Zombies hate gender
stereotypes!
Often we’re asked: why
post-apocalypse? Why set books that are, at their core, stories about human
emotion and interaction in such a terrible setting?
There are a variety of
reasons, of course, but one of the biggest is wrapped up in our desire to
explore the notion of strength and what it means. Specifically: what kind of
strengths are necessary for survival?
So often, strength in an
apocalypse is conveyed with muscles and guns, with military experience and grit
hard enough to sand down a stone. While this is all well and good-- and,
certainly, one of our main characters, Aaron, has an Army background-- we
wanted to explore other strengths, those of people who never spent any time
considering fighting to live, or even without wifi.
In action movies, the
Strong Female Character is a badass, seemingly trained in kung fu, and
unburdened by emotions. Emily is hardened by her past, but has a tenderness for
her son, and, later, daughter; when the apocalypse comes down, she’s never so
much as held a gun, let alone shot it. Emily is in mourning, but has a will as
strong as steel.
Annika has survived on
her own with a child, too, but has a deeper fear of the world outside her door.
In After Life Lessons Book Two, we meet Kenzie, merely a child when the world
ended, armed only with a rusty knife and a wit to match.
The majority of our
characters have never gone up against more than a bully on the playground.
While some, like Iago and his nomadic friends, have had a desire to live
outside society, a zombie apocalypse brings about a much more level playing
ground.
Take for instance Aaron,
our “Army boy” as he is so lovingly called. Combat trained, he is sensitive and
careful, far more hesitant than Emily in aggressive actions both in
relationships and against the enemy. He lets his heart lead more than his head.
But Emily has her limits, too, as she learns in Book Two: that strength and
will come in a hundred different varieties, with just as many limits and issues
that come to light.
Personality, more than
ability, plays a big part in reaction to trauma and tragedy. We strived to
create characters who did not fit the mold, but were survivors nonetheless:
Characters who find out that brute strength or combat ability isn’t enough to
survive, that strength is found where hardness and softness meet and balance
each other out.
After Life Lessons
Book Two
Laila Blake and L.C. Spoering
Genre: post apocalyptic
Publisher: Lilt Literary
Date of Publication: April 28, 2015
Number of pages: 350
Word Count: 95.000
Cover Artist: Laila Blake
Book Description:
Years after the end of the world, the scattered survivors have begun to reconcile with their fate and are starting to build communities from the rubble. Life has been kind to Aaron and Emily, and maybe it is that infusion of hope that leads them on a winter trip to search for Aaron’s family. But the world outside their little haven has grown harsher, the conditions rough and dangerous.
Not everybody they meet on their journey allowed the grim realities to harden their hearts, however. Malachi and Kenzie - an easy-going drifter with a bum leg and amnesia, and a teenage girl who has lost everyone and everything - are on an ill-conceived mission to Mexico, while Iago and his band of nomads work to forge trading connections between the small settlements of the south.
All of them will discover new nightmares on the road, far surpassing the threat of the last rotting zombies still roaming the countryside. And now they must come together to fight for peace and justice in the world they trying to rebuild.
Warning: This novel contains language some might find offensive, some gore and situations of a sexual nature. Reader's discretion is advised.
Excerpt 3: Kenzie & Malachi - 966 words
“Is that a house over there?” Mali
asked, and Kenzie looked where he pointed, ahead down the tracks. She felt a
momentary sense of annoyance that he’d seen it first while she’d had her nose
on the ground, looking for more loot. But then she shrugged.
“Kinda small for a house.”
“What kind of house did you live in?”
he asked, poking her in the side before picking up his pace. Given his bum leg
and the fact that he was eight hundred years old and falling apart, it just
meant he moved with a more acceptable speed.
“It’s skinny, I mean,” she grumbled,
stomping just a little. “Like, no bed could be in there. It’s not like I lived
in a mansion...”
“You’re skinny.”
He grinned a sweet, winsome smile,
but Kenzie ignored the quip and squinted into the distance. It was hard to see
because of the sun, but she tilted her head this way and that, biting at her
lower lip. Finally, she laughed.
“It’s a train, doofus.” But she
looked far too delighted for the insult to sting.
“Really?” He shaded his eyes despite
the hat on his head actually doing the job. There was a sort of impressed tone
to his voice that made Kenzie straighten her back in pride.
“See? Told you if we followed the tracks
we’d find something.”
This time, she couldn’t help it. She
tried to keep his pace, but before she knew it, she was skipping ahead,
pressing her nose against the dusty windows. They made her sneeze, but she
looked with longing at the cushioned seats. They looked like heaven to her
hurting ankle.
Malachi finally arrived next to her,
a little out of breath. He pushed his hat back on his head to look through
another window, more easily than she with his height.
“Huh,” he breathed, tipping his
forehead against the glass, making an instant sort of mud with his sweat. “I
wonder when they stopped using this.”
“Who cares?” she asked with the kind
of childlike glee she usually hid far better. “It’s ours now.” And she whooped,
once and happy, until a sound washed every hint joy from her face.
Something banged against the wall of
the compartment. Kenzie jumped back, Mali on her heels. The next came muffled
against the window. One rotted hand stood out quite clearly against the gloom,
leaving a trace of brown slime on the glass.
They both stood still. The zombie was
old, clearly, and locked safely inside the train car—the doors were shut and
latches firmly in place, if a little rusted.
“Oh.” Mali looked at Kenzie with a
small smile. “So that’s why this is just sitting here.”
She huffed. “Okay, maybe it’s his.”
Pouting a little, she banged back against the window with a stick she’d used to
swipe at the tall grass with. The zombie growled, threw itself harder against
the window. It didn’t even quiver in its frame, and Kenzie couldn’t help but
chuckle. “Sucks for you,” she said, eyes on the dead thing.
Mali, for his part, backed a bit
further away with each new advance. “Maybe we should just let him have it,” he
suggested.
“No way,” she protested, smashing the
stick against the window again. “I bet he just stank up that one compartment.
And where else are we gonna sleep?”
She glared at the thing as it hurled
itself against the window once more, like a stupid dog when the postman was in
the yard. Her smile turned something dangerous then, a cool, distant thing.
“I bet I can take it.”
Mali opened his mouth, but couldn’t
speak. After a second or two, he closed it, lifted his hands, and tried again.
“Are you kidding?”
“No.” And it was as though she’d only
just realized that herself. She squinted her eyes at the window, watched it
move like a tiger in a cage. “I’m serious. Fuckers have taken enough from me. I
want that train.”
He lowered his hands very slowly.
There was an expression on his face that Kenzie couldn’t quite puzzle out, but
she was already so busy planning, she didn’t bother to think about it for more
than a beat.
“All we have to do is be ready and
lure it out,” she informed him, setting her pack on the ground in front of
them. “I mean, it’s all in the surprise, right? If we’re ready, then it’s like
shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Fish don’t generally try to kill you
though,” Mali pointed out, but his voice petered away almost immediately.
“Sharks do,” Kenzie pointed out,
“and, like, piranhas.” It was a silly argument, but she didn’t put any effort
into it, as she rifled through her things. She found the thickest sweater she
could find, then wrapped a scarf around her hands and grabbed her knife.
“Kenzie, wait a second,” Mali said.
He had his arms crossed in front of his chest. He looked green.
“No.” She was louder than she had
intended to be, looked angrier, too. “We have to stop just… letting them have
everything. It’s just one. Look how rotted he is.” A few more of her things
went flying, scattering across the ground until she found a piece of rope, and
grinned, nodding to herself before she focused on Mali again. “If we want to
become more… like, proactive, we gotta train somewhere, don’t we?”
The man was silent again, and she
could see something like a fight on his face, like he wanted to agree with her
but couldn’t, not without a struggle. She waited, hopping from foot to foot,
before she sighed heavily.
“I don’t want to be scared all the
time,” she told him, and, finally, Mali nodded. Like she knew he would.
About the Authors:
Laila Blake is an author, linguist and translator. She writes character-driven love stories and blogs about writing, feminism and society. Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies. Keeping a balance between her different interests, Laila Blake’s body of work encompasses literary erotica, romance, and various fields in speculative fiction (dystopian/post-apocalypse, fantasy, paranormal romance and urban fantasy) and she adores finding ways to mix and match.
A self-proclaimed nerd, she lives in Cologne/Germany with her cat Liene, harbors a deep fondness for obscure folk singers and plays the guitar badly. She loves photography, science documentaries and classic literature as well as a number of popular TV-Shows.
L.C. Spoering has a degree in English writing from University of Colorado, and a lesser degree in sarcasm earned from the days of yore on AOL. A storyteller since she started talking, she now spends her days writing, reading and contemplating the universe through various pop culture lenses.
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