Bookshelf Battle

Resolving the telegram issue…and Slade learns too late that Bonnie wanted him after all.

It’s like that Chris Rock routine about how no women want him when he’s single but when he’s with a woman, every woman is after him.

A lot of things happening here.

1) I wanted to show that Highwater is near the Mississippi River. And near a railroad bridge that crosses it. And that Legion is a railroad company that sends trains over the bridge.

(SPOILER – have you figured it out yet that Blythe is in town to oversee a zombie shipment across the Mississippi on its way to attack the East?)

2) I’m going to take out the part where they dump red liquid into the water. I was basically going to later go into a whole thing where they poison the water supply so everyone becomes a zombie but it seemed like it’d just be a new direction.

3) Slade proposes. Too early? Yes. But I don’t think people dicked around back then like they do now. I’m a man. You’re a woman. We like each other, let’s get married. You didn’t have to do this whole song and dance routine where you have to pretend to be a platonic friend for a million years before you can ask her out for a chili cheeseburger or some shit and even then it’s at least 500 dates before you can ask her anything more personal than what she thinks about the weather.

4) The bedsheet thing. I don’t know about you – I thought it was funny.

Look, just throwing it out there, you could make an argument that Slade should just tell Bonnie to get lost. She’s a prostitute and she rejected him and Sarah’s a nice, wholesome woman who didn’t hesitate to go after him.

But, she’s interpreted the bible to mean all her uh various lady parts still belong to her dead husband, thus only sex through a hole in a bedsheet is allowed.

I said pillowcase up here. I have to change that to bedsheet.

Sure, make fun, but that’s how the Amish do it. Or is it the Orthodox Jewish people? I don’t know.

It’s one of those things that you know – a thing that upsets you that seems like a deal breaker that you find out AFTER you’ve agreed to be with the person.

That’s why I say every first date should be like a job interview where everyone just lays their shit out on the table to see if it stinks.

And I even leave room for the possibility this isn’t that terrible. Hell sex through a bedsheet is better than none at all, right?

But yes – long story short, remember how I said the challenge was Bonnie and Sarah both have their good qualities and it’ll be hard for Slade to choose?

This will be Slade’s sticking point. Poor Slade.

I had a good time writing this chapter.

So here we learn that Miss Bonnie has changed her mind, she is about to tell Slade she wants to be with him and is on her way to apologize to him with some muffins as a peace offering.

Then she spots him having lunch with Sarah and flips her lid.

She has a rapport with Gunther. He teases her that she’s dressed…well nicely instead of like a call girl as usual.

By the way, later in the story I never explain whether she sticks with this outfit or returns to prostitute wear. I decided to let the reader decide.

It made me laugh that various townsfolk walk by, say hello, and refer to Miss Bonnie as “Whore.” Like – “Hello Gunther. Hello Whore.”

She’s so used to it she doesn’t care.

The way it always goes, isn’t it? That person you like doesn’t like you until you like someone else.

This chapter is basically because it is unlikely Slade would have kept this info to himself.

Another chapter that’s basically me throwing you a bone.

“Please bear with me and I promise there will be many zombies…here’s a little bit to wet your whistle.”

So obviously, the soldiers coming from the west have met zombies. And you, the reader, know about zombies. Slade doesn’t so it is confusing to him.

The guy dies, but then the officer shoots him anyway…obviously because they’ve learned through experience this is the safest thing to do in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

In the rewrite I’m going to add a line that there was a bottle of Doc’s cure all in the wagon, maybe a passing statement that they bought it from some big mouth traveling doctor.

In this world, you only become a zombie if you drink vampire blood then die. I’m trying to generate the impression that Doc has been unwillingly peddling the zombie apocalypse across the west, obliviously leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

I hope that’s coming across. Let me know if it isn’t.

The romance blooms.

Slade is too “macho manly” to leave a woman on her own to tend an unkempt farm.

We learn Sarah’s ex-husband was 74. And her father basically set up an arranged marriage between her and an old coot so he could get a loan.

Shit like that probably happened all the time back then. I assume anyway.

She’s also worried no one will like “old maid of 26.” Unlike today where everyone just dates until the end of time.

A little fun made of romance novels at the end, where Slade is shirtless working on the farm. Women always want their men shirtless in romance novels.

Hey 3.5 readers.

I enjoyed this interview with J.M. Wilde, Australia’s preeminent zombie book writer.

She’s an unabashed nerd (we like loud and proud nerds here at BQB HQ) and was a good sport, putting up with my dumb jokes about Australia and everything. (I still want to know which way the water spins in the toilets down there!)

Speaking of Australia, her books follow a group of survivors as they make their way through a zombified land down under! Neat idea, isn’t it? Australia is one big island, right? Sounds like a place where zombies could wreak a lot of havoc.

She’s got a lot of great advice in this video about how to get readers on Wattpad. Why aren’t you using Wattpad yet?

My main observation is you never how opportunity will present itself to you as an author until you set pen to paper.

I needed Joe and Miles to meet Gunther and Slade and thought about how that could happen. Then I had a joke earlier – when the chips were down, no one in the saloon offered to help fight the Buchanans, but when money was offered to watch them now that they’re subdued, Gunther got endless offers.

He gives Joe a little test. I feared it was a little hokey but I thought it displayed Joe’s character a bit.

Ahh…the Widow Farquhar!

(PRONOUNCED – FAR-KWAR)

This is one of those jokes that only I get but I hope in later chapters I explain enough you’ll get it too. Or just laugh to placate me.

I’ve seen a lot of old time/old west movies where a widow is actually referred to as “The Widow Whatever Her Last Name Is.”

My modern day assumption is back in the old days, a woman’s only chance at survival was finding a man (because it’s not like there were a lot of job opportunities for women outside of school marm or prostitute).

So if you’re a woman and you’ve been married before but your husband died, you wanted to make sure everyone knew that, so they didn’t think you were still a married woman or GASP – divorced! I honestly don’t know much about the history of divorce back then.

I assume it must have occasionally happened. Back then a woman would probably have to prove the man was chasing her around with a meat cleaver on a regular basis or something) not like it is today when there’s a 99% chance your wife will divorce you because you left the seat up, forget to wash your dish, or accidentally farted and she assumed she was getting a non-farting husband.

I was a fan of Deadwood – fairly recent and super vulgar western show on HBO – there was a character Alma Garrett who was a widow (same actress who plays Jackie Sharpe on House of Cards now, can’t think of her name.)

Anyway, they always called her “The Widow Garrett” and I thought it was funny.

So, in a lot of love triangle stories, the author usually “cops out” and makes one woman become super awful and terrible so the hero only has a clear choice.

I challenged myself to not do that here. Sarah is a bible thumper, pure as the driven snow, a bit helpless…but as we find out soon, she really loves Slade! So it’s not going to be an easy choice for him.

Even before the concept of “wingman” existed, Gunther is being Slade’s wingman here, talking him up to the Widow Farquhar.

Oh and we meet Chance, Slade’s horse.  I wish he had more “screen time.”

Here we have the first clue about impending zombies. A Marshal in Colorado sends a warning that “monsters” are coming and everyone should leave.

Hate to admit it, but initially, I tossed it in there just because everyone was like, “Where are the zombies? When are the zombies coming?”

A valid criticism. I probably could have started the story with cowboys faced in the middle of a zombie outbreak. I think it would have been quite different though.

Better? Worse? I don’t know. I feel this buildup allowed you to meet all the characters and maybe begin to care whether they live or die.

Then Gunther drifts towards being Slade’s father figure. He provides his romantic advice. He tells Slade to get back there and actually propose marriage to Miss Bonnie. Don’t equivocate. Just pop the question, get a yes or no. If it is a no, move on.

But he doesn’t do it.

And then a new love interest enters the picture.