The Death's Realm Blog Tour: On Death and Dying

When the fine folks at Grey Matter Press asked me to hop on the tour hearse to help promote the spectacular anthology Death's Realm containing my short historical tale set on the Titanic, "Drowning", I paid for my ticket and grabbed my seat before realizing all this would entail: the introspection of envisioning and facing my own death.  There's a great chestnut about not pulling too hard on one thread, for fear of the rest of the tapestry unraveling.  But the concepts of death and dying are subjects I've covered in my writing career from the very beginning, and lately they've closely dogged me from over my shoulder, like Edgar Allen Poe's chatty raven. You see, in twenty-one days worth of time, a smattering of hours, a handful of minutes, I will have reached my fiftieth year on Spaceship Earth. Writing has always kept me feeling young, upbeat, and alive, my version of Dorian Gray's portrait or Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth.  But I'll admit it: even my inner child, who picked up the pen one overcast, muggy July night in 1980 and was forever changed by the possibilities contained within a magical potion of ink and imagination, is now grown aware of his mortality.  I am closer to the end of my life than its beginning, despite feeling (and often acting) like a kid.

If I could somehow communicate with the me that used to be, that fifteen-year-old who was lost and miserable, who started living inside himself (like in the great old Gino Vannelli classic from that long lost era), and tell him of the many joys and accomplishments he would know as a result of his writing, it might unleash a paradox -- and cause him to faint dead away of a heart attack.  That he would stand beside the Bridge set of the Starship Voyager (not on it -- signs were posted to keep out when the cameras weren't filming, because the producers didn't want soles tracking in muck across the pristine carpeting), or take to the dance floor in Los Angeles on the all-important night of September the 13th, 1999, with the cast of his beloved Space:1999, the show that first inspired him to take a stab at writing through original fan fiction, those ancient longhand drafts penned on lined school paper still archived in his future self's file cabinets alongside shooting scripts and over 1100 original fiction manuscripts. Not one but two cabinets containing his archives of published work. So many other instances.  All as a result of finding the one thing, the only thing, he ever wanted to do with his life. And doing it. There's no way that version of me could survive the shock of such knowledge, of knowing how happy and fulfilled his life would be.

It's been better than a good life.  It's been great, and I don't want to die.  Despite losing my grandfather, both grandmothers, a friend in high school who was the victim of an automobile accident, my mother from cancer at an age far too young (any age is the wrong number when your mom was as cool as mine), one great dog, five beloved cats, and various celebrity icons from my boyhood over the course of my near-fifty years, I want to live at least for another hundred -- albeit with new teeth and considerably less arthritis, especially in my right hip.  I know it sounds impossibly greedy, especially when you factor in the temporary nature of life and the randomness of living it to potential. There's a reason we age and pass beyond the pale.  But that's no comfort, not when I have so many stories within me left to write, like Scheherazade seeking to keep head attached to shoulder by telling tales in the face of death.

When asked to blog about about this subject nature, I was inspired to opt for a direct, personal approach: how I imagined my own end as playing out.  In my twenties, I joked about choking on a boneless spare rib after stuffing my face full of Chinese food between sweaty adventures with a dozen Major League Baseball jocks (this, long before I settled down with my partner of now-thirteen years, and landed my butt in this very seat in our happy home on the hill).  A decade ago, I remarked after attending a writers' group that I'd likely buy it from a shiv in the parking lot following the meeting, thanks to some disgruntled fellow scribe who didn't approve of what I wrote (today, I moderate one of the most amazing writing groups on the planet, and am more likely to code as a result of an overdose of laughter and enlightenment in the company of my many talented writer friends).  In the final reckoning however -- whether it's a hundred years away or creeping down from the woods in my backyard even as I type these words -- I hope the script reads something like this:

FADE IN:

EXT. OLD NEW ENGLANDER – NIGHT

A house on a bluff, illuminated by a lone streetlamp outside and lights inside the house, including a necklace of blue and white Christmas strands strung around the two windows of a home office.  NOTE: Houses can be forlorn or happy places.  This old soul seems happy, judging by its appearance.

INT. OLD NEW ENGLANDER – NIGHT

A foyer, painted indigo-blue.  To the right is a living room with a pomegranate accent wall.  To the left, the office room glimpsed from outside: painted beach-blue and filled with books, artwork and family photos, a desk.  Seated at the desk is an OLD MAN (THE WRITER) who feverishly runs a fountain pen across a notepad.

                         THE WRITER (VOICE OVER)

                 Ancient hands, so weak and old,

               hasten to the task.  Tell the

               tale that must be told, this is

               all I ask…

The Writer writes with haste.  He tears off a page, fills another, and another after that.  All of the pages form a neat stack on the desk.

The Writer’s pen stills.  We look down to see he has written THE END at the bottom.  Silence as he ponders the finished draft of the manuscript.  Then, he tears the last page from the notepad and assembles the sheets in proper order.  The manuscript goes into a decorative file folder labeled: THE FINAL STORY.

The Writer stands, gives one last bittersweet look around the room, and shuts off the lights.

EXT. OLD NEW ENGLANDER – NIGHT

The blue and white Christmas lights go dark.  As they do, a SHADOWY FIGURE approaches the front door. 

INT. OLD NEW ENGLANDER – NIGHT

The Writer crosses the foyer and climbs the stairs, which CREAK beneath his steps.  The Shadowy Figure follows him up and around the banister, making no noise, to a bedroom with crimson curtains and a big bed.

The Writer prepares to close the door.  As the door shuts, we see the Shadowy Figure in the room, standing behind him.

The door SHUTS.

                         THE WRITER

                    (through door)

               Now I’m ready.

                                                  FADE OUT.

My dear friend and colleague, Martin Rose, whose brilliant story ‘Mirrorworld’ shares space between the covers in Death’s Realm, was bold enough to also share his thoughts on the moment of his final heartbeat:  “I've had my future predicted for me, which is another story for a dark and stormy night, but I've got reason to believe I'm going to live to be very old, and then I'll probably pass away from the usual ailments of old age. Hardening heart, pneumonia, infection. Not very spectacular, is it? We'll die, and it won't be noteworthy, or excite interest, and we'll be missed for all of five seconds, and then easily forgotten. That's a component of Jude in ‘Mirrorworld,’ to show life can be disappointing, we aren't guaranteed happy endings. Working, getting through life, suffering. Then it's over. There's no bright lights, no manual for the deceased, no great epiphany, no illusion of endless love. All you have is everything within your mind, and if you believe in reincarnation, you can't even take the memories with you. But you'll do it, over and over again. Go into the gentle night angry, you'll come back angry. Go into it a trivial fool, you'll come back out a fool. Letting go of regrets and discrimination is the best advice I can give anyone before they go to meet their final appointment. It is how I will meet mine.”

Radio Nights

For the eighth time in my career, I recently took to the airwaves, this time as the special guest on the fantastic Ghostman and Demon Hunter show. Ghostman and Demon Hunter broadcast across a platform that includes 102.7 FM (live) and various venues after the fact.  I went on at just after 8 p.m. EST on Sunday, July 13, a night renown for some fairly bad weather between New York City and New Hampshire.

Ghostman and Demon Hunter (aka the brilliant Shaun Burris and Nathan Drake Schoonover) welcomed me on board to talk about the writing life and my latest literary adventures on a night that grew so humid, it was like walking through neck-deep water.  By afternoon, the sky had darkened to the consistency of dusk, and an apocalyptic rain hammered our fair mountain town.  By eight, I'd closed the windows and turned off the ceiling fan in my Writing Room, so as not to create any noisy feedback when the hosts dialed me in (as stated, I'm old hat at this whole radio coolness!).  Sans fan, the temperature in my home office skyrocketed, and sweat poured. Unseen, mercifully, to listeners, I looked like a refugee from a sauna!

At the other end of the line, massive thunderheads did their best to unleash havoc on the hosts, who put on an impressive weekly broadcast -- my predecessor the previous Sunday was none other than Svengoolie, whose monster movie fest on MeTV is beloved and required Saturday night viewing in our home. With lightning bolts attempting to deafen and frazzle, we discussed the skill of pitching ideas to TV, my work on Star Trek: Voyager, my books like the forthcoming Bugs!, The Q Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse, among others.

(at 94.7 FM's studios in January 2013)

We talked the new feature film I wrote, Brutal Colors (presently in post-production), and my love of creature features -- those wonderful classic monster movies I grew up on, and still often play in the background when I write. And robots, another beloved theme getting plenty of play in my career these past few months. Then, which is always the case when I've taken to the airwaves, I blinked and it was over, the thirty minutes passing with the speed of what felt like seconds. Ghostman and Demon Hunter were gracious hosts and thanked me for my time, promising we'd do it all again somewhere down the road.

When I was a teenager and had freshly discovered this whole writing thing, I listened to the radio at night on a boxy cube console with a record player on top located at the side of my bed. While waiting for my favorite songs to come on, I also looked forward to hearing my favorite radio hosts, who fed my imagination and helped me dream some of the biggest story lines of my life as a result of those nightly soundtracks.  So being on the radio -- three times in 2013 on the stellar 94.7 show hosted by Rob Azevedo, Granite State of Mind, once so far in '14 -- is always a treat, and a reminder of my humble beginnings.  I can't wait for Number Nine!

My New Hampshire Chronicle

(Miked for the camera -- and showing plenty of sweaty nostril on a day so
humid it was nearly impossible to breathe)

It started two weeks ago, when I gave an interview to our local newspaper, The Berlin Daily Sun (an abbreviated version of the article can be found here).  The feature, splashed over the front page and accompanied by a vibrant full-color photograph of me seated at my desk, eldest cat keeping company, circulated around our new home town -- and far beyond. So far, in fact, that on the following Tuesday, I received an email from Sean Mcdonald, a newscaster on WMUR-Channel 9/ABC in Manchester.  Sean pulls double-duty as host of our wonderful all-things-Granite-State lifestyle program, New Hampshire Chronicle.  He'd read the article on our move north to Xanadu, my body of work, and the founding of our new Berlin Writers' Group, and felt I would be a good subject for a Chronicle segment.  I was thrilled.  And a bag of nerves, which is so unlike me.

I've worked for Paramount Studios as a freelance writer, covered The X-Games, building demolition, and written a bazillion feature articles in which I've interviewed celebrities -- all of my childhood icons, in fact.  And though I rarely get star-struck or nervous anymore, I didn't sleep for more than a few minutes at a time the night prior to the day of taping.  Adding to the mix of nerves and exhaustion was the weather's shift from Arctic (it snowed up here the last week of May!) to Okefenokee.  Miserable humidity swamped our fair mountain town, making even the simplest of movements like wading through neck-deep water.

(With Chris, Chronicle cameraman extra-ordinaire, and the luminous
Sean Mcdonald)

As the Tuesday night writers' group has been such a dynamic part of life's new chapter here North of the Notches, at the last instant we pulled together an impromptu Monday meeting of the talented folks I count as friends and blessings. The first to arrive, Kyle Newton, helped set an energetic and uplifting tone that only grew as the rest of the gang wandered in, most with luscious desserts and finger foods in hand.  To commemorate the day, talented pal Judi Calhoun -- the next author feature to grace my blog -- not only brought brownies, but gorgeous hand-crafted journals for Bruce and me, and two silkscreened tees to enhance my literary couture wardrobe.  I'm wearing the one that proudly says, "Gregory Norris, Writer" as I write this post.  You couldn't meet nicer or read better than Judi-Beauty Calhoun!

Through the heat barrier, Sean Macdonald and Chris the Cameraman arrived, and from the start I knew the day would forever be memorable for many wonderful reasons.  The camera was set up, writers settled down in our volcanic living room, and we were asked to hold an impromptu version of our Tuesday night meeting some twenty-four hours early.  We went around the room and read short stories, synopsi, and back covers.  The camera recorded all of it.  Seated among us and soaking up the very good vibe, Sean conducted spot interviews.  Then good pal Jonathan Dubey, whose brilliant play Arthurian is being staged this summer, made a nifty suggestion: we all lined up with our published books in hand and, together in unison, said, "We're the Berlin Writers' Group -- and we'll tell you the story" for the camera.  It may or may not make it into the final cut.  Either way, it punctuated a wonderful dialogue between this vibrant creative community and our visitors.

(Taping Chronicle in my Writing Room)

Soaked in sweat, we then retired to my beautiful Writing Room, where we covered the full range of my life and career up until that balmy afternoon, June 24, 2013.  We discussed my humble beginnings as a strange and imaginative boy in Windham, New Hampshire, through my even stranger adulthood/second childhood here, in Berlin. We talked Space:1999 and Xanadu, Star Trek and Star Trek: Voyager; Sci Fi Channel, The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse and my newest book contract, its far-smaller sibling, Shrunken Heads: Twenty Tiny Tales of Mystery and Terror, forthcoming at the end of summer.  I showed him my files, shooting scripts (we improved a reading from the Voyager episode "Gravity" with he playing Tom Paris, me in the role of Tuvok; Sean aced it while I, clearly, need to stick to the writing side of the business).  At one point, I was asked to write on the spot.  I uncapped my favorite cobalt blue fountain pen, put it to paper, and spontaneously created a few powerful paragraphs that, later the same afternoon, got married to a project I'm working on behind-the-scenes.  And then they taped me standing outside in front of our beautiful new-old home among the hills, for a Trek-style beam-down, complete in post-production with strobing special effects.

This short documentary on my literary odyssey is scheduled to run in the not-too-distant future (updates to follow).  It was a lovely experience, the latest in a long list of fun and exciting adventures since uncapping my pen some thirty-three years ago when I first dared to dream big dreams -- and, more important, to chronicle them on paper.

Zombies For A Cure

In 1998, one week after my first newsstand magazine appeared on grocery store shelves less than a mile from her front door, five months before I notched my first episode sale to Paramount's Star Trek: Voyager, my mother, the late, great Diane Elaine Gauthier, passed away from cancer of the bowel.  I was able to pick up a copy of Sci-Fi Universe during daily visits to her hospice room at the top of the stairs of the house she loved, and she was still coherent enough as the malignancy feasted upon her insides to see proof that her faith in me and my love of writing was being rewarded in ever bigger strokes.  My mother was a beautiful woman who died decades too young, at the age of fifty-three.  She never smoked, drank, medicated (prescription-based or illegal; following her second cancer surgery, she refused to take the morphine offered, thinking as I still do that the body heals best through rest and positive emotion), and her loss left a jagged hole in the fabric of the cosmos from which, fourteen years later, I and those who loved her have yet to recover, and likely never will  But I have kept the memory of my mother alive through my writing.  I routinely dedicate new book releases to her, record my dreams of her in short story format, and write down the stories of our too-brief time together, recording some for publication, others so they won't be forgotten.

So when the divine Angela Charmaine Craig from Elektrik Milk Bath Press invited me to submit a short story to her charity anthology, Zombies For A Cure, I was beyond thrilled.  Authors and artists were asked if they would donate their work, as all proceeds from sales are in support of the Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Research Foundation.  In addition to original poetry and fiction from some of today's finest scribes, Zombies contains a moving tribute in honor of those loved ones the authors and artists have lost to cancer.

Angela's submission guidelines were as intriguing as inspiring.  One of the bullet points she sought for the anthology were stories that mixed up formats and genres, as well as efforts with a lighter, even comedic tone.  I had a story in mind but then remembered that, sitting snug in my filing cabinet, was a story even more suited, one that hit all the marks on the wishlist (proof yet again that it never hurts to keep a healthy inventory of completed projects on hand).  A year earlier, I penned a tale called "Deadly Jobs" -- a serio-comic take on what a reality show post Zomb-pocalypse might entail.  Tongue-in-cheek, I wrote it out in a half narrative, half teleplay format.  I'm thrilled to report the story was accepted into Zombies For A Cure -- and that my late mother's name is one of those honored in the anthology's role call.

Angela and many of my fellow contributors graciously shared the back stories behind their wonderful contributions to Zombies For A Cure.

Angela Charmaine Craig on the creation of Zombies For A Cure: "My sister and I liked to stay up nights doing crazy things after everyone else was asleep. We would have these wild conversations, making up lists of unanswerable questions (we loved lists), discussing inventions that never were (but definitely should have been), and planning all the things we should get around to doing, someday. The original idea to do a zombie-themed anthology came from one of these nights. My sister had always had a serious thing for zombies -- even as a kid -- but me, well… not so much. Still, I agreed that at some point we should definitely do a zombie book and it was added to our list of somedays.

'Someday' came a few years later as she was just beginning another experimental round of chemo. Her cancer had been in remission for a year and a half but it had returned -- and it brought friends. At the time, I was planning several new projects and my small 'staff' of volunteers suggested a zombie book to both entertain and honor my sister. From the beginning she wanted to donate the proceeds to charity, and so many generous authors and artists were willing to donate their work to help make this a possibility.

My sister didn’t live to see her book finished but she would have wanted to thank you all. To thank both the contributors for their kindness and generosity, and the readers, whose purchase of this book will allow us to donate to an organization dedicated to fighting a rare and aggressive cancer, the Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Research Foundation.  I thank you, too."  

Gene Stewart on "Zombie Love": "'Zombie Love' came from a particularly wild ride through the deep south, during storms that threatened to flood the roads and knock our car off them.  We were passing through a swamp, driving between Georgia and Texas, probably somewhere in Mississippi or Louisiana, and through the blur of pouring rain I saw a place like the one I describe in the story.  It was settled well back from the road to the left, behind a large expanse of mud and puddles big enough to drown our car.  It looked ramshackle but showed light and a few pickups were parked at odd angles close to the door.  We did not stop, but my imagination did, and I wondered what a long-haul trucker driving that route might find if he pulled off the road in so remote and wild a place.  What kind of folks, what sort of ambiance, and what dark surprises might be encountered there?

I'd read about the origin of the zombie legends and knew they came from very real practices in Haiti. People would be poisoned, it seemed, by zombie powder, a powerful nerve agent that rendered them seemingly dead.  They would be buried, but within hours they would be dug up and revived, to a degree, by the zombie master, who would then use them, sometimes for decades, as slaves in sugar cane fields and on plantations.  It was a way of enslaving people who had, at least officially, passed beyond the reach of law by 'dying'.  So the notion of slaves and zombies, linked in my mind, made the leap to sex slavery.  Eroticizing zombies took them in a direction I had not seen at the time I wrote this story.  It first appeared in an anthology called Cold Flesh, edited by Paul Fry and published in 2005.  

I hope it gives readers a good chill, and remember:  It's all possible.  Nothing supernatural happens in 'Zombie Love'.   When you're driving in the isolated, wilder areas, be careful where you stop and what you let yourself be enticed by." 

Jay Wilburn on "Dead Song”: "'Dead Song' is a very different zombie story. The idea for it came from a few threads. One was thinking about how survivors of a zombie apocalypse would tell their own stories afterward. Another was thinking about what would be a scary story for people who grew up during the zombie apocalypse. What would scare them anymore? The result brought me to a sound booth for a voice over for a documentary about music during the zombie apocalypse. The character is trapped by the story in an unusual way. All readers and writers of zombie stories are trapped by the story in some way. I hope you find 'Dead Song' and Zombies For A Cure entertaining, disturbing, or both. It’s for a great cause!"

Heather Henry on "You Can't Live Forever": "I got the idea for this story as I was trying to imagine what kind of person would not only survive a zombie apocalypse, but actually thrive. Immediately I thought of my great grandmother, Hazel McCormick. She grew up on the Montana frontier when it was still relatively wild and told me and my siblings stories about being attacked by ‘Indians.’ I’m not sure whether the stories were true or not, but I believed them. She told me so many different versions of how her husband died, I thought she’d been married eight times. She was a hard woman and a bit of a misanthrope, but she was a survivor. 

My great grandmother had a stray cat that she fed and allowed in the house. She named him ‘Freeloader.’ I started writing about the central character in my story and Freeloader was there, but I named him for our childhood Siamese, Teddy. Once Teddy became a character in the story, I knew he had to be integral in how the story resolved itself, but working that out took many incarnations. I wanted to build a zombie story around a nontraditional protagonist. As I worked on this story, I came to find the strengths in Hazel’s character, and she became a compelling character for me. I’m pretty sure that my great grandmother would like her, too."

Patrick MacAdoo on "The Sitting Dead": "This may sound cruel. On my route to the library, there's a senior-housing building, in front of which the tenants congregate to smoke. Many in powerchairs or wheelchairs, some with oxygen tanks, all with the distinctive gray, zombie-ish look of the lifelong smoker, I couldn't help but think of them as the risen dead. The presence of those powerchairs inspired the pun, the sitting dead, which of course became the title. 

I walk around with an alternate world in my head. In this world, the Apocalypse is happening slowly, or perhaps not at all -- the Apocalypse is a matter of controversy, as are the zombies themselves. In this world, political rhetoric has clouded all these issues.  Are zombies proof of the Apocalypse, a curse from God, or just a mutant virus? Some zombies get better (smarties), some do not (dummies). But those afflicted by hunger for human flesh, and this is enough for the epithet, Zombies, no matter how politically incorrect, is applied to the diseased."

Gerri Leen on "Run for the Roses": "I really wanted to write a story for this anthology, but zombies are not my thing, so I was having trouble coming up with an idea. While I was watching the 2011 Breeders' Cup and yet another racehorse—can’t  remember at this point which one—was either pulled up or didn't run and was retired early due to injury, this idea came to me. I may not understand the appeal of zombies, but they sure do seem resilient, and we've definitely made our racehorses fragile compared to the iron horses of yesteryear.  It seemed a perfect match up, and I have to admit it was a blast to write.  I hope it's as fun to read."

Sarina Dorie on "Zombie Psychology": "I wrote the story about five years ago, so it is hard for me to remember the exact inspiration.  I think I thought of the title and then wrote a story about that. My brain just asks, 'What if. . . ?' a lot.  For example, 'What if zombies had the same personality they had when they were alive, only they now also want to eat people?' or 'What if you were trying to get rid of an annoying ex-boyfriend who was bad enough when he was alive, but now he wants to eat your brains, too?'

At the time I started submitting this story, I was told by a few fellow writers that zombies were out and this was a dying trend -- no pun intended. As it turns out, zombies are still thriving. Some editors might be tired of them, but readers are not."

Megan Dorei on "Wings": "When I wrote the first paragraph of 'Wings,' I really had no idea what I was doing. I knew the basic skeletal outline for what I wanted but I didn’t know how to get there. I guess you could say I was just fishing in the dark, hoping to catch something remotely usable. But the more I wrote, the more things started to fall into place. And once I started pulling bits and pieces from real life -- a certain camping adventure and a few letters between me and a friend, just to name a few -- the story just seemed to tell itself. I have a passion for living unattainable dreams through my characters. Call it a guilty pleasure, if you prefer, but this became more than I thought it would."

Kathleen Crow on "The Ferry": "When I was younger, my son and I used to discuss how we might go about surviving a zombie apocalypse. However, after a knee replacement and succumbing to a rather nasty strain of arthritis, I realized that surviving might be a little more problematic than I had initially thought. The story bloomed when I wondered how an older person might survive in such a situation." 

Alyn Day on "Seven Eight One Five Four":  "'Seven Eight One Five Four' is the first of my works ever to be published, and one of my favorites among all of the stories I've written. I got the idea when the restrooms at work were fitted with electronic locks complete with keypads. We were told it was for enhanced security, but as an added bonus people from other floors might stop dropping by to avail themselves of our fancy soap. One day while standing at the sink washing my hands, I heard a noise outside the door. I'm sure it was something completely innocent, someone perhaps stubbing their toe on the bench outside, but it started my brain working. From there, the story pretty much wrote itself."

Mark Onspaugh on "The Song of Absent Birds": "Sometimes my stories start out with a single image, and in this case, it was the ‘Forest of Anubis.’ A great herd of zombies frozen in winter, still and ghastly, waiting for the spring thaw.  It was an image I had not seen or read, and I liked the magical yet tragic aspect of it. That got me to thinking about zombies being in a state of delayed decomposition; how one who ‘turned’ many years ago might still look relatively young.  That got me to thinking about tragic time travel stories where one person ages and another doesn’t (like that wonderful Twilight Zone episode from 1964, ‘The Long Morrow,’ -- astronaut Robert Lansing disconnects his suspended animation chamber, not realizing they have placed his true love in one back on Earth.  He returns having aged forty years, she is still young.  So my tale became a search for a lost love, and a chance to finally reunite with that one special person, no matter what they might have become.

I am very honored to be a part of this anthology. I have had three strong women in my life who have battled cancer: my grandmother Helen, my mother-in-law Judith, and my amazing cousin Chan Adams Bell. This story is dedicated to all of them, with tremendous love."

James S. Dorr on "Should Zombies Really Crawl From Their Graves": "My poem had its origins in a challenge to consider the phrase 'Should [blank],' filling in the blank and then using the result as the title for a poem.  I felt the examples suggested, including such things as 'Should I buy this outfit' and 'Should you leave before I buy this outfit,' were, to say the least, unexciting so I decided to write about zombies instead, offering the reader practical advice in the event of a burgeoning zombie apocalypse and even throwing in a hint or two concerning dating.  Useful things like that."

Terrie Leigh Relf on "The Zombie Solution": "When Marge Simon first told me about the anthology call, and that it was intended to benefit Cancer research and to honor those who have passed on (as well as those who continue to valiantly battle this disease), I was immediately inspired. What better way to support The Cure than a zombie-themed anthology? While I had originally intended to write an ode, Shakespeare rose from the dead and whispered in my ear that it was high time I wrote another sonnet. He assured me that were he not reduced to haunting the living, he would most definitely be writing about zombies (and he even intimated there were additional lost manuscripts where he did!). While I am no Shakespeare, and would never claim to channel him, either, he, too, has been a continual inspiration. The result? A spell was cast with the help of a friendly neighborhood witch.

‘The Zombie Solution’ is also about forming an alliance between another greatly misunderstood disease: Vampirism (or Porphyria), and is intended to show support for any undertaking (such as this anthology) that seeks to choose success rather than failure as its guiding operandi.

Humor is an aerator, and given the commingled stench of the zombie hordes, a light breeze is always recommended, don’t you think? Combine that with the fact that those suffering from Cancer are often ignored -- and mistreated -- by the same system that is supposed to be there to support them! We need more funding! We need a cure!"

Brian E. Langston on "necessary items for surviving the zombie apocalypse": "My poem started as an exercise at Zelda's Inferno, a weekly poetry writing workshop I sporadically attended while living in Baltimore, Maryland.  It's not clear to me how the piece came about.  I recall that the group, after having vetoed several more complicated writing prompts for lack of time and attention span, had settled on the old standby of writing a list poem. But 'necessary items' is not the normal list poem, and the prompt most certainly did not include anything about the apocalypse or zombies.  As so often happens with these prompts, however, I went off on a tangent.  Stringing together physical, emotional, and metaphorical items -- the things that I imagine I would find myself needing in order to survive an apocalypse, zombie or otherwise.  No, not just to survive, but to retain some piece of compassion in the darkest of times, some spark of hope, the mystery, perseverance, stubbornness, and strength of Homo sapiens. 

But where did that first word, 'fishhooks' come from?  And what about that arc through a gas mask and Adrienne Rich?  Origins are not always obvious, and the mystery is sometimes necessary, for our minds are not linear machines but make wild leaps connecting tangents.  As for the poem and the zombie apocalypse, I consider these metaphors for the darkest of times, be those on a global or personal scale.  These are the items, physical, emotional, and metaphorical, that I choose to take with me into the abyss in order to ground me to what it means to be human."

Jennifer Clark on "Zombie Mommy": "I almost didn’t write this poem. I wanted to lend my voice to this important project that Elektrik Milk Bath Press was proposing but I wasn’t sure I had anything to add to the zombie dialogue. What is it about our fascination with zombies, I kept asking myself. I wanted to tap into the nugget of zombie truth, whatever that was. Just when I was about to give up, it occurred to me that zombies represent the human condition. Those we love leave us. Despite their best efforts, forces out of their control (and ours) such as illness, addiction, or aging, cause loved ones to leave us behind. Zombies, I decided, represent that slow, little-pieces-at-a-time leaving. So with that all in mind, I wrote 'Zombie Mommy.'"

STAR TREK: VOYAGER -- A Fond Return to the Delta Quadrant

This week, I hopped back onboard the Intrepid-Class Starship U.S.S. Voyager, after a fashion.  For quite a few years, I was associated with the fourth live-action Star Trek series in a professional capacity as both TV journalist and TV screenwriter.  With my good friend Laura A. Van Vleet, I was vetted into the story pitching pool by series creator Jeri Taylor.  Laura and I had written a massive feature article on Ms. Taylor's body of work for the Sci Fi Channel's magazine and, impressed with our knowledge of the franchise and our competence in storytelling, she invited us to show her what we had.  She would also recommend us both for internships on set at the Paramount Studios at 5555 Melrose Avenue.

It took nearly a year of meetings, but we eventually cracked the Powers-That-Be, selling not one but two episodes: "The Hiding" which went through committee to become the fifth-season's unforgettable "Counterpoint," in which Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) outwits a powerful military leader to save survivors of a persecuted race (we had the telepaths hidden in Voyager's ground hover foot pads, not the easy out of the transporters); and "The Well", which went on to become "Gravity," and originally involved Tom Paris (Robert Duncan-McNeill), the Doctor (Robert Picardo), and Neelix (Ethan John Phillips) trapped in a gravity well and staging a daring plan to escape.  That story was committee'ed into the backstory of Vulcan Tactical Officer Tuvok.  For "The Hiding," we had the pleasure of working with staff writer Nick Sagan, Carl Sagan's son and a true gentlemen in the business. 

During that time, Laura and I had numerous opportunities to work with Ms. Mulgrew as well (for the series finale, we were invited back to the set and wrote some thirty-plus feature articles for various national magazines and newspapers).  This week, Kate Mulgrew -- the Trek captain who took down the Borg Collective -- wrote a stunning blurb for my forthcoming collection of original short and long stories, The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse: A Baker's Dozen From the Terrifying Mind of Gregory L. Norris (Evil Jester Press).  The blurb is incredible, generous, powerful, a clear sign that this book has the potential to become one for the history books. Muse is scheduled for release in December 2011.