Burning Building

On Not Enjoying the Show

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:43:00 +0000

When theaters allow movies to run with faulty sound or projection because they're too greedy to care, people should get angrier.

Some movies are important works of art, and even the ones that aren't are often at least culturally significant. You can only see a movie for the first time once, and in most cases the first time will be the only time. Movie theaters aren't like any other business. They're not selling you merchandise that can be returned if defective or services that can be offered gratis if unsatisfactory--they're responsible for the entire population's entry into our era's most important art form. So when they dim their projector bulbs to save a few bucks or play movies in theaters with blown speakers or refuse to pay a kid minimum wage to stay in the booth and make sure the screen doesn't go black for an entire scene, they're not just giving you a bad product for your money, they're permanently spoiling your experience of a cultural event. And you should be pissed.

Low Expectations

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:19:00 +0000

Every time I tell someone I got a book published they say, "Oh, like a local indie press?" When I tell them it's being made into a film they say, "Oh, like a local indie film?" When I tell them John Malkovich is in it they say, "Oh, like a local indie actor who looks like John Malkovich?"

Delays, apologies

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:09:00 +0000

I'm in big trouble.
I hope you guys are good forgivers.
I put my short story collection, THE HUNGRY MOUTH up for pre-order a couple weeks ago, promising that it would be finished mid-December and you'd receive it before Christmas. What I didn't mention was that I'm still writing the damn thing. Well, not writing it, but doing final editing with my agent/editor. He reads the book, takes notes on what's wrong with it, sends them to me, and I edit. I thought I would've been finished with this process weeks ago, but as I've mentioned before, my agent is a unique case because as much as he is a wizard at the business side of literature and can sell a gay prostitution memoir to a grade school textbook publisher, he's also an artist. He understands literature much better than I do, and his grasp of what works and what doesn't, in every area from major plot points down to comma placement, makes me think he should write his own novels. He also had a pretty kickass grunge band in the 90s.

The upside of him being an artist is he makes a great editor. The downside is that like most artists, he's a bit, shall we say...unpredictable. And in this case, an editing process which he assured me would take less than a week has taken about a month. Which is to say, THE BOOK WON'T BE READY IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS, BUT IT'S NOT MY FAULT!

I really do apologize. I'm going to be finished editing within a couple days, but then it takes 7 days to print the books, and at least 3 days to ship them to you, so realistically, you're not going to receive them till the first or second week of January. I'm a bad person and if you want to press charges for fraud, I will understand. Maybe prison will toughen me up. It worked for Dostoyevsky.

Almost 200 books have already been pre-ordered, and I'm sure a lot of those were intended as gifts. Since I've failed to deliver on my promise, what I'd like to do is send you a postcard so you'll at least have something to give them on Christmas morning/Hanukah evening or whenever it is you celebrate Hanukah. So if you pre-ordered the book as a gift for someone else (not yourself!) please email me at isaacinspace at gmail dot com, put HOLIDAY STYLINGS in the subject line, give me your address and tell me who the gift is for. I'll send a postcard that you can wrap up and write "I didn't fuck up, the author did" on the envelope.

(PLEASE only do this if you bought the book as a gift. My poor wrists can't handle writing 200 postcards.)

THE HUNGRY MOUTH

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:00:00 +0000

For everyone who's been asking me, "When is your next book coming out?" "What are you working on right now?" "Why don't you do something with your life instead of dicking around on Twitter all day?"....here is my answer:

There's a proper sales pitch on the book's own special site, but since we're here on my blog, I'd like to do a rambling Academy Awards style speech and say that I'm unbelievably excited to finally be releasing these stories. Those of you who've stuck with me since the old days of creepy HTML adventures and 1-paragraph vignettes have been asking me to compile a book for a long time, but what you might not realize is that this isn't just a collection of old literary b-sides and rarities. Of the 20 stories here, 8 of them are brand new, never seen by anyone but me and my agent, and one of them, which comprises 1/3 of the book, is a novella set in the world of WARM BODIES, involving the early lives and deaths of Nora, Julie, and M. In my opinion, this collection contains most of the best writing I've ever done.

Of the stories that I've previously published online, all of them are significantly revised, refined, and added to. This book is a unique situation--I'm self-publishing it before I try to land an traditional publisher because I just don't have the patience to wait through that process. So what you'll be getting is an ultra-limited edition that is designed, printed, numbered, and signed by me myself.

There will only ever be 500 copies made.

The book is a matte UV-coated paperback printed on quality natural stock. Every copy will be signed, and any and all profits will go to support my dear old mother, Lynda Jo Marion, who will be handling the shipping for me. (You might get one of her supernaturally not-grey hairs inside your envelope!)

The following stories are present:

THE BACKROADS (NEW)

SHE AND I WALKING (formally "Blind Date")

RED! RED! RED! (formally "The Angriest Stoplight")

THE HUNGRY MAN

PIZDEC, PIZDATO (formally "Paper Airplane")

THE HOLE IN THE LAKE

SUMMER LIGHTNING

THIS TYRANNOSAUR LOVES YOU!

THE ONION CLOCK (formerly "Eli Jones and the Onion Clock")

PARKED CAR (NEW)

EMAILS FROM A SERPENT TO VARIOUS
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES (NEW)

YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL

ADAM (NEW)

ASCENDING NOTES (formerly "Now We Have a Map of the Piano")

JERRY LIVES FOREVER (formerly "What It Was Like For Jerry, Being Immortal)

HARSH WORDS FROM A FERAL CAT (NEW)

LOUD NEIGHBORS

THE MAN WHO SWALLOWED A UNIVERSE (NEW)

GRASS THROUGH THE CONCRETE (NEW)

A LONG STORY (NEW)

Note that the books are still being finalized and printed, but if by some chance they aren't going to be ready by Christmas day, I will send you some kind of special Christmas surprise that you can use as an IOU for anyone you might be buying gifts for.

New WARM BODIES story!

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:18:00 +0000

Have you missed the sweet sound of R's voice? Have you wondered how he feels about the holiday season? Is he a post-apocalyptic Santa or Scrooge? Did he cut back on his murder rates in the spirit of Christmas?

I wrote a short story for City Arts magazine about R's first winter as a walking corpse. It's significantly less heartwarming than most holiday specials.

Pick up a City Arts mag if you're in Seattle or read it online here:

http://www.cityartsonline.com/issues/seattle/2011/12/boarded-window

Merry Christmas, friends. Enjoy your memories.

Official Statement

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:49:00 +0000

Regarding that rather um...familiar-looking "poster" for the Warm Bodies movie you may have seen floating around the Internet recently: that is NOT an official promo image and is DEFINITELY not the official movie poster. It wasn't even meant to be seen in the U.S. So tell your local gossip blogger to relax, and stay tuned.

Halloween Rerun

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:35:00 +0000

Since I'm too busy/lazy/uninspired/tired/stressed/arthritic to write a new post about Halloween, here's a rerun of last year's Halloween special for your spooky amusement.

Factual Facts About Halloween

A good costume idea

Halloween is that special time of year when parents dress their children as classic representations of evil and send them out to demand sugary taxes from their neighbors on threat of violence. But what a lot of kids don’t realize is that there is more to Halloween than just eating so much candy that you throw up and lie huddled in bed all night twitching and cursing God. Halloween is also an important cultural holiday for zombies, vampires, Spidermans, and other manifestations of our collective consciousness’ darkest dreams.

Although witches and demons have been part of our culture for centuries, and skeletons have been around since the early Paleozoic Era, Halloween is a relatively modern invention. After observing the successful creation of the African-American holiday Kwanzaa in 1966, an unnamed zombie proposed a similar celebration for his own people as a way to promote species awareness and acceptance, and also to make hunting easier by flooding the streets with costumed decoys. No one expected the holiday to catch on outside the undead community, but the ‘60s were a time of profound social upheaval, and since the youth culture had already begun to embrace monsters—who possessed an undeniable charisma and sinister cool that humans couldn’t help but envy and want to imitate—Halloween quickly exploded into one of the world’s most popular holidays.

Another good costume idea

Halloween is celebrated in all English-speaking countries and most Pashtu-speaking tribal lands, but the traditions associated with it vary from place to place. In my own city,Seattle, Halloween looks very different than it does in, say,London. The basic spirit is the same; our kids still go Trick-or-Treating and dress up as aborted goat fetuses and schizophrenic hallucinations, but because of Seattle’s frequent, heavy rainfall, we must make some adjustments. Since October is our wet season, the streets are usually not navigable by land, so on the morning of the 31st every family has a “Creepy Craft Party” where we help the kids build canoes out of paper and popsicle sticks. We then load the little rascals into their boats and set them adrift in the floodwaters, where the violent currents whip them through the streets until they eventually run aground on a random neighbor’s porch. From there, the Trick-or-Treating resumes more or less traditionally. The neighbors take the waterlogged tykes inside, dry them off, and perform any necessary CPR. The eager kids are then treated to an extravagant feast of generic bulk candy and put to bed in the garage if the neighbors have one, or under the sink if they don’t. The next morning, the neighbors look up their little guests’ barcode tattoos on www.kidcode.gov, find the parents’ addresses, and return the children home only slightly worse for wear. That is, of course, if they weren’t drowned or eaten by river vampires the night before.

A good couple's costume

All this may sound like an anxious night for the kids’ parents, but playing the odds—even with such morbidly high stakes!—is just part of the Halloween experience in Seattle. With over eight hundred casinos—more per square mile than libraries, schools, and coffee shops combined!—Seattle is known around the world as a gambling city, and the question of whether or not the children will make it home from Trick-or-Treating is the subject of much extravagant wagering. In 2009, an estimated forty million dollars changed hands via Halloween betting. Traditionally, parents will always bet against their own kid, so that if he or she does end up being eaten by river vampires, the parents will at least have their winnings as consolation.

Losing a child is always a hard thing, but the thrill of the risk—along with the fun of friendly competition between neighbors—is what that keeps Halloween interesting for Seattle’s adults, most of whom can no longer enjoy candy due to suppurating stomach ulcers. Some may call our holiday traditions inappropriate or even irresponsible, but after all, it’s Halloween. If you want warmth, good times, and your children to be alive, you can go celebrate Christmas.

New Story - "PIXEL"

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:45:00 +0000

This story owes its origin to a whimsical tweet by Analeigh Tipton, who has whimsy to spare so I didn't mind stealing some.

Warm Bodies fan art

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:22:00 +0000

Fan art has been trickling toward me over the last couple years. I find it adorable and wanted to share a couple with you. Some are amazing, some are amusing. You decide.

R has kind of a Connor Oberst thing going on here.

Never thought I'd see R become an anime hero. Zombie fist ultimate strike! Kiyaaaa!

I like this because Julie looks like Gadget from Rescue Rangers, who was my first cartoon crush.

My sometimes collaborator Sarah Musi made this one.
An overtalented artist who continues to slum it with me in zombie town.

Dog Person

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:56:00 +0000

I met this girl, she told me she was a dog person. I was like, "That's awesome! I love dogs!" But when I took her to a government laboratory, they found no canine DNA in her at all. Women are liars.

Trapped in a car guy, speak up

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 20:25:00 +0000

Several years ago, someone emailed me or commented on this blog with an idea for a story. He proposed I write something about people who get trapped in a car and have to live there for a long time. I scoffed at the idea at the time, pointing out its many impracticalities, but it unexpectedly came back to me later in a more abstract form and I did indeed write a story based on it. It's going to be in my upcoming short story book, and I want to credit the person who sent me the idea. So whoever that was, if you're still out there and still listening, speak up and you'll be immortalized in the small print of a book very few people will ever read.

Meet Baleen

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:12:00 +0000

Anyone curious about the RV-livin' author lifestyle? I made a slightly drunken introduction for Baleen, my beautiful home on wheels.

New story

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:12:00 +0000

Had a unpleasant night last night. Wrote an unpleasant story this morning. Enjoy.

Reading about myself

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:28:00 +0000

Things I learned about myself from this article in The Daily:

1. I am "attractive in an emo sort of way."

2. I am "bewildering."

3. I am "half an aperture stop away from something like obliviousness."

4. I am a hipster cliche.

Can't argue with any of that. Read this article if you have an interest.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/08/14/081411-arts-isaac-marion-1-4/

Musical Camping Trip [CONTAINS NUDITY]

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:09:00 +0000

Previously, on Isaac Marion:

Isaac was living in Bellingham with his girlfriend. They were about to move back to Seattle together. Then they broke up. Isaac moved back into his RV and headed back to Seattle. Will he be able to remember the plot of his old life and resume it? What do single people do between 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm? When is it safe to start listening to music again instead of NPR and standup comedy? What are society's current hygiene expectations?

PRESENT DAY

I just went on a fun trip and I want to tell you about it.

My longtime friend, former room-mate, and former/future bandmate Jared McSharry proposed a musical camping trip. This doesn't mean we go camping and randomly burst into vibrato-heavy songs about camping. It means we bring instruments out into the wilderness and try to play and write songs while under the influence of nature and freedom and stuff. We get in my RV, Baleen the Big Blue Whale, and take off for Winthrop, WA.

Along the way, Jared reveals a terrible secret. He hasn't actually broken up with his girlfriend. They are trying to work things out.
Work things out? What the hell, man? You're supposed to be sad and lonely with me!

Sometimes my friends are so selfish.

I forgive Jared his lack of unhappiness and we arrive in Winthrop. Winthrop is a simulation of an Old West town. It looks like this:

Usually I find theme towns depressing. I feel like I'm in a movie set, all the residents are actors, and if I slam a door too hard a matte-painting sky is going to fall on my head revealing buzzing fluorescent lights and a table full of stale turkey pesto wraps. But Winthrop surprises me a little. We have breakfast at an "inn" and their biscuits and gravy contain real biscuits and real gravy. They have a coffee shop that serves the kind of coffee that comes in tiny cups. They have a brewery.

We go to the brewery. They have an awe-inspiring selection of beers, probably over 20 to choose from. Except they are "out of" all of them except three. When I ask the waiter why they aren't serving 80% of their beers, he explains, as if it's obvious, "Because we're brewing those ones." He then starts to walk away, pauses to chew his bubblegum, then keeps walking.

Tangental note:
Every floor in Winthrop is made of ancient, hand-hewn planks to give the place that "boots and spurs clattering" atmosphere. The downside of this is that every table in Winthrop is wobbly, and every beer is spilled.

The next morning we activate our primary mission: to play music in a wild place far from any electrical outlets or facebooking facilities.

Picture the following:

Two guys in shorts and t-shirts are hiking along a riverbank. They find a patch of sunny sand and lay out a beach blanket. They stick some beers in the icy river. One guy pulls out an acoustic guitar and starts idly strumming.
Now, ruin this pastoral scene by revealing that the second guy is a keyboardist. He pulls out a synthesizer that looks like the master control panel from Apollo 11. He plugs it into a portable power device that looks like a world-destroying neutron bomb that can also jumpstart your car, inflate your floaties, and play your iPod. (It actually does all those things except destroy the world. It also has a flashlight.)

The scene now looks like this:

A note about my friend Jared: he likes to mess with people's preconceptions. If someone tells him the sunglasses he found in a ditch are women's sunglasses, by God he's going to wear them, just to provoke conversation. If someone tells him his fuzzy lemon-yellow cardigan makes him look like Big Bird, by God he's going to resemble the FUCK out of Big Bird. And if a few people ask if he and I are a gay couple, by God he's going to strip down to nothing but package-hugging red spandex underwear and Jackie Onassis glasses while we're playing music on the beach on a rainbow striped beach blanket.

Our musical duo created quite a stir amongst all the kayakers and river floaters. I have no doubt our ~~flaming~~ incendiary performance earned us a mention in the next day's Winthrop County Almanac.

That night we go back to the Old Schoolhouse brewery to catch Jared's friend's band, and since Jared has at least one foot dipped ankle-deep in the hippie world, this band is a full-blown jam band. If you're unfamiliar with that genre, jam bands are often staffed with ridiculously skilled musicians, but instead of using their chops to rock you to your knees or drag raw emotion out of your rusty urban heart, they use them to make you smoke weed and dance and feel like everything is just kinda generally a-ok, man.
Also, their sets last literally three hours.

I'm digging this band as much as I'm able to dig such bands, but beer and emotion and beer-emotions are tugging at my soul and the sun is setting over a yonder hill, so I have to run out and summit it. When I summit, I take this picture of the horizon:

This is not an abstract painting. This is Washington.

When the show is over we go back and chat up the band and somehow the group of hippie chicks that had been leading the evening's dance revolution becomes involved in our conversation. Next thing I know we are invited to go night swimming and I'm drunk-driving an RV on deserted country roads behind a Subaru (of course) full of hippies leading us to a lake somewhere out in the dark.

Everyone convenes in a boat-launch parking lot, and this is where things get fascinating. See, this is a moonless night in the middle of vast country with no city lights for miles around, so we're all hanging out in COMPLETE DARKNESS. I have some idea what one of the girls looks like because back in the light she was arguably attractive and I'd been beer-goggling her dance moves, but the rest of the group I met in the dark and never saw any faces. So I'm sitting there in the dusty gravel making conversation with a bunch of silhouette shadow people, and then it's time to swim.

Everyone stands up. The girls strip. I can tell they're naked because their vaguely defined body shapes are solid white from head to toe. Well, they're either naked or wearing light-colored swimsuits. I choose naked. I also get naked. We all walk down the boat launch into water that feels like a bath that's maybe been drawn a little too long but still pretty cozy. We swim out into the middle of the lake, feeling the cool water caressing our inappropriates.

This is a nice experience. Jared opts out and stays on shore, so I'm in a nameless lake in an unknown town treading water in a circle of complete strangers, completely naked, in complete darkness. Above, the sky is so thick with stars I can see the spiral arms of the galaxy. I go into a backfloat and it's like drifting through deep space. I think profound, cosmic thoughts and ponder the mysteries of life and love and the universe, and also the fact that there's nothing but a few feet of clear water between my penis and five vaginas.

Sometimes hippies are okay.

HEAVY BUMMER BUZZKILL EPILOGUE

Back on land, Possibly Attractive Silhouette #1 suggests we all sneak into a nearby lodge and get in a hot tub together. Wah-wah guitar and saxophone fills the night air, raising my spirits and also other parts. Jared and I get in the RV and start it up, but by the time the engine warms up enough to drive, we're alone in the parking lot. We have no idea where this lodge is or how to catch up with our new friends. We drive back to Winthrop and go to sleep and then go home in the morning and Jared goes back to work and I take my RV to a repair shop to fix the broken propane alarm before I burn to death in a gas fire.

THE END

An insane man VS "Captain America"

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:43:00 +0000

My local cinema has an insane man working for them now. I walked in on a whim just looking for a movie to kill a couple hours, and as soon as I was in the door he hollered at me from about thirty feet away.

"WHAT MOVIE ARE YOU GOING TO SEE?" the insane man demanded.

I was confused at first. Was he an employee? He was wearing a Loewes Cineplex Odeon shirt, but he didn't seem to be assigned to the box office or ticket gate or any particular post. This insane man was just wandering freely around the lobby.

"Um, I'm not sure yet," I replied.

"SEE HORRIBLE BOSSES."

"Yeah...?"

"IT'S SO FUNNY. I LAUGHED 18 TIMES."

"Well, it looks like that started an hour ago..."

"OH, THERE ARE PROBABLY 20 MINUTES OF TRAILERS."

"Ok, well that's still...I think I'm just going to see whatever starts playing soon, if that's ok."

"SEE COWBOYS AND ALIENS."

I looked around the lobby for help or an explanation. What was happening here? The box office kids ignored the situation.

"I do want to see Cowboys and Aliens," I told the insane man. "But probably not today. And it doesn't start for another hour."

"FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS WASN'T THAT GOOD."

"Good to know, but I wasn't..."

"HARRY POTTER."

"I've seen it."

"HARRY POTTER."

"You know what? I think I'm just gonna see Captain America. It looks good, and it starts in five minutes."

"CAPTAIN AMERICA IS AN OLDER MOVIE, SO IT CAN'T REALLY BE AS COOL AS THE NEW ONES, BUT IT'S STILL OKAY."

"An older movie...? It just came out like a week ago. Surely you aren't saying you think it's an old movie because the story takes place in the 1940s...?"

"IT'S GOOD THAT ACTORS GET PAID SO MUCH BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO DO THINGS LIKE FLY AND TIME TRAVEL AND GET SHOT A LOT. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW REALITY WORKS."

Then the insane man moved backwards into his ticket gate and silently took my ticket for Captain America, tore off the stub, and directed me to theater #11.

I thought Captain America was pretty good, despite its handicap.

CASTING NEWS! And vague musings on the possibility of a sequel...

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:09:00 +0000

So, a lot of people ask me about the cast for the Warm Bodies movie and so far I've had only our star, Nicholas Hoult, to offer. I've actually known who his co-star is going to be for several months, but the official announcement was pending some contractual details being worked out or some such blah-blah and I was forbidden to open my mouth. But despite the lack of features in Variety or other reputable sources, word about our female lead has been steadily leaking, particularly from that female lead herself via interviews and Twitter, so enough already, let's come out with it.

Our fiery heroine Julie Grigio is to be played by this woman:

I'll give you a moment to recover that breath she just took away.

Ok. Her name is Teresa Palmer. She is an up-and-comer, so her name may not rock the bells, but you can find her in "Bedtime Stories" opposite Adam Sandler, "Take Me Home Tonight" opposite Topher Grace, and "I Am Number Four" opposite a slow-motion explosion.

I've only seen her in I Am Number Four, which wasn't exactly a Teresa Palmer showcase (she doesn't have any lines until the last 15 minutes) so I can't claim intimate familiarity with her work or her talents, but I've heard great things about her audition, and based on her performance in IA#4 and general saucyness in interviews, I think she has what it takes to capture the volatile combination of hardened badassery and wounded tenderness that is Julie. I'm eager to see how the chemistry develops between this Aussie firecracker and our politely British zombie hero.

On another note....

To everyone who's asked me if there will be a sequel and had to listen to me rant against the very idea of writing one...I'd like to amend my answer a little. I've had some ideas recently that make the prospect of a sequel much more intriguing. But I think if I do ever write one, it will surprise people. Warm Bodies has already surprised some people by not being what they expected when they heard "zombie novel", but I think the follow-up would diverge even more from that genre. There would still be zombies in it, but they wouldn't necessarily be the focus anymore. I think the characters would find themselves in a world that's much bigger and weirder than they realized, where zombies and skeletons seem almost normal compared to what else is out there. R and Julie would find out what it actually means to be the vanguard of a new breed of humanity, and that it involves a lot more than changing their eye color.

Basically what I'm saying is that, despite what I've said in the past, I think there IS a sequel in there--who knows, maybe even a series. But since it would deviate so much from the original, I would have to have a pretty large and loyal following to risk spending a year or more writing it. I would lose a lot of people by moving away from zombies, so there would have to be a big enough core fanbase to support the book even without all the rabid zombie fans. I'll be watching how things go with the movie and the paperback and all that, and gauging interest. If it seems like enough people care about this world and these characters and are willing to follow them into strange new territory...I just might take them there. So, I guess it's up to you guys. Tell your friends! ;-)

Duck Hero

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:01:00 +0000

I have an amazing and heartwarming story for you guys. Yesterday me and Nichole were running errands. It was a miserable day full of pain and sadness and endless medical offices. As we were leaving one of those, we saw a mother duck leading a train of babbys across the road.

Now, Nichole loves ducks to an unreasonable degree. Which is saying something since it's reasonable to love ducks to a pretty damn high degree.

THESE DUCKS WILL MAKE NICHOLE HAPPY, I thought to myself. THESE DUCKS WILL RESCUE OUR DAY!

I stopped the car in the middle of the two lanes to protect the duck's passage. We giggled and squealed as the ducks hobbled and quacked. A woman and child on the sidewalk also saw the ducks and joined us in the squee party. All human hearts within range were severely warmed.

Suddenly, a metaphorical cloud passed over the sun, which was also metaphorical. The ducks were on the grassy median and were hobbling and quacking into the other side of the street. A large silver SUV with an elderly man at the wheel was barreling toward them. It seemed highly unlikely that he would see the ducks.

THE DUCKS WERE GOING TO DIE!

A vision unfolded in my head. While Nichole and the woman and the child and myself--all of us passionate lovers of ducks--look on in horror, the ducks disappear beneath the SUV's cruel black tires. Nichole, overwhelmed by the sight of her day's one ray of light snuffed out before her eyes, jumps in front of a passing truck and kills herself. The mother and daughter, who were on their way home from the funeral of the woman's parents and husband and son--who were all recently killed by an SUV--also lose all hope and suffer simultaneous brain aneurysms. The elderly man who killed the ducks steps out of the car and removes his Vietnam Veteran baseball cap.

"There is no innocence left in the world," he mutters. "I have killed it all."

He pulls a pistol out of his jacket and shoots himself in the head. His brains spray all over his wife's face. His wife has a brain aneurysm. I am left alone in a field of blood and sadness. I cry for a few minutes and then have a brain aneurysm. Later, the duck autopsy reveals the baby ducks died of brain aneurysms moments before impact so in a sense, they were killed twice.

BUT NONE OF THIS HAPPENED!

Because as the SUV was hurtling toward tragedy, Nichole leaped into action! Without a moment's hesitation she dived out of the car and ran toward the SUV, waving her arms and screaming, "DUCKS! DUUUUUUUUCKS!"

The elderly man screeched to a stop mere feet from the ducks. The ducks, realizing they had just felt death's rancid breath on their hilarious little waddling butts, sped up slightly until they were across the road and safe in the grass.

The elderly man got out of his SUV and took off his Vietnam Veteran baseball cap. He looked at Nichole. Nichole looked at him. He gave her a crisp, wet-eyed salute, and she returned it. We all went home, pondering life and mortality and ducks.

This morning, a letter arrived in the mail. There was a key in it. It was the key to the city of Duckburg.

My girlfriend is a hero in Duckburg.

Fake Craigslist Ad To Vent My Frustration

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:54:00 +0000

APARTMENT FOR RENT!!! IN SEATTLE AREA (OLYMPIA)

Reply to: sale-376259264@craigslist.org
Date: 20011-05-11, 6:55PM PDT

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PostingID: 376259264

Also, some more fake ads from the old days when Burning Building was funny.
MORE ADS I DID LONG AGO

A...story...of sorts...that I wrote a while ago.

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:07:00 +0000

OUR ROOM MATE SUSAN

“Hey.”

“You look pretty trashed. Rough night?”

“I’m never drinking again.”

“Yeah, for the rest of the day maybe.”

“What’d you think I meant?”

“God, this place is a disaster. We need to clean.”

“Most of this is Susan’s.”

“Have you seen her yet?”

“Are you kidding? It’s only 11:30. She won’t be up for at least another two hours.”

“I’m getting real sick of this. Her shit is all over the house.”

“Let’s go wake her up.”

“Go for it if you want your hand bitten off. She’s a beast in the morning.”

“Yeah, probably not wise. I’ll wait till after she gets her cigarette.”

“Hey.”

“So hungover.”

“Me too. I think I need to slow down; I never even left the house today.”

“Me either. Puked three times.”

“Shit.”

“Did you ever see Susan?”

“Nope. Her car’s here though.”

“This mac and cheese is sprouting mold, look at this.”

“Gross.”

“Well, I need to puke again. See ya.”

“Enjoy.”

“Hey.”

“Well today’s the day.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Job hunt.”

“Where you gonna start?”

“I don’t know. Probably just drive around and look for help wanted signs. They still do those, right?”

“Like I’d know?”

“It’s starting to stink in here. Where the hell is Susan?”

“I peeked in her room this morning. She’s in there sleeping.”

“When was that?”

“Like 12:30?”

“God. We should wake her up.”

“Be my guest.”

“You’re not going anywhere today are you?”

“Nah.”

“Make sure you catch her when she gets up.”

“Will do.”

“Hey.”

“How’d the job hunt go?”

“Didn’t go. Got high and fell asleep on the couch. You were here all day, didn’t you see me?”

“I was in my room all day.”

“So we missed Susan again.”

“I’m not sure we missed her. Not sure she ever came out.”

“Jesus. I’m gonna wake her up right now.”

“Wow. I thought my room was messy.”

“It smells like shit in here.”

“She must have a dozen rotting sandwiches under all those clothes. I can spot three take-out boxes just on the surface.”

“I’m not going in there. It’s lethal even from out here.”

“Susan!”

“That’s not gonna work. She sleeps through everything. I was playing drums in my room for two hours yesterday and she didn’t even yell at me.”

“Fine. We’ll get her tomorrow.”

“Hey.”

“Man, what happened yesterday? I lost my phone in the couch and missed three calls from the admissions guy. Now I’m not gonna get in this quarter.”

“Sorry man.”

“What the hell did we do all day?”

“I don’t even remember. Watched TV?”

“Maybe it’s this house. All this fucking clutter gets into my head. I can’t focus.”

“Yeah, but it’s because we can’t focus that the clutter got there in the first place.”

“Shit. Chicken or egg scenario.”

“Exactly.”

“Where the hell is Susan?”

“Haven’t seen her.”

“Let’s go drag her down here and have a cleaning party.”

“I’m in, let’s do it.”

“Oh my God it stinks in here. How can she live with this?”

“Susan!”

“I told you yelling’s not gonna work. Go shake her.”

“I don’t even think I can get to her bed through all this garbage and clothes. I need a snow shovel.”

“Susan! You’re gonna get bed sores!”

“Wow, look how thin her hair’s getting. There’s big clumps of it on her pillow.”

“She bleached it like four times last month trying to get the right color ‘cause she didn’t want to go to a salon. Her scalp must be permanently scarred.”

“Have you seen her go outside at all this month? Christ, it’s the middle of July and her face is paler than my ass.”

“I noticed that. Is she depressed or something? What’s her deal?”

“No idea. She’s a pretty philosophical chick, maybe she thinks all our efforts our meaningless.”

“She’s also pretty hip, maybe she thinks people that try are trying too hard.”

“Or maybe she’s just lazy.”

“Or all of the above.”

“God, there are actually flies buzzing over her. Look at that.”

“I need to get a picture of this.”

“The flies won’t show up. It’ll just be a picture of Susan in bed. Not exactly news.”

“Yeah. Well anyway, should we just tackle the mess ourselves? It’d probably only take like twenty minutes.”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“I'm gonna go lie down for a bit.”

“Okay. Me too.”

“See ya later.”

“Later.”

More Words From My Fingers

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Wed, 25 May 2011 20:37:00 +0000

Hey guys. Sorry my blog is so self-promotional lately but I have to do it, it's in my contract! (It's not in my contract.) But anyway, if anyone is still tuning in, here are a few of the more interesting interviews and such that I've done lately, in case you're eager to unlock the deeper secrets of my book and/or existence.

A guest blog about what people from my real life I'd cast in the movie version of my book:

http://americareads.blogspot.com/2011/05/isaac-marions-warm-bodies-movie.html

A fun interview I did with someone who actually read the book.

http://culturemob.com/the-trials-of-zombie-love-an-interview-with-isaac-marion-author-of-warm-bodies

Another fun interview, finally with some new questions I haven't been asked before. (God, I sound bitchy don't I? Not trying to complain about the trials of fame here. I'm just sarcastic in the mornings.)

http://www.greatmindsthinkaloud.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=interviews&thread=185

Finally, here's a link to the first chapter of WARM BODIES. Check it out if you're skeptical that a serious literary post-apocalyptic romance with zombies can exist and also not be all kinds of dumb and stupid. And if you're already a fan of the book, please use this as a proselytizing tool on your unbeliever friends! Grassroots campaign, word of mouth, DIY, all that shit. Thanks!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/53369189/Warm-Bodies-by-Isaac-Marion

And as your reward for reading this far, here's a funny picture:

Nevermind. Couldn't find one. Sorry. No reward. Thanks. You're welcome. Bye.

Guest Bloggings

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:57:00 +0000

Hey friends. Just in case you're interested, I did a couple guest posts on a couple bookish blogs.

This one is my unconventional answer to the age-old question, "What famous artists would you like to meet?"
http://www.todayiread.com/zombie-tea-party/

This one is a more serious one, about the various ways zombies are portrayed and how Warm Bodies differs.
http://www.tyngasreviews.com/2011/04/guest-giveaway-with-isaac-marion.html

Book is on shelves. I'm on TV.

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 02:22:00 +0000

Hi guys.
Today at last, half a year after it hit shelves overseas, WARM BODIES is finally for sale in the USA of America. Find it at your favorite book store, unless your favorite bookstore is one like Left Bank Books in Seattle, which probably doesn't stock commercial books from commercial publishers, only books that are hand-written by the author in the author's blood on dried sheaves of the author's skin.

Also, a last minute cancelation (of a guest so important the host couldn't even remember who it was) led to a last minute booking on New Day Northwest, a morning talk show on Seattle's King 5 News. So I rushed down to Seattle last night, got my hair cut, and went on TV. Weird! Here's the clip:

It was my first public appearance of pretty much any kind, so go easy on me.

Speaking of public appearances, why not attend my second one? I'm doing my first reading this friday, April 29th, at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, near Seattle. I'll be reading a short story or two, maybe something from Warm Bodies, "A"-ing some "Q"s, and getting severe dry mouth.

Come hang out! Admission is 1 High Five.

Also, to recap: here's the book on Amazon. (but please buy it at a local bookstore if you can!)

And here's the book's Facebook Fan Page for you to LIKE!

Book Trailer 2 Redux: The Threequel

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:35:00 +0000

Remember how I've been bitching and moaning about the amateur quality of the book trailer that I made years ago and was then forced to use as Warm Bodies'? official representative to the internet? Well, I went ahead and remade the whole thing with my friend Tiffany Laine De Mott and her fancy pants camera.
Some of it is the same shots, some of it is all new. Please enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBv7cC_qU30

(It's too wide-screen to embed here)

If it pleases you, please spread it around the internet. R needs your help.

Thanks to Tiffany for her beautiful photography, and to my dear brother Nathan for letting me kill and eat him about 15 times.

Book stuff for people who read words

noreply@blogger.com (Isaac Marion) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:48:00 +0000

A couple minor missives from the Warm Bodies front:

I've created a fan page for the book on Facebook. Anything relevant to the book or the movie will show up there, and all your friends will be able to see how painfully cool and literate you are, so please Like it (I love capitalizing verbs) if you're into that sort of thing.

http://www.facebook.com/warmbodies

Also, remember that little trailer I made in 2009 when I was self publishing the book? The one I filmed in 4 hours with my brother's old camcorder and some halloween makeup, then edited on my brother's laptop in iMovie, which I'd never used before? Turns out none of the 20 major publishing houses now publishing the book think their professional marketing teams can do any better, so this pixelated home movie has become the official trailer for Warm Bodies. Luckily, I now have a whole mess of glowing reviews to pepper throughout the video, which does seem to grant an illusion of professionalism to the whole affair. Enjoy, and please spread around!