but yeah so that's where that's the story behind the little gores but it was kind of perfect. It's like it's almost like little kid me knew this project was coming or something.
SPEAKER_01And what is it like in a nutshell what would you say little gores?
SPEAKER_03So so uh in a nutshell it's my stories from my childhood. So in a sense it's a memoir but give us swords. Give us kung fu give us kung fu. Give us like because we you know it's these stories that were um we were so just like enclosed by the adults and the adults were not they did not have their shit together. They were really a chaotic you know element surrounding us at best at best they were chaos or misery like Dan described you know like I only knew one woman and that was my grandma Lynn who was who who didn't have like some kind of fear element going on with her partner. Wow and I mean and that includes my mother and that's I love my dad I'm a huge daddy's girl but that unfortunately does include my mother. Yeah sad to say you know where did like where the fights got too ramped up or um there was you know if I don't do this I'll get cheated on or if I don't you know or will he come home drunk or what you know like just the fear but my grandma ran the show. So she didn't have that same fear. It's amazing you had that alternative vision though in your grandma oh yeah I remember looking at her life when I was little and being like I I'm going to choose someone just like my grandpa like nicest guy in the room that's gonna be what I do. I knew I knew what she had done as opposed to what other people had done and she had chosen like kindness above all things kindness above charisma kindness above kind just kindness top of the and that's because I think she had an you know she had an abusive death. Yeah that makes sense but in Little Gores they're very you know this is all happening all this adult chaos is happening and the first scene the first comic actually is going to be a story from my childhood where I w a neighbor called me over I went over I talked to him and he was wearing like two short nylon shorts and like one testicle just now like he's there on his cement soup just sitting having a morning he's just chatting away at me and that testicle is there and I just like didn't say anything. I I didn't know anybody you're talking about how old were you? Oh I was probably about seven. Yeah I mean what are you but I mean I knew what a testicle was because I was an old kid like I'd had spent many so it was certainly not my first testicle um but I also didn't I wasn't sure that he knew and I didn't want to tell him because if he didn't know what he doesn't know won't hurt us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah us.
SPEAKER_03Right us and if he does know fuck you I'm not gonna I'm not gonna engage with testicles in any way I'm just going to have this conversation like it's completely normal for your testicle to be sticking out of the shorts and in that conversation he asked me to go to the mud hens game the Toledo Mud Hens game. I went home I told my mom oh he said that I could go to the Mudhens
Little Gores: Memoir With Swords
SPEAKER_03game with him and his son and his nut was hanging out and mom was like there ain't no way there ain't no way he didn't know that nut was hanging out oh my god she was like so pissed off but she allowed me to go to the mudheads for you that is indeed chaotic I'd had a marvelous time at the mud okay good I'm glad nothing horrible happened and it was actually funny that particular person and that particular thing never went south but that's how Little Gores opens and they're just like they're just like how I was alone in real life but in in in Little Gores it's it the story opens with the two girls just sitting there with their 10 speeds having the conversation with the neighbor and he in in this one I like made him rant and angry at an ex-wife so there's the nut the throbbing nut the the the the anger and the rage and um they're just like it's almost like the rage the the adult drama of him being mad at his ex-wife is more burdensome to him to them than this like errant testicle that because that's when they finally cut off the conversation I mean those little details though at any time the testicle doesn't make them wheel away but when he starts raging they're like okay we gotta go and he just yells after them amiably bring me a sundae I got money he's just run these children off and then he's like oh bring me a sundae I got money and then once they as they start to be alone the palate deepens and becomes jewel tones instead of like washed out Polaroid pastel ladies colors it becomes deep jewel tones kung fu colors and they say to each other if we'd had our swords we could have lopped that nut clean hell yeah it was right little gorgeous it was right there for the taking and then they start to practice and have this kung fu spar and then later they get in a fight a kung fu fight a street fight with the boys from the neighborhood and um but then the street lights come on boom and the fight everybody's disbands go home.
SPEAKER_01Gotta get back before um sadly this conversation I hope it's the first of many Dia needs to come to a close but I'm curious if there's anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to make sure that that you shared today.
SPEAKER_03No I think we just about covered it looks you'll probably have some stuff to edit out in fact that's every episode that's a lot of me usually I'm the one that Dave has to work on. But the nut story stays in oh absolutely all the stories stay in oh I guess I probably should say about the Little Gores project is that we it it started it just conceptualized not even that long ago a month ago and then I started sharing it in progress and then I got the artist the artist came on hexathon out of Minneapolis. Yeah their art is super cool looking too isn't it oh it's amazing just so kinetic does these fight scenes is very surreal and psychedelic and so yeah that's a that that collaboration is exciting and that happened so easily and perfectly a lot like the Beppy thing that's usually a good sign that you're on the right track when things just boom boom boom boom boom fall into place.
SPEAKER_01Yes life has shown me that too or when everything's falling apart that usually is a good sign. You just don't know it right that's the tower card you're gonna get remade. Yeah uh well folks can find you on blue sky uh definitely check that out I need to be on blue sky more pink zombie rose and the van gun you can probably find me either way anywhere that you are uh and where can where can we expect or when can we expect those those decks tarot decks and volume two for Pink Zombie Rose.
SPEAKER_03I'm not totally sure on that actually that's okay when it when it's meant to come back up over above the surface right yeah yeah both Puppy and I had some we both had a rough year and there was a lot of like deaths in the family and so we're just sorry but it's still there it's it's it'll it's coming.
SPEAKER_01Volume two is actually almost all done so it'll come I mean it speaking of rhizomatic it'll come up yeah when it needs to come up um and in the meantime I look forward to Little Gorus it's gonna be very fun I can already tell with that one story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah it sounds yeah I mean anything with loose testicles hanging around I'm signed on automatically subscribe yeah you know it was actually like the third scene and then I read it aloud because I was like I'm gonna bury this loose testicle like deeper into the story and then lure them in on and then I read it aloud and I was like no no no no no that's gotta come right to the head start just let everyone know what they're gonna get you know that's that's the uh the appeal of the loose testicle is that you're you're not expecting it and it's not welcome.
SPEAKER_00But also it should but it's right there in front of you. It's the first thing that you see and now you have to deal with that.
SPEAKER_01And as a former little gore um I can say that I think many little gores have had similar encounters also as adults like recently when we went to our favorite diner we were pulling out of the parking lot and this guy came out and like I was like there's no way that this man doesn't know that he has a giant hole in his jeans and that there's clearly like I saw the full enchilada both balls and the eggplant and I was like there's no way you don't know there's no way you don't know you gotta feel the wind for this why do you think it's okay to walk around like that I mean again if we lived in a society where we were had different relationships to our bodies and it wasn't a sexualized thing we're all just naked having a good time fine but that's not what we're living in.
SPEAKER_03So right it's still even as in an adult it's still an intrusion. Yeah you know it still feels like and then there's still that like what's happening here? Do they know this? Do they you know so I I still find myself thinking those same things in confrontations or um situations that I have as an adult that I had when I was seven with the you know and the thing is is that particular person nothing bad ever happened.
SPEAKER_01I think maybe he didn't know oh but you have to wonder it just brings it back to that you can't know for sure and that's the kind of hypervigilance that we shouldn't have to exist with.
SPEAKER_03Right right I I I don't know for sure whether he knew or not I didn't know then I'd never know are you going to send him the story? Oh I don't even know where he's at darn I think now's the time to let him know you inspired this it's awfully close to his real name and I'll probably change it because he actually never did that like what the character does to them with the ranting about the ex-wife and here's all my adult drama and you and then at one point he says there's some real bad dudes out there you you don't know there's some real bad dudes out there and I'm here to warn you babies
Closing Thoughts, Where To Find Dia, And Community
SPEAKER_03you've been warned like okay we don't know we don't very interesting we haven't encountered any errant testicles in our lives I think that's where we need to end it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah right there. Dea it has been an absolute joy thank you so much for gracing us with your time with your storytelling and with probably the most unique I don't even know what to say just soul filling experience of a read and a listen and like all the art too. Just thank you for doing what you do because I know that obviously there's some people who are a little freaked out by it hence the getting denied but yes the people who see you um I think really see you and appreciate you and I'm one of them so thank you.
SPEAKER_03Thank you thanks for having me and sorry for uh talking your ear off and sorry for the dogs.
SPEAKER_01That was the whole point. We want you to talk your ear off all right and we also welcome the dogs so dogs welcome have a good rest of your day guys. You to Dia thank you. That is exactly like reading Pink Zombie Rose that conversation it was perfect. Yeah it was nonlinear yeah it's nonlinear it had feeling we got to it got into the capitalism in all the right ways but also ended on testicles always end on testicles. And everybody this is what I mean by like the zombie genre quote unquote can be what you want it to be and there's a place for everything. There's a place for the traditional Brad Pitt movies there's a place for a usual linear story and then there's a place for just being quietly whispering what the fuck to yourself while being in a blissful state of listening to something that is undescribable except for to experience it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It is very hard to describe yeah um uh one one of the things that I've uh I've said time and time again when talking about this this book is I have no idea what it's about probably because I'm high but also because it is uh it is it it is like experiencing somebody else's dreams like if you could go into somebody else's dreamscapes and you just see all the stuff happening you're like it's beautiful but what what is happening? But also it all makes sense. Yeah it all makes sense there's big and little stories that are coming together and your brain is just like fireworks going off just trying to to to put the the pieces together and then I mean I I'd say it's very right brained like it's really that creative space. Yeah I thought that was a left brain. Isn't it no wait we gotta Google maybe it is right brain because they say that left handed people are in their right mind.
SPEAKER_01That makes sense. Yeah I think it's the creative like that creative space where anything is possible and time doesn't necessarily mean what it has to and I that's why I really think that it's beautiful as an anti-capitalist book because it takes all the things that we expect because even in the way we write stories has capitalism embedded in it. And uh Dia's just like fuck that I'm gonna write something that is its own experience and doesn't have to play by any specific rules but its own internal rules which is what matters I think. So um I'm obsessed people go read it you can get it on um Kindle if you want to just see it in your palm but getting the full physical book is also quite an experience a beautiful thing just to have to like flip through um you don't have to read it in order. Also I know that I've heard Dia say that if you wanted to ask your local bookstore if they could order it and get it for you. That's really important to her you can get it on Amazon if that's your option do it. But if you can get it locally I know that she'd appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah that's a great idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. In the meantime thanks for joining Zombie Book Club.
SPEAKER_00Yeah all the links will be down there in the description go follow Dia.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And uh you can also support us we love a rating and a review. Yeah five stars please and uh if you feel so inspired to share something out loud that you've written that you think would make us also go whoa feel free to send us a voicemail at 614690006 up to three minutes. And if you haven't joined us on Patreon yet I suggest you do. It's free. Free on FreeTreon yeah there are paid tiers but they're really just you saying hey thanks for making this podcast we want to support you and you might get some physical merch. Some of them have physical merch tiers but everything about the book club is free. It's accessible for all because if you didn't pick it up from this episode um we don't like capitalism. We're not here to make um it's only a book club the thing that makes us trillionaires we are looking to create a community and that's what starts and comes first.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So check it out. Yeah check it out uh Leah the end is nigh so stay human and don't die. Or do if you're in Pink Zombie Rose because it sounds like that's the place you want to be is those Kotar televisions figured out yeah they're eating them all that's great. They're eating them all if you eat donating their lungs to a hyena I think it's a whole other way of thinking about consumerism that I love is just to like fucking get rid of it. Yeah. We love you. Bye bye bye