F12 time here, as the zombies approach their big scene. I'm beavering away at the book and making not much sense of anything else. I know I should be paying attention to the rest of my life, but somehow the book seems bigger. My larger children's essays, my smaller children's dinners, the hygiene of my person and my apartment (I'd love to call it a flat, which sounds British in a cool way, but it's really the upstairs of a house) --- all of these are crammed into the back pocket of my mental pants. My speeding ticket is on the back burner of my mental stove. My blog is in the back forty, my workout schedule is in the backwoods, my love life is knocking on the back door ... well, you get the idea. Hey, maybe you can help. What's happening in the book is this: the town is on its way to being overrun, and our heroine is about to realize that she has been the cause of it all ... but she has no idea how to save the day from the consequences of her own meddling. The place needs a saviour. It needs Hugh Jackman or Jack Nicholson or Nicole Kidman (gee, that was fun. Where can we go with this? Kid Rock, Rocky Balboa, Bilbo Baggins ... okay, now we're stretching) --- in short, a hero for perilous times.
But I have no hero. That's my problem. I want to finish the book and return to the rest of my life, but I can't see my way out of my hero-less state. My cast of characters includes Ryan the misunderstood zombie, Marlee the lonely girl, her Uncle Ted the preacher, Dr Malik the worried hospital exec, assorted bullies who are due to get eaten, Granny Griselda, and her son Mr Grassmore the fifth-grade teacher and part-time Ninja. I don't see a hero there. Do you? (Yes, the picture's title is Part-time Ninja.) I don't see any of those roles played by Samuel L Jackson, or Jack Johnson or John Cougar Melloncamp ....
Comments