The song that inspired my first work in progress is “Give Me Novacaine” by Green Day. The book is a young adult zombie novel, and my main character Tess feels very disconnected from the privileged world she lives in. I create playlists for each one of my characters, so I thought I’d share some of the other songs playing on Tess’s ipod right now:

“Give Me Novacaine” by Green Day

“Lithium” by Evanescence

“Fade Away” by Breaking Benjamin

“Is Anyone Here Alive?” by Kill Hannah

“Suffocate” by Green Day

“Somewhere I Belong” by Linkin Park

“Contagious” by Trapt

“Over and Over” by Three Days Grace

“Strawberry Gashes” by Jack Off Jill

“Monster by” Meg & Dia

“All Is Numb” by 32 Leaves

“Everything Is Alright” by Motion City Soundtrack

“Home” by Kill Hannah

“Virgin State of Mind” by K’s Choice

“Numb” by The Cure

My other work in progress is a middle grade ghost story set in a haunted historic theatre, and the song for it would have to be “The Edge of Darkness” by Nox Arcana. Their CD Theater of Illusion could be a straight-up soundtrack for the book. Creepy and atmospheric, and even a little grand theatre organ. Gorgeous.

So what would the song be for your work in progress? Or if you’re a reader, what about a song for your favorite book?

Believe it or not, there was a time when I didn’t have blue hair, Green Day wasn’t my favorite band, and I had no idea how survive in a pit. (I know, weird, right?) An editor had expressed some interest in a young adult mystery series set in a teen nightclub, and decided I needed some hands-on research for the sample chapters. My friend Sally and I went to a teen night at a local punk club. We observed from the bar. We thought we were safe.

We were not.

The loud, joyously sloppy music of the second band broke the pit into chaos. A kid in a Casualties t-shirt careened through the pit, his arm locked around the neck of a wiry kid with a shaved head. The guys on the edge of the fray knew to clear the way for them. So did the fifteen-year-old girls in front of us.

We did not.

The guys slammed into us and I took a steel-toed boot to the knee. The kid in the Casualties t-shirt sprawled onto the floor. I knew he’d come away with a crushed hand, all bloody and mangled and ready to punch someone out over it.

Then something amazing happened. A sea of hands surged to help the guy up, including the kid with the shaved head. Because punk rock is a community and nobody lets anybody get trampled in the pit.

My left knee swelled up about twice its normal size. I limped home. I took notes. I wrote a book. And I fell in love with punk rock.

Click on the book covers to the right to learn more about my books, or use the navigation above to tunnel through my site and learn more about me, my books, my gigs, and my school visits. I also design book covers. 

Hope you enjoy your visit. I love to hear from folks, so don’t hesitate to sign my guestbook or leave a comment or two.

Keep creepin’…

Lynne Hansen

There’s an interesting article in The Independent today about dystopian fiction being the hot new genre for teens. The problem is, several of the titles on the list aren’t dystopian. Ally Condie’s Matched? No question. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games? A no-brainer. But Charlie Higson’s The Enemy and The Dead? A world of no.

Charlie Higson’s The Enemy takes place a year after the zombie apocalypse, and the prequel The Dead takes place a year earlier, during the zombie apocalypse. Sure, there aren’t any adults around and the world kind of sucks because it’s overrun by zombies, but that doesn’t make either of those a dystopian novel. In my mind, they’re both apocalyptic novels because they’re about surviving the apocalypse, not about a world twisted by a society that no longer remembers a time before the world took a nose dive.

And this all got me thinking. How many years have to pass before the apocalyptic becomes post-apocalyptic? A month? A year? Five years? Fifty?

How soon can a society devolve into a dystopia? Are we talking centuries here, or merely a couple of generations, or could things take a bum turn tomorrow and we’re suddenly in a dystopia?

Ultimately, I don’t have an answer. I just wish they’d publish fewer dystopian novels and more novels about the apocalypse. And if they could throw in a few more zombies, I’d be even happier.

It’s Road Trip Wednesday on YA Highway, and this Wednesday’s topic is “Your Six-Word Memoir,” inspired by the book I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets a collection of, well, six-word memoirs by teens. After reading the great angst other authors on YA Highway had distilling their lives down into six words, I anticipated more than a wee bit of stress attempting to do the same. It wasn’t as tough as I’d thought. Here goes:

“Planned much. Did more. Loved it.”

What’s your six-word memoir?

• New High Interest, Low Reading Level Books for Reluctant Readers
• How Educational Publishers Are Dealing With The Common Core State Standards Initiative
• Mead’s Builder v.s. Literature and Latte’s Scrivener (And Why I Geek-Out Over Both)
• People With a Passion for Helping Kids Read, Learn, Laugh, Create & SPARKLE!

Next year the conference travels to Chicago for its centennial year, and if you’re interested in presenting, the deadline is January 12 (snail mail)/January 19 (electronic) to submit your your proposal.

This time I actually did.  This week’s question at YA Highway is: “What’s the best book you read in October?”

Hands down, it was The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell. It’s about a 15-year-old girl who has only ever known a world devastated by the zombie apocalypse, and yet is somehow able to find beauty in it.  The writing is luscious without being pretentious, and the focus stays on the story. The POV is deep and intense. Temple is just the kind of teen character you want to spend time with so you can get way inside her brain.

And speaking of brains, The Reapers are the Angels plays fair with the zombies. the book plays to the conventions that zombie fans expect, and yet because these conventions are filtered through the eyes of this broken, brilliant girl who sees hope and miracles in a world that you’d think would have run out of them.

My “to be read” pile is so huge that I rarely get a chance to reread a book, even one that I love. I adored this book so much that I actually started reading it again as soon as I finished it.  Amazing book.

And if I haven’t convinced you to read it yet, here’s a snippet:

“God is a slick god. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe

Like those fish all disco-lit in the shallows. That was something, a marvel with no compare that she’s been witness to…”

You can read a longer excerpt here.

So what was your favorite book that you read in October? Share it in the comments here, or over at YA Highway.

I’m tickled about my Necro appearance because not only do I get to talk about young adult fiction on “What’s Next After Harry, Percy, Artemis, and Lemony Snicket?” at 10:00 am Saturday, but I also get to talk about “Zombies as the New Vampires” at 11:00 am, and man, can I talk about zombies!  Then at 12:00 pm, it’s all about “Using Ghosts, Angels, & Demons in Fiction.”

Then it’s off to the Zombie Nation: St. Pete Book Launch Party at 5:00 where many of the authors will be autographing the first official copies of the book. My story is called “Dead Memories” and it’s about a 13-year-old girl who is trapped in a nursing home with her Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandmother during the zombie apocalypse. (Think zombies with walkers.) Full details here. And it also features one of my favorite soft ice cream stands and a St. Pete institution, the Dairy Inn. (The ice cream related research I did for the story deserves a post on its own, so keep an eye out for that one later.)

Oh, and there’s one place I won’t be in person, but will be on video. On Saturday at 1:00, Gregory Kurczynski’s short film “Risen” will be a featured selection at the Reel Terror Film Festival in Tampa, Florida, and I got to play a zombie rights advocate in it.  Too terribly cool.

Hope to see lots of folks out and about this weekend for a ton of zombie-themed fun!

So what’s the oddest thing you’ve done to get into the mindset of your character? (Oh, and bonus points if you can identify the song titles and artists from some of the lyrics Tess quotes.)

Let’s be honest here. The zombie apocalypse will mess with your head in a deep and permanent way. Unfortunately, it seems that most zombie novels forget that (or you’ll get a couple of paragraphs of the narrator telling you they’re messed up right before they pick up an uzi and start mowing zombies down.) I find that non-zombie apocalyptic fiction seems to handle the emotional side of the apocalypse better.

Currently I’m listening to the audio book version of George R. Stewart’s 1949 classic Earth Abides. The basic premise is that the main character Ish is doing some academic research in a cabin in the mountains when a deadly virus sweeps the globe and wipes out most of humanity. When Ish comes down out of the mountains, he isn’t faced with hoards of marauding hooligans. The world is not an inherently a physically dangerous place after the apocalypse. However, it is a very dangerous place mentally. Initially Ish is alone and bored and without purpose, finding that most of the societal rules that have guided his life no longer apply.

Does Ish turn all bad-boy rebel as a result? Nope. Ish is an intellectual. He observes and analyzes the apocalypse. He finds no urgency in “surviving.” Gathering food, finding shelter, protecting himself and eventually others–these are all afterthoughts, really. It takes Ish 20 years to even start to think about what might have happened to the government or the rest of the world, for that matter. Earth Abides is about one man’s perspective on the world after the apocalypse. Ish isn’t an emotional kind of guy, so we don’t get that deep POV I love in good young adult novels, but we do see a whole new and interesting world, not so much because a virus has wiped everyone out, but because Ish tinges the world with his unique views and observations. I wish more zombie novels could get me (and keep me) so engaged with a character.