One of the hardest things with the writing of a realistic zombie book is dealing with psychological damage. All of my characters are suffering from loss of loved ones. I’m not talking distant cousins, but husbands and wives. Mothers and fathers. In reality, that sort of grief would almost as damaging as a broken leg. Imagine losing your whole family to the undead in one shot. You’d be fine so long as you kept moving, but once you found a location far from the hungry undead maws, the emotional release would overwhelming.

Honestly, as a reader, the last thing I want to do is wade through a character’s grief. A prime example of grief overpowering story was Star Trek: Generations. Within the first five minutes of the movie, Piccard learns that his brother and nephew burns to death and pretty much nukes his character for the entire film. Watching that movie, I wanted Piccard to “get over it” and return to “himself”, but that takes time which is something a movie doesn’t have in abundance.

There’s a moment I’m dealing with right now in my story, and the one way I’ve managed to escape the grief trap is by following the direction of my characters. Evelyn lost her new husband to zombies. Simon deserted his fiance in the middle of a war zone. Randell never knows what happened to his mother. Holed up in an abandoned hotel in a remote part of Connecticut, each of the characters try to keep it together while the others are around. Randell doesn’t want Simon to think of him as a wuss. Simon wants Randell to believe in him. And Evelyn doesn’t trust either of them. It is only in the night, when the blinds are drawn and the lights extinguished does the grief strike, and when it does, it happens “off screen”.

Honestly, I don’t know how I’d survive such an apocalypse. When the zombies did manage to break through my barricade, it would be a kind of relief. And that’s something you don’t much see in zombie flicks.