Scrounger: Intro

or the past few years, I've been working on random bits of writing and submitting them to various online literary magazines. I am always met with, "this is not what we're looking for at this time," which is a euphemism for "that was crap." Then they end the rejection with "we hope you won't stop submitting," which we all know means, "we'll reject you regardless. We have your name on our bulletin board." 

I love the literary world, and I am happy to be a part of it in a very miniscule way, but sometimes I feel like those literary magazines are a bit stuffy. Although I enjoy writing and would consider myself a writer, I don't know if I would exactly fit into the classic mold of "writer." 

In a sense, I dislike the cliche of the "the writer" just as much as I dislike "theater people."

With that in mind, I decided to go back to my roots one afternoon while searching for a place to submit some more writing: horror.

Zombies, to be exact. 

Oh, I know -- zombies are as niche as vampires were a few years ago. 

"The Walking Dead" : Zombies :: "Twilight" : Vampires

I jumped on the zombie train, too, don't you worry. I played around with some lite zombie fiction, which I enjoyed writing. I made it a bit of a love story, with some attraction played in (I will say, this was before "Warm Bodies" came out, so I wasn't swayed by that, thank you).

I liked it enough to search out a horror-based online literary magazine, and to my delight I came across Tales of the Zombie War. So, I submitted. And, hurray, the editor liked my piece enough, he posted it. 

This piece was originally something I wrote in a website called Ficly and people seemed to want more. What? You want more? But, I thought I was done with the piece...

Apparently not. 

So, I added a bit more. And then, I decided that I would also post it here, too. In pieces. 

Don't worry -- it'll be short each time. Like, no more than 1,024 characters (not words) short. That's the length of 7.3 text messages -- you read those all the time, so there's no excuse for you to read this.

So, I present to you a zombie story, with some elements of romance. It might be a bit icky at times, but don't worry -- I usually keep it PG-13. Because, really, what you imagine might be far worse than what I put into words, and that's just fine.