The Projects

I don't post here often enough, and that's recently due to the fact I haven't written a word at Living With the Dead since the big finale. Now that the last book is out and I'm on track to get some things done, I think it's time to let everyone know how the work is going.

Dead Will Rise, the sequel to Victim Zero, is growing fat. I've been dealt a bad hand of problems over the last few months and have yet again struggled with anxiety and similar problems, but I'm back to working on it with gusto. The tentative plan is to have it out by the end of November, which is contingent on me getting it done in the next two weeks and edited *super* fast. Whether that's possible I don't know, but I'm going to try. Assuming I manage that, the print edition will be out before Christmas. 

After DWR is published I'm going to take a break from the Living With the Dead universe. After seven collections of the blog, two parallel novels and a collaboration also set in a zombie apocalypse, I need to work on something else. 

Fortunately, that isn't a problem. After I send out DWR to be edited I'm going to spend a week or so working on a novella set in Hugh Howey's Silo Saga universe. If you haven't read those books--and I don't see how you could miss them considering their immense popularity--then you might want to read the trilogy. Hugh is very permissive in allowing anyone to write fiction in his universe and to make money with them. I'm going to try to get mine published through Kindle Worlds, which is a fan fiction section of the kindle store. Failing that, I'll publish it on my own. 

My next novel will be the much-talked about (by me) superhuman story, Next. Though a glut of superhuman/superhero novels have been released over the last few years, I've seen few that tackle the ideas I'd like to read about. That's the same reason I wrote LWtD in the first place; I wrote the story I wanted to read. So Next isn't going to be the tights-and-heroism story of people who have secret identities or who hide from society. This isn't a world where superhumans exists as some fringe subculture most people don't know about. It's a balls-to-the-wall examination of what the most dangerous power--superpower--would do the to world if it were exposed to everyone. All of that conveniently framed in the story of one main character and several secondaries. It's different than anything I've written and I have a hard time putting a genre label on it. 

The really good news is I wrote about 30,000 words before switching over to write VZ. So I can get this baby done in a relatively short time once DWR and my Silo novella are done. The novella shouldn't take that long considering how short it is and how fast I write. I look to be working on Next full-time by the second week of December, give or take a week. 

After that I'll decide which project I'll take on next. For purely business reasons the smart thing to do would be the third book in The Fall. It's going to be a bit trickier than books one and two, and maybe with another novel and a novella between books two and three I'll feel refreshed and ready to go back to that world. 

So many things I want to write, so many genres! Some of you have seen the list before, some haven't, but I'll post again soon and maybe do a poll on the facebook page about what book you're most interested in. 

Until then, keep reading. I like paying my bills. 

Josh

Grown Up

A friend of mine posted on Facebook a short while ago that someone we went to school with died. The name wasn't familiar, but I graduated twelve years ago, so that didn't surprise me. I looked up the person he was talking about, and thought I knew who it was. So for the first time in many, many years I broke out the yearbooks I could find--those from my Junior and Senior years.

He wasn't there.

I don't know why or how. He wasn't even listed among the people not pictured. The mystery will probably remain, but the experience of looking back over those images, single smiling slices of a life, stays with me.

I wasn't a popular guy. I was known, but that isn't the same thing. Popularity implies people like you. A lot of people didn't. I was smart but lazy, defensive of others and with a fuse so short it might as well not have existed in the first place. I was confident with women--very much so--but sought the approval of people who could barely stand me. I think I did that because I knew they didn't like me.

I wasn't hated, really. I got along with most people. I wasn't into trendy fashions or sports, and aside from acting I didn't get into school activities. The politics of high school did not appeal to me. That said, I looked back over two years of my life in pictures and remembered my entire experience in that place in flashes, and the man I remember as a boy, the one who passed away, was there.

He wasn't a friend. I knew him to speak to him but not much more. The modern age of technology allows me to reconnect and keep in touch with many people I barely knew in school, others I had deep friendships with but who stepped out of my life for years on end.

There was the guy whose friendship and respect I wanted badly, and twelve years later he's the same guy. Pretentious, talented, arrogant, and with every reason to be happy while rarely expressing anything but ironic scorn. He lives his dream job and seems to detest life.

The football star who did everything in his power to live up to the stereotype. A year after graduation--two years or better since he'd transferred to another school--he came into the restaurant I was working at and tipped me large. He apologized for the way he'd behaved. I did the same.

The prim honor student always so perfect and proper, her nervous state a constant as she ignored joy and being a kid in order to be the best. She's an artist now, a bohemian of the old school.

Boys and girls became men and women. The guy who called me a faggot and got in trouble for it--who apologized while both of us were waiting to see the Principal over it--is a happy adult, a married man and father who finds great purpose in being fair and honest.

I skipped the reunion. I was working at the nursing home, depressed and trying to make a go of my writing career. I had no desire to show up, the weird guy everyone knew but few really knew. I'd seen so many of them talk about their lives online that I couldn't bring myself to go there and tell everyone I was a CNA, though there's certainly no shame in that job, who was killing himself with the constant effort to write for a living. It sounded so sad to me, so deeply cliche. Most of the people I went to school with didn't treat me badly. If I'm being honest, I probably did worse to them on average than all of them together did to me.

Now I'm a full-time writer, at least for the foreseeable future. I'm living the dream. And I realize I still shouldn't have gone to that reunion. All of them have changed in so many ways, but I'm mostly the same. A little more mature, true, but as I looked back on those memories and who I was I realized I was always an old man in that young man's body. Maybe I'll go to the next reunion. Maybe not.

We are the story we tell ourselves. Our lives are books we write each day. They can (and will) take us to amazing places, to happy places, to dark and dangerous places. When the reunion came about, I was measuring my success and who I was against them. Now I only measure against myself.

If I could go back and do it all again, I'd change some things. Oh, you expected me to say I'd change nothing? Hell no. Sorry. No hackneyed trope here. I was a virgin until I was eighteen, people. No, I'd change a lot. Foremost I would have worked harder. In my classwork, sure, though I had no desire to be an honor student. But I'd do more even if just to make my mom happy. Beyond that I would take up two jobs and work myself to death all four of those years and save every penny.

To invest in Apple in 2002, when their stock was at the lowest point in the decade. I mean, what's the purpose of theorizing about time travel if we can't make a buck off it, right?

Most of all, I would have been kinder. I would try to impart some of the lessons I've learning in life. People need to go through hard times to learn lessons, no avoiding that. But I would have tried to show people that no matter how overcast the future looks, it's no reason not to show love and respect. That was something I learned late.

Since the first day of Freshman year, several people I went to school with died. One was a dear friend, in a car crash. That happened while I was enjoying a Halloween party. Another was a guy who hated my guts. That didn't make me special; he hated easily and often. There was the guy who died running back into his burning house to search for his mother.

It's easy to think you've got forever when you're young. I'm only thirty, but I've spent enough time caring for the elderly and seeing death to know on a visceral level how frail it all is. That is why I'd go back and preach kindness and understanding if I could, because our time on the mortal coil is limited and unpredictable. We should not treat it as a test or a trial run, no matter what our faith might tell us. How we treat others is a perfect model of chaos theory. Every wound we inflict adds up and ripples outward, as does every smile we inspire.

Need proof? I said all that, had all those thoughts and introspective realizations, because a boy I barely knew who became a man I didn't know passed away. I learned more about him tonight from his friends, his hidden struggle with illness, his positive spirit, than I ever would have known otherwise. He was a small wave in the water, gently pushing me to be a better person.

Think about it. When the situation comes up where someone is being mean or rude or hateful, you have a choice. You can return it to them, or ignore them, or maybe try throwing a little understanding at them. It's not easy, but someone has to start.

Just remember this when it happens. And from there it becomes easier to not just respond with kindness, but to create it without prompt.

The End of a Story, The Beginning of Many

I've been putting off writing this post for a while now. Part of the reason was because I didn't want to upset anyone. Part of it was plain stubbornness on my part--I wasn't sure if I was sure. But now I am. This is going to cover a lot of ground, so stick with me all the way through, okay?

I'm ending Living With the Dead. Sort of.

I'm not taking down the blog or anything, but the current season will be the last collection. There is a small chance I'll collect more down the road, but unless circumstances change dramatically, it's unlikely. This does NOT mean the blog is ending, however. I will still post there if at a dramatically reduced pace. Instead of doing four days in a row and taking a day off, I might do two a week. Maybe only one.

The reasons are many. First and foremost, I've burned through most of the material I intended for the blog. I had a five-year plan and we're hitting that stuff right now, a year and a half earlier. So anything I write on the blog after the end of August will be internet-only stuff. Seven books seems like a good number to me.

LWtD as a universe will not only continue, but get even more awesome. Most you know about Victim Zero, my most recent novel. It's about how The Fall (which is the series title) began, the man responsible, and what it's like to lose everything and have the weight of the world on your shoulders as a result. The Fall will continue with Dead Will Rise, which is the next book following Kell's life, and the link is to the IndieGoGo campaign for it.

You might be asking why I'm choosing to end regular publication of the LWtD collections and why I'm choosing to devote less of my time to the blog. It's pretty simple: I'm a full-time writer as of now. That might not last, but for the next several months at least I can continue not having a job and focus on putting out books. You'd think that gives me more time for LWtD, but not so. I'm working on several novels of my own, a collaboration with another author, and managing my own business needs. LWtD is something I love, but I'm honest enough to realize I've tapped every interesting possibility out of that style of writing. The characters have done everything I can do with them in blog form. Which brings me to my next point...

The fictional people you've enjoyed in LWtD will at some point in the next year get a series of their own. Novels, not blog collections. A separate series from The Fall. That's one of many, many projects I'm planning out.

The reality is I need to focus. I dearly love LWtD and recognize that you as my readers have brought me to this point. I wouldn't be taking the chance of staying home and writing if not for you. I wouldn't be living my dream if not for you. I hope you all realize this isn't an easy call for me to make, but I'd rather end the collections here and not have the same hard deadlines I set for myself with the blog than continue on and put out something shitty. That's just the brass tacks of the situation.

I am, however, planning on doing something cool with the blog. While I will write posts--possibly as another character since anyone can die in LWtD--I will soon be trying to set up a process to find those of you who might want to take part as well. Beckley, for example, is a real person. I love his posts and if he wanted to do a post every week or every other week, I'd take him up on it in a heartbeat. I know there are others out there who want to do the same. I'll keep you updated on that.

That's basically it. For the near future I'm going to be doing what I've been doing for the last three months and change: sitting at home writing new stories for you to read. From a personal viewpoint this works out well for me. Jess is super supportive, almost suspiciously so. I get to be home and not deal with the ridiculous stress of working in healthcare, which in hindsight was literally killing me. My health is better even if I've put on a few pounds. I'm happier. I'm doing what I love.

From a business point of view it's a huge change for the better. LWtD isn't your standard fare, written entirely in narrative as it is, and that means it isn't likely to break out into wider popularity. That doesn't bother me at all, but as a matter of paying the bills it's time for me to move on to being more productive with standard novels. They make more money, have more appeal, and while you aren't getting the dose on a daily basis, I think you're getting a better product. I'm proud of my work on LWtD, immensely so. But it was writing practice to start, and three and a half years of doing it made me an iron man writer. I can produce novels fast, and Victim Zero is a better work than anything I've done on the blog.

It's that way because of the blog.

I hope this doesn't make too many of you angry, but it's the way things are. As a fan myself it always irritates me when a producer of regular content moves on to other projects. "Oh, but I love your webcomic! Why are you ending it?" "Oh, I love your blog, please don't start a different one and give up on this one!"

I've done what I can do with LWtD. Now I'm taking the world I built there and expanding on it. I doubt very much I'll ever be done with that world. I have the chance to do that and so much more.

I started the blog in March of 2010. By the end I'll have produced seven collections. And that's only the beginning when you look at the series I'm spinning off from it. Basically I told you that story so I could tell you these stories.

Hope you'll stick around for them.

Josh

Victim Zero and Other Sundries

As many of you might know already, I finished the first draft of Victim Zero the other day. I sent it out to the first crop of beta readers Friday night, and I'm waiting with anticipation and trepidation to hear back from them.

I've also managed enough work on the collaborative project I'm doing with James Cook that he has to catch up with me. That one is going to be very, very cool and something all of you will enjoy.

I'm in kind of a strange place. It's coming up on three months I've been off work and if you'd asked me when I put in my two weeks if I'd have a novel done at this point I would have probably said no. Granted, that was always the plan with VZ and Next (which I resume work on this week) but I figured I'd have to be working another full-time job by now.

Not yet. I'm going to be putting in applications this week, but I have to say I'm completely happy with the decision to leave the nursing home I was working at. I miss the people, but three months without the agonizing back pain, without the unreal stress and overwork, and all the other little joys have been like magic for me. It hasn't been perfect and I'll have to rejoin the workforce soon, but hopefully these stories will be seeds that bear fruit before the end of the year. I think I might be a full-time writer by the start of 2014. Earlir than that if they go beyond expectations.

I'm just blathering, really. This has been a time of immense satisfaction for me on a personal and professional level. Creatively I feel free to write what I want, and that gives my writing more confidence and strength.

The IndieGoGo campaign had a lot to do with that. Though we didn't hit the goal we shot for, the campaign itself was fun and brought me closer to the readers and fans, which is you guys. This is a huge part of why I choose to be independent and self-published; because all I need is a platform and people willing to give me their time, attention, and a small amount of money. In exchange I try to give you as much interaction and entertainment as possible. I've become friends with many of you along the way.

How can I complain about that? I'm building a career thanks to all of you, one where I get to do the thing I love. I've made some strong connections and had a lot of support. I don't know how any entertainer in any genre can ever be anything but thankful and humble in the face of that. Without you guys none of it happens.

I thank you for this a lot, but repetition makes it no less true. You're the best. That's all.

Status (updated)

[The AMA on Reddit is planned to start at 7:00 PM, EST. I will be posting a link here as well as on Facebook]

[The AMA link can be found right here.]

Rather than try to update everyone piecemeal about what's happening with me and my work right now, I decided to write a quick post here to share the news.

So, in no particular order:

Tomorrow I will be hosting an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit. I will update this post when the AMA is happening, as well as posting it on my author page on Facebook. It will be in the evening unless some dire emergency comes up, and if that happens I'll update as needed.

I've been hard at work (and annoying my friends on Facebook with updates and word counts) on Victim Zero. Remember that we still have just under a month on the Victim Zero campaign at IndieGogo, so check it out and back the project if you can, or share the links if you can't. Victim Zero is now over 40,000 words, all of that done in 12 days of manic writing, and I think it's some of my best work. I've never felt so strongly about a project, and I hope you guys like it too.

This weekend I will be taking some time off from Victim Zero to work on my other WIP, Next. That's my superhuman story, and I enjoy writing it almost as much as Victim Zero. Next may or may not come out first; that was the original plan, at any rate, but since I'm now only working part-time I'm getting more done than I planned for. We'll play that by ear.

The other big news I have to share is that James Cook and I are going to be working on a collaboration set in his Surviving the Dead universe. Actually we've already done some work on it, but both of us are mid-novel at the moment. Jim is working on the third Surviving the Dead book, and I've got all of the above PLUS Living With the Dead happening.

So we're going to let it simmer for a few weeks while he finishes up his book, then really get into it. I'm not going to tell you anything else about it for now, because it's awesome and cool, but it definitely is zombie fiction and it's a labor of love. You'll really like it, I swear.

For now that's all I have, but keep your eyes peeled for news in the near future as projects go forward and books come out.

Saying Goodbye

This morning at 6:33, I clocked out of the nursing home for the last time. My notice is up and while my technical last day ends tomorrow, it's my day off. Maybe that's not poetic, but it has the advantage of being accurate. Functionally I'm without a job.

I'm happy.

I have orientation at a new job on Friday, so I'm not going to go without work. I'm not dumb. I have some money saved up because the new job pays less and is part time. I'm doing this for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is so I can have at least a few months of working somewhere that doesn't leave me so exhausted I keel over in the mornings so I can write more.

I'm going to be using the reduced hours and workload to get things done. I'm working mostly on Next at the moment, but I have some work done on Victim Zero and I'm planning to get deep into it in the coming weeks. (If you don't know, I'm running an IndieGoGo campaign for Victim Zero right here.)

Between working part-time (maybe even full-time hours depending on demand) and having an easier job, and having my savings, I should be able to swing this for at least three months. During that time I expect my productivity to shoot way up. I've been excited about it for a while now, and impatient for my notice to be up.

The reality of leaving work for the last time this morning was far different than I expected. My coworkers gave me little going-away gifts, thoughtful ones, and brought in food. I choked up when I did the rounds giving them hugs as I left. I felt a bittersweet joy in going, sadness that I wouldn't be laughing with them and telling jokes any longer. They're a damn fine group of friends to have, and even though I saw them just a few hours ago I already miss them.

Working in a nursing home is hard. Mentally, physically, and spiritually. You're responsible for the well-being of a large group of people, and the folks you work with are some of the few who understand. I'm leaving behind a solid group of people I care about, and that's just the ones that work there. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to miss the ones I took care of. The nursing home was like a family--sometimes dysfunctional, but at the end of the day full of love and good times.

I should feel trepidation about the near future. I'm in uncharted waters, with no guarantees. The only sure thing I have is my writing, and probably the best and most heartwarming thing my friends at work told me was that I should go for it. They know how much being an author means to me. They've encouraged me to succeed and wished me all the best. In return I told them that if I manage to get Stephen King rich, I'll share the wealth.

I'm onto the next step in my career, or at least that's the plan. The likely outcome is that I'll use this time to finish several works in addition to the books mentioned above, and that I'll see some increase in my writing income, which is currently at a very low point. Chances are high I'll have to get another full-time job at some point this year, but I have hope I'll finally strike gold with one of the things I'm working on or am about to start. I finally feel free to explore those ideas, even knowing I'll be working in home health. Going from taking care of twenty people a shift to a maximum of two means I will have energy to work on my books and the blog before and after my job. It's an awesome thing to know.

I feel confident and happy. I feel excited about the future for the first time in ages. I'm up. 

It's a fantastic feeling.

Victim Zero Milestone

As many of you know, I'm currently running an IndieGoGo campaign for Victim Zero, which is an actual novel set in the Living With the Dead universe, rather than a book collecting the blog.

The campaign hit a milestone yesterday: 10% of total funds reached. That may not seem like a lot to some people, but it is for me. I promised to write a blog post giving some background on the book when we hit that $500 mark, and this is me keeping that promise.

So, you want to know who stars in this, the first LWtD novel? Sorry. Can't tell you.

If you read the blog, you've met this character. He isn't a main character, but once you read Victim Zero you'll know exactly how vital he is to the story. The idea with this book is to show how the actual organism that started the zombie plague got started. Most zombie fiction skims over that fact, but the (albeit extemely dubious) science behind zombification fascinates me. So, like any good writer I came up with an idea, looked into the biology of it, and fudged the facts one hell of a lot to suit my purpose.

This is the first in a planned series. The number of the book is right there in the title: zero. The events I'm currently writing about in the story begin well before the first post of the LWtD blog. Unlike many books, this one will cover a fairly long stretch of time as the main character deals with the onset of the plague as well as the immediate fallout from society collapsing.

It's entirely possible you'll see some familiar faces in there, too.

Important to remember is that Victim Zero is a standalone novel. You don't have to read LWtD to know what's going on or to feel like the story has been told. Likewise you don't have to read this book if you already read LWtD. Each will, if I do my job right, exist as intertwined stories that can be consumed separately with no loss of coherence or quality.

It's hard to give any hints about the book without mentioning who the main character is and what he does. That's central to the entire thing. However, I did promise to share something of the book with you, and I keep my word. Since I can't give away much at this point, allow me to post the prologue to Victim Zero for all of you to read. You helped raise that $500--now almost $600--and you've earned a peek.

It's short and sweet, but hopefully sets the tone:

 The end of the world started on a fishing boat.

That was not the primary mission of the boat; it was a science vessel. Though the men and women who worked its decks pulled fisherman's hours and suffered the same weather, their purpose was fundamentally different. One group sails to eat, the other sails to know.

The boat should have been at its current location a day before, but harsh seas and high winds kept her anchored longer than anticipated. The marine biologists aboard and their many student researchers discovered the delay to in fact be a lucky break—the algae bloom was spectacular following the churning of the sea in storm.

For hours they hauled small pots of water, a cycle repeated until the tanks were full of iridescent blue-green algae. Then the plastic containers finished their last trip into the sea, were cleaned and stowed, and the vessel turned toward home. A day late but richer for the potential in their discovery, the crew celebrated with cold beer and fresh-caught fish grilled on the main deck.

It would be years before they learned of their part in the end of the world, innocent and small as it may have been. Lost among the understandably more vital news of the day, no one connected the suicides of one tenured professor and two of his former students. By the time anyone could have connected their research to that day on the boat and the haul they brought in, it was far too late. At that point the world had fallen too far for anyone to care.

But that was later. After it all happened.

This is the story of how it began.

Because I can't share much at this point, I'm happy to answer questions about the book in the comments. I may have to give you a RAFO (read and find out) but what I can answer I will. So get asking if you're curious!

My Affair With John Scalzi

I'm not one to pick up new writers easily. I'll be honest as hell and say that since I've started writing my own stories I've become much worse about that. Reading a new book by a new author is for me what shopping for cars is like for most people. I get nervous and twitchy and I want to know I spent my money and time on something good.

I've heard John Scalzi's name for years now. I've seen his books on bookshelves and noted that the covers of his SciFi books are similar to many, many others: ships in space painted with that dreamy haze. I like that aesthetic, honestly, but it doesn't jump out at me.

Then I read this post on his blog back in October. The post and the resulting comments are a brutal send-up of some extremely conservative politicians and their view on rape victims. It's not easy to read.

That post got me curious. I started to take a deeper look at Scalzi. Then I read a sample of Redshirts and immediately knew I had to read it. A comedic novel that parodies Star Trek? Yes, please.

I read the book and adored it. I laughed out loud reading it. Scalzi captured me with his ability to make the ridiculous believable and to effortlessly (or with a seeming lack of effort; I'm a writer. I know it's difficult) blend in tender moments. I cried at one point. It was pretty good.

I did not, however, continue my affair. I was working on my (now indefinitely) shelved novel Monster at the time and didn't feel right spending my time reading when I should have been writing. So I wrote and occasionally reread old favorites. My relationship with Sanderson, Rothfuss, Butcher, Brent, Weeks, Friedman, and other favorites was once again sort of monogamous.

Fast forward to last week. I finished reading the final Wheel of Time book and found myself in a mood to keep reading. I wanted something new, something very good. And I remembered that I had enjoyed Redshirts and loved it. Surely Scalzi's other books were somewhere close to that quality, right?

Well, no. They weren't. Redshirts was really good, but the others? Fucking AMAZING.

I started with Old Man's War, which is the first book in a series by the same name. I read it in six hours. Then I bought the sequel, The Ghost Brigades, which I read in five hours. Then I bought The Last Colony and took my time, spreading the reading over two days and a total of about eight hours. Then it was on to The Android's Dream. And that's where I'm at right now. Four books consumed in less than a week and I hurt for more. Scalzi is releasing a new novel in the Old Man's War series (which I meant to review here instead of just writing a huge fangasm to Scalzi, but hey--I've been awake since last night. I'm tired.) in serial format, thirteen parts released one a week.

Starting today.

I will wait until all thirteen are out, then buy them all at once. I couldn't stand the anxiety of waiting a week to read the next installment.

So we're clear: John Scalzi is ludicrously talented. No, his books aren't perfect because nothing is perfect, but I judge science fiction by very high standards. Old Man's War as a series stands beside the best SciFi in the world. It may lack the gravitas of Aasimov, the earthy wisdom of Heinlein, or the sheer technical brilliance of Clarke or Herbert, but that does not make Scalzi's work less than theirs. Culturally, Old Man's War is as relevant to where we are as people today as anything Heinlein wrote in his time. I don't denigrate his work in saying he isn't those men (I think he would agree). I just want to be clear; his work carries the best parts of each of them.

In short, John Scalzi has his own voice. It may have a tone more wry and irreverent than others (the first chapter of The Android's Dream, the title itself a reference to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep AKA Blade Runner, is one long fart joke) but that's just fine with me. Because Scalzi manages to capture you with his words, keep you there with his characters, and make you laugh your ass off and ponder philosophy at the same time. That's a hell of a thing.

Looks like my harem has a new member. And yes, I realize it's creepy and weird to keep referring to my favorite authors that way. It's because I love them, all of them, and Scalzi is just too good not to love.

The one where Winnie the Pooh is outed as a murderer

Jess and I had a conversation on the way home from the store yesterday. Here's how it went.

Jess: Did Winnie the Pooh only eat honey?

Me: I mean, he's a bear, right? I'm pretty sure that between heartwarming adventures he hunts.

Jess: Seems reasonable.

Me: Well, the hundred acre wood isn't rife with woodland creatures. Probably because Pooh kills and eats them.

Jess: I think that's what happened to Piglet's parents. Piglet has Stockholm Syndrome. Pooh is his friend because Piglet's mind can't deal with the horror of remembering the bloody murder of his parents.

Me: Christopher Robin is just getting fattened up for a finale that will ruin the childhoods of millions.

Jess: God, I hope so.

There was more to the conversation but I was so tired that I fell asleep and forgot the details. But this is the gist of the thing, and it gives you some small insight into the twisted discussions I have every day. It made me laugh to do Pooh's voice, telling Piglet that his time has finally come. I guess the other possibility is that Pooh and Piglet have some kind of Lenny/puppy relationship. I don't know. It just made me giggle.

Back to work for me.