'Til Death Do Us (A)Part: Love (and Sex) In the Zombie Apocalypse

Today’s Feedback Friday is going to be short and sweet, my friends; it’s been a crazy week and I still have the 2nd half of chapter 4 to finish, so I haven’t had much time to scour the internet for interesting things to share. I’ll do better next time.

First of all, let me say that I’m crazy appreciative of the comments that have come in since last week’s chapter went up, as well as the verbal feedback I’ve received – thank you for letting me know what you think, and for liking what’s been put up so far!

In the spirit of helping me viewing myself as a for-real writer, and not just a “writer”, my very cool husband decided to surprise me and design business cards with the serial information on them; they arrived the other day and they’re so awesome!

I’m considering ignoring Facebook’s rules for cover photos and using this for my page, I love it that much. Plus it’s kind of sad how empty and unfinished that page looks right now; it needs SOMETHING. If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it! I really suck at choosing pictures. Which is why on Twitter I’m an egg. Eggs are ancient fertility symbols, so that’s kind of sexy? We’ll go with that.

In writing news, it looks like there’s an interesting Independent Author Symposium happening in Rhode Island in November, with lectures on e-book formatting, promotion and royalties (for those who can worry about that kind of thing, ie: NOT ME). The price is kind of steep, I think, but one of the hosts is a best-selling author so, maybe worth the cost. Some day I’ll have the free time to attend this kind of stuff, although by then we might be publishing books on, like, space rocks or something.

Speaking of space and zombies (which we WERE), I read about this cool program that The National Academy of Science has developed, STEM Behind Hollywood, which is designed to get kids interested in math and science by using topics like zombies, superheroes and forensics as gateways to learning. Forbes had an article about this the other day; basically, they use things like the way zombies shuffle to figure out which part of the brain would be damaged, and from there learn what a healthy brain looks like. They can also use math to track things like infection rates through equations. I don’t know, I think it’s a pretty brilliant way to get younger kids interested in these areas, by appealing to them through pop culture – kind of like the Canvas.net class with the same goal for older students, or when the CDC used a zombie apocalypse to teach people about disaster preparedness.

Last but not least, CHECK OUT THIS SHIRT.

I saw this while out shopping the other night and absolutely had to have it. It’s awesome, right? I got mine at Walmart, but they’re available at ZombieMart. Also, ZombieMart?! I will be scoping that place out thoroughly this weekend; I’ll report back next week.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

This week’s recommendation is Hugh Howey’s Half Way Home. You might be familiar with Howey through reading his Silo series; I’ve read the first part of that, and really liked it, but Half Way Home was my first introduction to his writing so I have a soft spot for it. It’s about a group of people who are sent to a distant planet as embryos to colonize; they’re supposed to remain in stasis until they reach age 30, at which point they’ll awake with all the information they’ll need to succeed as a society, but an accident destroys most of them and awakes the rest at 15, long before they’re ready to be out. It’s a really good book, with both physical dangers and psychological issues to explore, and the main character, Porter, drew me right in. It was slow in places, and I wasn’t thrilled with the ending, but overall it was a good read.

Well…that actually wasn’t that short, was it? So I lied. Hopefully you’ll forgive me and come back on Sunday for Chapter 4. See you then!