HMCN Read Through Fun (Patreon)

First, let's all enjoy the french cover of HMC,N. I don't know what's going on there, but I love it. 

I started reading through HMC,N so I can get back to writing more pages of BT,LN. At first I thought maybe we could do a read-a-long, but then thought, well, I need to get through these fast, so maybe not. But I did think it would be fun to do a sort of annotation for you as I read. Behind the scenes, if you will. This might keep me from the despair of reading my own work. (It is very difficult to read through and not be able to fix or changes things. Every writer I know would do this if they could--just fuss with a book forever.)

Today we're doing chapters 1-5!

HMC,N, early days: First, I feel like you should know how HMC,N came about. I wrote a short story in my brief and disastrously short tenure in Alternative School in my junior year. It was a silly story of a fast food employee fighting off stock monster characters. That version, thankfully, is long gone. In college, I needed a short story to turn in and decided to revisit the fast food/monster fight, but change it to a zombie story. In the original, Ramon and Sam blow up Plumpy's and Brooke dies. Except Brooke was named Megan and Ramon was called Mitch for some reason. It was called Zombie Burger and it wasn't very good. My writing professor at the time thought it could be a novel, but I dismissed this as, well, almost everyone was dead and the burger place gone and I didn't see where it could go from there. But I did use the story as part of my application to graduate school. Kind of amazing they let me in, really.

But I kept coming back to the story. Thinking about it. Changing and adding things. When it was time to write my novel/thesis for graduate school, I went back to Zombie Burger, much to the despair of my thesis advisor. That's where it all began.

Chapter 1 & 2: So you already know that names changed and originally Brooke died by zombie--obviously her fate shifted slightly in the novel. Over the years a few people familiar with Seattle have asked if Plumpy's is modeled after Kid Valley, as that is a local burger place next to University Village, which is a shopping center. It's not modeled after Kid Valley, but more after my own stint in a local burger place that no longer exists. (Terrible job. The smell of the grease trap still haunts me, and I worked in the kennel of a vet clinic for several years, which means I've handled bodily fluids you wouldn't believe.) UVillage is real, as were the many Starbucks there. It's been remodeled since and I no longer know how many Starbucks there are there now. I failed to count them the last time I had to go there when my laptop bricked. 

I did use to play Potato Hockey, though not at the burger place, but at a bakery I worked at in Seattle. (My son works at that bakery now. Ha!) I did once catch the grill on fire, though. We absolutely did use to play a game called, "Guess What I Put in the Fryer?" My friend Tiny was really good at it.

Related to the stack of movie's Frank has for everyone to watch--it's becoming really obvious that I have a weird obsession with the movie Beastmaster. Also, Frank has really come a long way since this opening of this story.

The other fun real life detail from chapter one--Sam's name. So, the story about Sam's dad being late and his mom naming him something that they argued over and pronounced differently? Well, that was me. I was supposed to be named Jenna. I know some amazing Jennas! I am not a Jenna. My mom agreed, and since my dad wasn't there to put in his two cents, I was named Alicia. Well, she pronounced it A-lish-a and he pronounced it A-leash-a, and to this day I can tell which side of the family is addressing me by how they pronounce that name. Though mostly they all call me Lish by now. So that's where that whole thing came from.

Chapter Three: Douglas! Fun fact about Douglas's chapters--I almost never had to edit them beyond copy edits. Apparently I write "murderous sociopath" really well. I think it's because they have such clear goals? Douglas knows exactly what he wants and will go to any length to achieve it. Douglas's name was picked very carefully. It has many different meanings to it, some of which are dark river, dark stranger, and in one baby book I can no longer find, River of Blood. SO. Very fitting.

Chapter 4: We meet Mrs. W--I had no idea she'd end up being such a big part of the story, but I adore her. This is where we first see Sam's apartment. His tiny bathroom was modeled off of the first house I rented on my own, which my friend dubbed The Slanty Shanty as it was both visibly crooked and part of the floor had a definite tilt to it. It was not a nice house, but I was 19 with no rental history and pets. The bathroom was so tiny I couldn't get to the shower with the door open, and I could reach the sink from the toilet. I am not a tall person, nor are my arms that long. Also, what appeared to be a medicine cabinet was actually a window/opening with no glass that was so close to the nearest house I could reach into their little boy's bedroom had I wanted to do so. (I did not want to do so.) 

Brooke's head--so there's a moment where Sam asks, "who wraps packages like that anymore?" which was a sort of private joke because my old roommate used to wrap her packages in brown paper and string. They looked very cute. 

Chapter 5--we meet Bridin and start to get a deeper understanding of what creatures lurk in this world. I don't have any other fun notes for this chapter. 

We'll see how many chapters I plow through tonight. If you have any questions about this or parts of the book, post them in the comments!

-Lish