i'm afraid of the dark. and zombie movies.

I’m a wimp. A scaredy-cat. A pansy (although I technically don’t like that term—flowers are always getting a bad rap. Pansy, shrinking violet, bleeding heart, etc. Do you see what I mean?). I’m NOT dying to meet anything that goes bump in the night. No problem with the night itself, especially if there’s a nightlight, a full moon, or some other illumination source nearby. I can even do camping. But your run-of-the-mill night monsters? Not my thing. I won’t be fantasizing about vampires, werewolves or zombies anytime soon.

I’m probably the most easily startled in my circle of acquaintances. Example: I can’t watch horror movies. Can’t do a lot of drama or suspense, either. The weeks leading up to Halloween are the worst of the whole year as far as television programming goes, in my opinion. All those “I know what you did last summer”-type movies and dudes named Freddie and Jason on TV. **shudder** M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is about as scary as I can stand (I know it’s not that scary. I’m the problem.). In fact, I had to walk out of the theater during Will Smith’s I Am Legend. This was due in part to the fact that I didn’t know it was a zombie flick until ten minutes before show time, but also in part to straight up cowardliness. A valiant Gryffindor I am not.

It therefore makes almost no sense that I can stomach dark, even scary, books. One of my favorite authors is Neil Gaiman. Description: Nice man who writes creepy and/or disturbing things. Another favorite writer: Robin McKinley. She’s penned an award-winning book with vampires in (called, ironically enough, Sunshine). Other recent reads: Pretty Monsters (win a copy here!) and The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Soon-to-be-read selections for the Everything Austen Challenge: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Mr. Darcy, Vampyre (contest to win a signed copy here). You can count on the fact that if either of them are made into movies, though, I will be far, far away.

[Note: I will grudgingly admit to having seen the movie version of Twilight. I was fairly sure it couldn’t be traumatic, as the book was heavy on teenage obsession and light on gore. I was right. Giggled in disbelief and incomprehension through the whole thing.]

Perhaps there’s something in the written word: a distance, or more nuanced and underlying humor in the sinister that renders it endurable to me rather than the film and television adaptations of those dark books. In any case, I think that a good collection and contrast of mediums (written, filmic, aural) is necessary to any full life. Perhaps one of these days I will let someone tie me to a chair to watch Silence of the Lambs. You never know. Pigs may start flying too.

But I digress. These recent reading choices inspired me to a) Petition my excessively talented and creative sister to make a ZOMBIE CARD (see lovely photos), and b) Hold another contest to give away a similar hand-made bookmark (inspired by the card) tucked inside a paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. My next post will share the details. In the meantime, check out this contest for the forthcoming YA book Never Slow Dance with a Zombie and another for a goodie bag (also including the book!). And be sure to look at September Zombie Week. Whatever your feelings about zombies (you’re afraid of them, laugh at them, or don’t care much either way), there’s a surprising amount of zombie-lit out there, and some of it can be truly entertaining. Err…yeah. Go celebrate undead monsters!?!

(Zombies were never so cute, if I do say so myself...)