It’s kind of peculiar. Not that I don’t like Margaret Atwood (though of her novels I’ve only read The Handmaid’s Tale), but… Well, it just seems like all of these “what is your writing style” tests, based on my blog entries or on my stories, guess that my writing is by a woman. And there are several tests out there (most of them rather dubious, of course) that purport to guess your gender based on a series of questions that you answer; and almost all of these quizzes guess that I’m a woman. This is weird because I’ve frequently been told that when I try to write from a woman’s point of view, I just don’t succeed.

I wonder if this is something I should explore more, or some weirdness I should just chalk up to the Internet?

(Reminder: I’m switching my domain over to http://www.underpope.com. Comments on this entry are closed. If you want to comment, go to http://underpope.com/bloginomicon/2010/07/you-write-like-a-girl/. Be sure to update your bookmarks and feed readers.)

So here’s some updates.

First, before I get to the writing updates, here’s an important one: I’m changing domains. I’ve had mossroot.com for over ten years and I’ll feel sad to leave it behind, but underpope.com seems so much more appropriate since I’m “Underpope” everywhere else on the Intertubes. A domain that reflects that just seemed natural. It’s all about growing the brand, you know? So go and change your links, your bookmarks, your feedreaders, etc.

Plus, this clever old-time photograph of the monkey at the typewriter seemed very appropriate for me. After all, it’s a monkey! And it’s typing! How friggin’ cute is that! And since my very own personal slogan is “Code monkey by day, word monkey by night”, the image could not be more fitting.

And now for some writing updates:

Code Monkey! Originally I had planned for this novel to just be a throwaway project for National Novel Writing Month. I had fun writing it, and fun putting it on line, chapter by chapter, for my friends to read. But then enough people (that is, more than one) suggested I actually push forward with it because it apparently has some potential. So I’m in the process of heavily editing it for possible submission to somewhere in the future. And I’m talking some serious edits. I swear, on some pages there is more red ink than black. (This is the reason I took down the original novel online. I could no longer stand the thought of people reading the original crap version.)

Also, My short story, “A Most Heinous Man”, which was published in Issue 33 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, will be published in their second “Best of Horror” anthology. I don’t have a publication date for it yet, but I will be sure to update here once I find out.

My short story “Night of the Frozen Elf” (available in a slightly typo-ridden version here) will be collected in a new anthology, The Undead that Saved Christmas. You can probably guess from the title that it’s a collection of Christmas-themed zombie stories. All proceeds from this anthology will go to support the Hugs Foster Family Agency. It’s a good cause, so when the book becomes available, please go and buy many, many copies.

And, finally, if you’re thinking about contributing to my speculative fiction webzine, Daikaijuzine, we’re now open for submissions again. It’s a great ‘zine, with great content, if I do say so myself. Check it out and spread the word.

For now, that’s about it. In the future, I plan to actually post more actual content. But, then, I always say that, don’t I?

(Comments on this entry are closed. If you want to comment, go to Underpope.com and comment there.)

Anyway.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called “double depression”. With double depression you get to feel constant low-grade depression — dysthymia, for those who are curious — interspersed with bouts of more serious depression. The dysthymia isn’t incapacitating or even all that serious, doesn’t have any specific cause, and can even lift for days at a time. You get used to it, sort of like that low-grade pain in your back that you don’t even notice until it’s gone for some reason. You can get good at acting as though it doesn’t exist; you can act cheerful with your co-workers, your friends, even your loved one.

But the low points — the dips, as it were, or major depressive episodes — really can be incapacitating. You wake up, having slept for eight to twelve hours, feeling exhausted and as though you have to wind yourself up, like a child’s toy, just to get out of bed. Nothing holds your interest. Even typing on your computer keyboard seems like a chore. There’s a hollowness in your chest, an emptiness in your solar plexus, that demands you just curl up and ignore the world around you. Daily maintenance chores — showering, shaving, brushing your teeth, taking medications (among which are, ironically, anti-depressants) — are skipped just because you don’t have the energy. Interacting with co-workers is okay, because it’s a distraction and because you’ve mastered the art of hiding your feelings, though it’s too easy to just call in sick and sit at home eating and watching television or surfing the web (and you probably would if you had any sick hours left and hadn’t squandered them all already). Being at work sucks because, in spite of the “attaboys” and “good job” comments you get from your boss and co-workers, you can’t help feeling like you’re screwing up and are on the verge of being fired at any moment. Above all you spend the day on the verge of tears without really knowing why.

Hope is elusive. You feel as though nothing good will happen, that nothing good will ever happen. At the same time, you also feel as though everything good that has happened has been due to undeserved good luck, or just a plain old fluke. I also have trouble writing, because of the above-mentioned chore of sitting at the keyboard and typing, and because I’m convinced nothing I write — short stories, novels, whatever — is marketable, let alone publishable. In this mood, it’s difficult to motivate myself to do any writing at all. Works in progress stay untouched for days, possibly weeks, at a time.

At least, that’s how I experience a day when the kobolds are attacking in swarms. Your mileage may vary.

Lunch hour’s just about up, so I’d better finish this up. Do you have days when the kobolds attack? How do you experience them? It’d just be nice to know that I’m not the only one.

Let me know.

This “outing” happened a couple of weeks ago. My neighbors came up to me and said, “Hey, Richard! I saw you in the paper!” The next day, a co-worker said the same thing. And at church the following Sunday, yet another person came up and told me that they’d seen my picture in the paper.

These comments took me by surprise; to my knowledge my photograph hadn’t been in the paper at all. I mean, I knew that I’d been interviewed for this article in the Sacramento Bee about “Doppelganger Week” on Facebook — “Doppelganger Week”, for those who don’t keep up with Facebook memes (doesn’t everyone?) was a week or so when people replaced their Facebook profile picture with the picture of a celebrity that they were told they resembled– and I’d sent the reporter a photograph of myself and Emperor Joshua Norton (whom I’ve been told I look like and so whom I’d chosen as my doppelganger). But the online version of the article hadn’t run my picture, so I figured the print version hadn’t either. I don’t read the print edition of the newspaper, and I’d just assumed that no one else does either.

Turns out several people do, though, and in the print edition of that day’s Bee, my photograph ran alongside the photograph of Emperor Norton that I’d sent in. A high school classmate posted a photograph of the print version to Facebook, and it’s reproduced here. So yeah, people saw my photograph in the Bee, and they kept telling me about it. And I was definitely outed as a nerd. A Facebook-using, historical-figure impersonating nerd.

I’m okay with that.

At least they still don’t know about the robot penguin on my desk.

In Other News…

Writing: The writing continues. Right now I’m editing one of my Stories of the Week in preparation for sending it out to the markets. I’m also working on a new novel, Brought to Life, which so far isn’t going very well. And, of course, Code Monkey!, my NaNoWriMo 2009 novel, is still available online in case you’d like to read it. If you do choose to read it — and bear in mind that the version online is the unedited, un-revised version — I hope you enjoy it.

Work: Work continues to be challenging and enjoyable. I recently characterized my job as “slapping bandages on broken code”, to which my boss responded that it was more like performing major surgery on broken code. In some ways, though, I feel like Dr. Frankenstein, especially one product that I’ve been hacking and eviscerating so heavily that what we use now barely resembles the pre-existing version at all. It’s a good job, pleasantly secure, and I fully intend to leave it boots first.

This website: At some point, I’ll be moving to a new domain: http://www.underpope.com. Right now, the only thing that the new domain does is redirect back to my current domain. It’s all about growing the brand, you see. I’m “underpope” in just about every online forum I participate in, as well as on Twitter, Facebook, and so on, so I figured I may as well have the domain too. I’m going to take the opportunity to do a major redesign of my site, I think, so if anyone has any suggestions I’m open to them.

This blog: And while I’m at it, I’ll mention that this month marks the tenth anniversary of my blog. My very first entry was March 20, 2000. I’ll try to remember to post something of interest on that day.

And So On…

As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, and so it goes. Thank you and good day.

All right, I won’t be deleting Code Monkey! from my website today. The main reason I was considering it was just a matter of space on my server; but since it turns out I could clean up tons of space in other ways, Code Monkey! will be hanging around for a bit longer. At some point I probably will be taking it down, just so I can clean it up, and then make it available through CreateSpace and other venues.

Thanks to those who chimed in. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, just like a monkey.

I’m planning on deleting Code Monkey! from my website later today. Any objections?

What’s funny, though, is that even though Romero pioneered the genre, and just about everyone, when asked to name the most influential zombie film will name Night of the Living Dead, the version of the undead zombie which has permeated pop culture is very different from Romero’s undead. The modern pop culture zombie shuffles about just like Romero’s did, but also cracks open human skulls to munch on human brains. The brain-munching seems to have its origin in The Return of the Living Dead (directed by Dan O’Bannon) and its sequels. Note that Romero had nothing to do with these films. In these films, zombies walk, munch brains (“Because,” one zombie explains, “being dead hurts”, and eating brains soothes that pain), and can even talk (“Send more cops”, says one zombie at one point). But you can’t kill them just by decapitating them as you can with Romero-style zombies; if you cut the arm off of a O’Bannon zombie, and now the zombie still comes after you as does its separated arm. Cut off its head, and the head keeps biting and the body keeps shambling. The only way to kill an O’Bannon zombie is to incinerate it completely, although the ash still contains the chemical that set it into motion in the first place.

So, anyway, the modern pop culture zombie seems to be an amalgamation of the two breeds of zombie: they shuffle (Romero), moan (Romero + O’Bannon), eat brains (O’Bannon), and can be killed by decapitation (Romero). They’re not articulate, but they can moan after “Brraaaaiiiinnnnssss”.

I’ve already shared with you my theories about the zombie apocalypse (in “It’s All About the Zombies“); now you’ve been subjected to my theory about the origin of the modern pop culture zombie. I don’t claim to be the font of all zombe lore, but I may end up getting there at some point.