‘Lone Star Zombie-Con’ fights the undead for a good cause
In recent years, a growing number of books, movies and TV shows have shown us what the so-called “zombie apocalypse” could look like. Such a plague might be one of humanity’s greatest modern fears; from a pop-culture perspective, it’s certainly among the most profitable.
Now five writers from Texas and Oklahoma have turned the zombie apocalypse into something else — a fundraiser for Hurricane Harvey victims. In a manner of speaking, anyway, and via the form of some short stories in which:
• A surprise costume-contest winner must think quickly when the fan convention she’s attending turns chaotic.
• While getting reacquainted, the invited speakers at a writers’ convention confront a fellow author’s unfortunate condition.
• An old enemy menaces the star of a beloved zombie-themed series at still another convention.
Pairing “horror and hope — two things that don’t normally go together,” the above stories, plus two more, make up the new anthology “Lone Star Zombie-Con: An Anthology of Horror and Hope,” which was released last week through Amazon, both digitally and via print-on-demand. All proceeds benefit the Houston Food Bank and Montrose Center.
Although “we weren’t expecting to get J.J. Watt money coming in, it felt good to be doing something,” Jess Capelle, the only Houstonian of the five authors, says, referencing Watt’s massive post-Harvey fundraising efforts.
The book’s roots lie in Fandemic, the traveling comic convention that was supposed to come to Houston’s NRG Center in September. Besides appearances by stars including Norman Reedus and Jeffrey Dean Morgan of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” series, several panels were scheduled. One, “Just Add Zombies,” was set to explore the undead creatures’ high pop-culture profile.
Then Harvey hit. Fandemic was first postponed until December, then pushed back to Sept. 13-15 of this
year. For Sarah Bale, who organized the zombie panel, swapping formats from discussion to book was relatively easy.
“We get tornados all the time, so I’m very familiar with the concept of a natural disaster (and) a ton of media coverage,” says the Oklahoma City-based author included in this compilation. “But then a few months later people move on to the next thing, even though the city is still healing. So it was really important for us to do something that was ongoing.”
Bale’s fellow panelists — Capelle; Lubbock-based Raymond C. Morris; Austin’s Katherine L. Evans; and Michelle Rene of Dallas, all friends she’d met through the DFW Writers Conference in North Texas — signed on in short order to contribute to the book. The ground rules were few: Their stories had to take place at a convention of some kind and must somehow invoke the zombie apocalypse.
Although some of the ZombieCon authors had never appeared on a panel before Fandemic, they had all attended such gatherings as fans.
“It’s just nice to walk in and say, ‘These are my people,’ ” Morris says.
Comic-cons especially offer nearly limitless narrative possibilities, and not just because it’s where like-minded souls come together to celebrate a common interest — often something they’re unusually passionate about. Lots of people in costume under one roof is always a plus. However, such mass gatherings are also ripe for the outbreak of contagious disease and the resulting mayhem. This is the environment of “Lone Star Zombie-Con.”
For Bale’s “A Cat, an Ax, and the Zombie Apocalypse,” the main character wins her convention’s costume contest over her jealous best friend. She’s just finished the grand prize, a private lunch with the star of a “Walking Dead”-type show, when all hell breaks loose.
“There’s always celebrities,” the author says, “and what if this character were at this comic-con when the zombie outbreak starts, and somebody on this show has some fake knowledge of what to do and they end up being paired off together? “I just thought it was fun.” The heroine in Capelle’s “Method Acting at the End of the World” goes to great lengths to conceal the fact that her employer — a legendary comic-book creator à la Marvel’s Stan Lee — has actually been dead for five years, giving the story an added “Weekend at Bernie’s” twist.
“They always bring Stan Lee to conventions, and he loves to make cameos in the movies,” Capelle says. “So who better to have a little winkwink to fans?”
According to Morris, whose “Addison Morgan vs. the Stumbling Undead-ish” features a student at a school for the children of supervillains battling both human and dinosaur zombies, these kinds of stories remain popular not necessarily because of the zombies themselves.
“I think it still comes down to we like seeing other people strive to survive and somehow making it,” he says.
A fan of tongue-incheek zombie tales such as “Shaun of the Dead,”
Capelle says she enjoys the opportunity to inject similar notes of humor and camp into her stories.
“There still has to be laughter because you can’t sustain fear for that long,” she says with a laugh. “So I like adding that little bit of levity.”
Even if the zombie apocalypse stays fictional — and we can only hope — the scenario is still similar enough to reality that these stories have more to offer than just entertainment. Both in others and ourselves, the qualities we see in characters who must fight such a pernicious, nearly unstoppable adversary are what we’d like to see when a real-life disaster such as Harvey strikes.
“People can sympathize because whether it’s a zombie apocalypse or a hurricane or a tornado, bad things happen that are out of (our) control,” Bale says. “It’s the survival instinct that takes over and makes everything worthwhile.”
“I don’t know that I necessarily believe (the zombie apocalypse) is going to play out like all of that, but I definitely think that the pandemic aspect is a very real concern,” Capelle says. “So anything that helps us be a little more prepared for that I think is a good idea.”
In the more immediate future, the Lone Star Zombie-Con writers have been discussing ways to spread something else: word of mouth for their book. If things go well, they might get to appear on that Fandemic panel after all.
Says Bale, “Hopefully we’ll be back in September.”
‘People can sympathize because whether it’s a zombie apocalypse or a hurricane or a tornado, bad things happen that are out of (our) control.’ Sarah Bale, author