My Little Apocalypse

I’ve long had a terrible weakness for post-apocalypse stories, and am thrilled to finally be reading Terry Nation’s Survivors, which a kind reader picked up for me from my overcrowded Amazon Wish List.

Much of the post-apocalypse nonsense has spilled over into my writing.  You’ve just finished reading The Walkers and, starting this Sunday, you’ll suffer through a few weeks of my early 90’s attempt at an apocalypse story, In This Darkness.

Of course, Judgment Day premiers tomorrow in its new regular Friday spot.   Well, a brief introduction premieres… You’ll have to wait till next week to start reading the novel.  (Nothing at that link today, but that’ll be the home for the novel.)

As I’ve been going through Judgment Day, and the two post-apocalyptic shorts in the Sunday Archives, I find myself back on the apocalypse train.  An idea I’ve had batting around my head for the last couple of years.  My schedule makes it impossible, but I’m debating launching into yet another failed novel project.  Just to say that I did it again.  At this point, the only thing that really keeps me writing is the driving need to keep content moving here on GS, per my now long ago 2007 New Year’s Resolution.  When you work five jobs, getting an article together can be a serious chore.  Especially when the two jobs that consume my time – the regular day job and the weekend job – are full of interruptions.  I’ve timed it at my day job: Every two minutes, someone will come in to talk about nonsense or try to relieve their boredom.  They’ll do this even if I’m wearing headphones, reading, on the phone, or pointedly ignoring them.

Everyone at my day job is brain dead and, in the end, it’s actually insulting to be there.  But…tra-la-la.  I have publishing debt to pay off before I can flee to a cabin in the Ozarks and raise rattlesnakes.  (My current goal in life.)

The good thing about living in the Ozarks is that, when the bowel cancer hits, I can just go throw myself off a cliff and be eaten by animals.  The manly way to go.  I refuse to die in a hospital when the time comes…

The worry with writing an apocalypse story (and reading one), is that I start to daydream.  I walk around the city at lunchtime and imagine the streets empty. Terror raining down on all the pencil neck office workers.  I’ve always dreamed of being the sole survivor…I think most people do.  Certainly only children from the latchkey generation where, every day from around 3pm until our parents dragged home in the evening, we were sole survivors.  Batting around the house completing chores and homework in time to watch GI Joe and Transformers, playing alone down in the woods, or at the end of the garden, or, in my case, in the open sewer that goes by the quaint name of Rock Creek in Kensington, MD.  Rock Creek Park is a huge greenspace cutting through Kensington and roaring into DC.  The creek somewhat formidable in a few areas, but mostly shallow and inviting.  The woods a haven for hobos – lean-to’s and trash piles here and there – but otherwise safe, because Kensington is where the rich people grew up.  You could weave through the tangled forest in a sort of Bridge to Terabithia haze, usually coming up on the Beltway where you could crouch and watch cars scream past, or dig through the trash for something of value.

I’ve talked about my old Rock Creek haunts before, so no need to continue.  Besides, I have to go reread the intro to Judgment Day and make sure it makes sense.  I wrote it before I started re-reading and serializing the book, so maybe my attitudes have changed.