Is Canada’s fascination with zombies the death knell of undead chic?
Good day, eh? And greetings from the Great White North. It’s great to be here on Cat Rambo’s blog to extoll the virtues of our great Canadian literary culture.
Speaking of Nobel prizes, I should mention Margaret Atwood. Now, Margaret’s a real good gal, eh? She can hold her beer and paddle a canoe with the best of us but she’s a pretty good writer, too. People say she should win a Nobel, but she’s been standing in line for so long now that they’ve lost interest in her (like we have with Prince Charles). But it doesn’t change the fact that she’s smart as a whip. About our great Canadian literary culture, she said:
“Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed: the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all “¦ Our stories are likely to be tales not of those who made it but of those who made it back, from the awful experience — the North, the snowstorm, the sinking ship — that killed everyone else.” ““ SURVIVAL: A THEMATIC GUIDE TO CANADIAN LITERATURE, Chapter 1
Like I said, she’s clever. And she’s right! Even if she couldn’t have licked Ernest Hemingway in a boxing match in his prime (but I bet she could now, eh?)
What Canadians are most often challenged to survive is our great Canadian wilderness.
OUR GREAT WILDERNESS
Whenever Americans want to make a cowboy movie, they come north to film it, eh? Because all their wilderness is gone. We still have some of ours, although Prime Minister Harper is working hard every day to change that, and to make us more modern and civilized like America. Indoor plumbing, Velcro®, remote control tee-vees. What’s next?
Well, what’s next is the very popular Northern Gateway/Keystone XL Pipeline, eh? Because whenever Canadians want to make money, they go south because all our money up here is gone. But Americans still have most of theirs (although their politicians are working hard every day to change that, and to make them more modern and civilized like, say, Russia ““ or maybe the Chinese).
Anyway, with the wilderness gone, what is there left to survive?
Zombies of course!
OUR GREAT ZOMBIES
Hold your horses, eh? That’s no zombie, that’s Prime Minister Harper (although it’s kind of hard to tell the difference sometimes because he never blinks). Anyway, Prime Minister Harper occasionally takes breaks from rehearsing with his rock band the Van Cats to negotiate trade deals, like the one with China that introduces a mysterious street drug into Canada called L that unleashes a zombie apocalypse.
You probably never wondered what a zombie apocalypse would look like up here, but I tell ya’ ““ it’s pretty scary! I wrote a book about it, eh?
The zombie apocalypse begins the same night your girlfriend skips town with the $5,000 you owe your drug dealer. Fortunately, you know a place you and your best friend Frankenstein can hide out ““ a marijuana grow-op in the hinterlands of rural BC ruled by a psychopathic evangelist who believes she is the Angel of Death. Take a toke and relax. Everything’s going to be fine …
Now why would anyone write a zombie book that takes place in Canada? Well first off, there’s what Margaret said about how we’re always taking the pulse of the patient to see if he’s alive. That sounds right up Zombie Alley, if you ask me! And as for survival, well isn’t that the whole point of a zombie story?
Some of you might be asking: without any wilderness left to challenge your survival, how can this novel truly be Canadian?
Well, like I said, Americans travel north for our wilderness (what’s left of it) and we go south for money. But in abandoning nature for civilization, we’ve created a new wilderness ““ one inside ourselves that’s every bit as ugly and toxic as the slag heaps at Fort Mac, one we try and fill with cash and dope and a new flat-screen tee-vee or fishing boat or something like that.
But that’s just us, eh? Dead inside and following the herd, slack-jawed and trying to consume enough to fill that bottomless hunger the wilderness left behind when it vanished.
So thanks for reading. I hope you’ll check out my book, eh? I worked real hard on it.
““ la fin ““
(“˜cuz this was made in Canada, part of it has to be in French, eh?)
Bio: Jamie Mason is a Canadian sci-fi/fantasy writer whose short fiction has appeared in On Spec, Abyss & Apex and the Canadian Science Fiction Review. His second novel KEZZIE OF BABYLON was released by Permuted Press in March, 2015. Learn more at www.jamiescribbles.com
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Guest Post from Ken Altabef: Designing a Fantasy World Around Inuit Myth
An insatiable fever demon… A restless Wind spirit… A treacherous shaman… A golden walrus… And one courageous young girl.Unlike the more familiar Greco-Roman or Norse pantheons which feature vivid characters and well-defined myth cycles, the Inuit myths tend to ramble, skipping madly about with the rapid scene changes of a disjointed dream and likely to end abruptly with a stoic, “˜”Here ends this story.”
The mythology is peppered with impressive spirits with interesting names. But aside from a name and a job description there’s little else to go on. So when I decided to write ALAANA’S WAY, an epic fantasy series about the first female shaman in an arctic world based on Inuit myth, I had my hands full. As shaman it’s Alaana’s duty to negotiate with the great spirits, and they all became colorful characters in the story. Their appearance and personalities were entirely up to me.
Another problem. A nomadic lifestyle, the vagaries of a mostly oral tradition and a fractured tribal system leave little agreement between different versions of the same story. Even the most established figure, Sedna, Mistress of the Sea, owns multiple conflicting origin stories. One version claims she was the daughter of two giants with such an uncontrollable urge for flesh that she tried to devour her parents in their sleep. Another tribe insists she was a young beauty forced to marry an elderly neighbor who turned out to be a monstrous carrion bird, leaving her no route of escape except a plunge into the salty depths. Or perhaps she was a poor orphan girl mistreated and cast into the sea by the other children; her fingers, chopped off as she clung desperately to the side of the kayak, fell into the water to become the walruses and seal. I had to tread carefully here. I decided, in a flash of Solomon-like insight, that all of them were true. I supposed that in the Beforetime, where dreams were reality, she was all those things, lived all those lives. But here and now she is simply Sedna, the Sea Mother who controls all the animals in the ocean.
Another established figure is Tulukkaruq, the Raven, who always represents a mischievous spirit in Native American folklore. The Inuit Raven is impressive indeed, having been credited with creating human beings and bestowng the gift of fire on us as well. But really, this one was easy. I gave him the personality of the Dark Knight’s Joker and urged him to plague both my shamanic heroine and her villainous nemesis in equal measure.
But what about the rest? Interpreting an entire pantheon is a daunting task, but I never flinched. I’m a fantasist. This is what I live for.
TornarssukConsider Tornarssuk the guardian spirit of the polar bears. The name spoke to me. I pictured an enormous shimmering white bear with starry eyes. He would be fierce and deadly but also benevolent and wise, with a soft spot for human beings as well. Tekkeitsertok is the guardian of the caribou, so a tawny-furred man with cloven hooves and an impressive rack of antlers. I figured he was an old and docile spirit, more interested in sleeping than fighting, but he does get into at least one good brawl before the series’ end. The Whale-Man may appear as a gigantic black bowhead or a Poseidon-like man, and let’s make him the estranged lover of Sedna for good measure. I wrote a scene in book four where the two have a torrential undersea battle, her sharks on one side vs his whales on the other.
What about Erlaveersinioq, the Skeleton Who Walks, a terrifying spirit who loves murder and death above all things? I guess we can chalk him up in the villain’s column. Sila, spirit of the Wild Wind, was a wild card but in the southern tribes he is also the spirit of justice. Let’s put him with the heroes, but leave some question as to whether he’ll really show up to help. As for the snowy owl who leads the souls of the dead across the great divide, she should be petite and cute, with a light as bright as sunlight on fresh snow. Narssuk, who controls the weather, is an insane sky baby who lets down his caribou skin diaper to issue a stormy blast of thunder and snow.
RavenSomewhere along the line I found mention of the Tunrit, a race of people who lived in the arctic before the Raven created human beings. A race of prehistoric supermen. I could find nothing more about them except for the name of the tribe, but that was enough. I had found my villain. A promethean figure among the first men, who had wrestled sabre-toothed tigers and brought the sun from the other side of the sky, and who turned to sorcery to atone for that terrible mistake.
So are my versions of these mythological figures accurate? Probably not, since they came mostly out of my own imagination. But they might be. And that’s an important point. In dealing with a cultural belief system, albeit an archaic and disfavored one, I felt a duty to be respectful. My books sit proudly on the shelves of the Toronto Public Library and in a home for wayward Inuit boys in Nunavut, Alaska. In correspondence I’ve received from Inuit people reaction varies from praise for giving these mythological figures new life, to a stoic acknowledgement of the fact that at least I didn’t contradict anything.
That last is not entirely true. A pivotal figure in the series is the Moon-Man. Many Inuit tribes posit the familiar Native American myth that the lecherous Moon-Man chases his sister the Sun across the sky each day in hopes of an incestuous liaison. This didn’t fit in with my elderly, romantic Moon-Man nor my version of the Sun as an extraterrestrial spirit. What to do? I decided to have my shamanic heroine Alaana ask the Moon-Man, on one her soul-flights to his realm, if the story was true. “Oh no,” he says, “that’s just a story people tell.” So at least the contradiction comes right out of the mouth of the Moon-Man himself. Who could argue with that?
So, as a middle schooler, I thought that Awesomewriter65 would be the perfect username for my Wattpad. I had then started writing Happy Endings.
This story was practically my baby. I worked out ever single detail I could and planned it to the tee. Even though I have everything for it planned, I still have not finished my entire novel. I have been rewriting, revising and planning this entire universe since I was in the sixth grade. Cover made for me by a fellow writer on Wattpad.
Since publishing chapters of Happy Endings on Wattpad, so far I have gathered over 1k in views. In honor of the many years I have been posting chapters of Happy Endings, I thought I’d share with you my favorite scene from Happy Endings.
Before I share the excerpt, I should probably tell you what my story is about. This summary was pulled from my Wattpad account:
Another cover made by a fellow writer on Wattpad.“Life hits Rebecca Waters and Philip Waters in the face when their mom gets thrown in prison. With their mom in prison and their dad gone their older brother Eddie takes them in. Growing up with a drug dealing mom was hard enough, but after the arrest it was even harder being raised by their brother who was still growing up himself despite his age.
Over the years once the kids watched as their older brother grew up from a rebellious teenager to a loving husband with a stable job and a baby. One mishap; their mother is released from prison on good behavior and is ready to fight for custody.
If that can’t get any worse, Rebecca struggles with the idea of falling in love and the drama of high school. Thankfully Phil and Rebecca have their best friends to stick besides beside them. But when things start to look up, it all falls down. The twins’ mom hires scheming lawyer Shane Russo to plead their case and let their mom win. As he gets close to Rebecca and her weird family, Shane soon learns that he suddenly cares for this family which makes the battle even harder. Not only that, but Shane deals with his own inner demons.
Will they be able to stick together?”
Now, the following is an interaction between the lawyer, Shane, and the twins’ sister-in-law, Angie. If you have any interest in reading more, follow my Wattpad page and check out my posts there.Yet, another amazing cover made by another member of the Wattpad community.
“Shane stayed in a dirty motel a few blocks away from a few restaurants. This was his first custody case. Shane mostly worked with cases in which someone sued someone else. The only thing he hoped for is not bonding with the twins. That would be horrible. He was hired by the twins’ mom to represent them, but somehow let their mom win. For the sake of the case, and for the sake of him getting his money, he had to let their mom win and had to not get attached to the two teens.
As he threw his clothes in the dirty dresser that smelled like mold, he hoped the dresser wouldn’t ruin his clothes. The room was dark and dusty. There was one bed and a dresser and a square T.V. There was a bathroom, a small one at that. The room was quiet. It was almost too quiet. He could hear his own heart beat. It was a nervous heartbeat. It was a guilty heartbeat. The kind of heartbeat you get after someone gets furious with you and you’re afraid they’ll never forgive you.
All he had left in his brown matted up suitcase was a couple of black shirts and some socks. He shook, startled when he heard a knock at his room door. Shane stood silently hoping the knocking would go away and he could watch T.V. His body was like a deer when it sees headlights. Only fear pumped his blood. The knocking soon turned into banging and he gave in and slowly walked to open the door. When he opened the door, he saw a short British woman with dark red hair crossing her arms. Her arms were crossed and anger spread across her face.
Shane put on a fake face to hide his fear. ‘Hey, dollface,’ He said to her. ‘How ya doin’?’
Angela jabbed her pointer finger at Shane’s chest yelling, ‘You’re a fraud!’ She backed him up into the room and slammed the door behind her.
Shane crossed his arms, ‘What in the world are you on about?’ He snapped.
‘What am I on about? Don’t act like you don’t know,’ she replied in a irritated voice.
Shane threw his hands in the air. ‘Well if I’m an actor, you might as well give me an Oscar!’ He replied sarcastically in an almost shouting voice.
He tried to ignore Angela so he walked his way to the mini fridge in his motel. Angie still stood, silently judging him. Angela knows how to get information outta of people. She does it for a living. She can flash the opposing side in a courtroom a look and she can get the information out of people.
Angela is an honest person. She doesn’t believe in lying and she can sniff it out a liar from miles away.
‘Shane Russo, don’t you dare mess with me. I uncovered all your dirty little secrets.’
Shane stopped in his tracks as he opened the bottle of beer.
‘What do you know about me?’ His voice shook as he turned around to face her. He tried the best he could to as stay calm as he could, but in that moment it was hard to stay calm.
‘You’re just another sleazy lawyer!’ she accused.
‘I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about,’ He replied sipping his beer.
‘I have a very good friend who can dig up so much dirt about you. You may have Rebecca and Phil and maybe even Eddie a little, but I could see right through your ignorant smug look. I don’t trust you.’
Shane rolled his eyes at her. ‘Oh yeah?’ He tested.
‘You act like women don’t know how to do their research,’ Angie muttered under her breath.
Shane kept rolling his eyes at her. This whole conversation was like arguing with his siblings. The other one will just keep badgering him until he finally tells the truth. He didn’t want to give in, but if there is one thing he hates more than waking up before noon, it’s someone like Angie.
Granted, he knew what he was walking into when he signed up for this job. Laura gave him information of the family. Shane already knew what he needed to know. It was just a matter of time before he could put everything into action and do what he does best. One last awesome cover made for me by someone on Wattpad.
‘How’d you even find anything on me?’ Shane sighed giving in as he rubbed his temples. ‘Fine! You want the truth? I lie, okay? I bribe people and I do illegal things. And I like it.’
Angela was stunned and wide eyed. ‘I can’t believe you! How could you do that?’
Shane stifled a sarcastic laugh. ‘Look, dollface. There are two kinds of people out there. There are the Saints who want to do everything right. Then there are liars and I’m one of them.’
She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘God, you’re horrible. I can’t believe I breathe the same air as you.’
Shane downed the rest of his beer he had been drinking and threw it in the trash can. He watched her as she circled the room, trying to wrap her head around the situation. Angela quickly tried thinking of solutions to fix the problem.
It seemed like everyone had goggles on in the house. They all thought this guy was their savior. To Angie, he was translucent and she could see right through him. She was even surprised that Phil and Eddie fell for Shane’s act.
‘You act like you do nothing wrong. You’re a sleaze and a scammer. I can’t believe that people like you exist””’
He pointed his finger at her, cutting her off and shouting, ‘You don’t know what it’s like for me. When I first started out I broke and I needed the cash. It’s easy to throw a little bribe here and there.’
Her hands ran through her red hair. ‘Everyone starts off at the bottom, Shane! It would’ve been fine if you just played fair! You didn’t have to base your cases off lies and bribes!’
‘You’re a lawyer too! You should know that we’re professional liars!’
‘We serve for justice. We can’t just feed lies. We need cold hard facts. Why’d you even take this case?’
She seemed more calm than before, but now she was more sad than angry, ‘Why’d you even take this case? Because their mom offered you a lot of money? I can see you need it.’ She looked around at the grimy hotel room.
‘Okay, yes she gave me money to fight in this custody case and yes I may be living in a crappy motel room. Sure, I’m broke at this moment in time, but I’m not who I was back then.’
Angela scoffed at this and rolled her eyes. She had every right to. She doubted that he was any different now. The reason he was broke is because he blows all his money. Mostly on gambling and drinking. The reason he took this job was because to him, it seemed like the perfect job for him. It was different and seemed easy enough where he could pass with flying colors. Plus, these days it seems like people love seeing children reunited with their biological mother.
‘But I’m also doing this because I really want to do this, and do something good for these kids,’ Shane lied and Angela just rolled her eyes. She could see right through this guy. She no idea why anyone would trust this him.
Must be his good looks, Angela thought to herself.
‘Listen here Shane Russo, these kids mean the world to Eddie. I’m pretty sure he loves them more than he loves himself. If I could, I’d be the lawyer in this case but I’m not,’ She walked up to him and stabbed his chest with her finger again.
‘He waited so long to get them back in his life and if you mess anything up for this family I will make sure that every detail I have on you is released to the public.’
Shane stopped in his tracks and stared at the short woman walking to the door, ‘So let me get this straight. You’re not okay with lying, but you’re okay with blackmailing me?’
Angela turned around before she walked out the door. She turned back about to speak again but only stared for a good few seconds at the middle-aged man. Then she shook her head and left. Shane watched her get in her car. He watched until she drove away.”
Lou is a writer of rom coms, eater of pizza, lover of 90s boybands and cat enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter at @aweosmewriter.
4 Responses
ZOMBIEDÄMMERUNG: In which I extend the frontiers of our Great Canadian Literary culture to @CatRambo’s blog, eh? http://t.co/8QBGtb6JvS
Cat Rambo: Guest Post from Jamie Mason: ZOMBIEDÄMMERUNG ““ Twilight of the Walkers http://t.co/6qbJZbFEMg
RT @Jamiescribbles: ZOMBIEDÄMMERUNG: In which I extend the frontiers of our Great Canadian Literary culture to @CatRambo’s blog, eh? http:/”¦
@detoxqueen @CatRambo