Maureen Johnson, Super Genius… er, Zombie

Though it has long been a axiom amongst YA authors that zombies (like Alan Rickman) make everything better, Maureen Johnson has been putting that to the test in her guest stint on InsideADog. To wit:

Here’s the challenge: take one paragraph of a book that you feel can be improved by zombies . . . and PUT THAT ZOMBIE IN THERE. (Need an example? See the previous entry!)

Roolz:

1. Keep it to one paragraph. (250 words or less. Less is better.)
2. Make sure to give the title and author, so we can know whose work is being zombified. If these are not given, the zombified work will not be considered!
3. E-mail the much-improved work to me at maureen@maureenjohnsonbooks.com. Please use the subject line: ZOMBIE INSIDE! You may enter as many times as you like. (So, if you want to zombify 30 stories, you can! But they must be different ones each time.) The deadline is February 14th. You can go right up to midnight (US, east coast time).
4. All of these wonderful entries will be read by me and some of my zombie expert friends.* Five finalists will be chosen. On February 15^th, these five entries will be posted. And then, the madness begins. Because . . .
5. You know who picks the winner? YOU DO! It’s like ZOMBIE IDOL!

Here’s Maureen’s own, from Pride and Prejudice:

Then Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black got in on the action. Holly’s is my favorite to date:

I have eaten
your brains
as you slept
beside me

I know
you probably had
other
plans for them

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so convenient

I also read another great one, but the entrant doesn’t have a blog to post it on. Sad face.

Since I’m now done with my gruesome, zombie-apocalypse-like deadline, I was able to play too:

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams of braindead hordes, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a flesh-eating zombie. He lay on his moldering back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his gray, putrified abdomen beginning to harden in the first stages of rigor mortis. From this position he caught a whiff of the blanket, which was just ripe enough to draw flies. His legs, pitifully stringy in comparison to what he could now see of his other innards, began to rot before his eyes.

“What’s happened to me,” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper room for a live human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four well-known walls. Above the table hung a picture of a woman with a fur hat, a fur boa, and delicious-looking plump cheeks. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire succulent forearm had disappeared.

Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge—made him quite melancholy, and the moaning shadows beyond the pane drew him only slightly to their call. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this foolishness,” he thought. But this was entirely impractical, for he what need had he in his present state for sleep? No matter how hard he tried to relax, even going so far as to cross his arms over his chest like a proper corpse, this urge to stand and shuffle overcame him.

I believe the contest lives on on Maureen’s blog. Go forth and devour!

All of this, of course, reminds me of my favorite zombie joke:

Zombie Protest Organizer: What do we want?
Zombie Horde: Braaaaaaaiiiiiiins!
Zombie Protest Organizer: When do we want it?
Zombie Horde: BRAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIINS!