Zombie Zeitgeist Redux

Posted on by scott

Over at Inside a Dog, YA writer Maureen Johnson has just extended and expanded her Insert a Zombie, Win a Prize contest.

The basic concept is that any scene in any book would be better with a zombie, a truth universally acknowledged among certain of us genre fans. (Scroll down to the blue text in this post for Maureen’s own example, featuring a zombie in Pride and Prejudice.) To enter the contest, just take a scene from any book and add a zombie to it.

For the contest’s new and improved iteration, celebrity judges Meg Cabot, John Green, E. Lockhart, and Justine Larbalestier will choose the winning entry!

Here’s my entry, though I probably won’t win, given that I’m married to one of the judges.

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Zombies.

It was the best of apocalypses, it was the worst of apocalypses. It was an age of brain eating, it was an age of shotguns. It was the epoch of damaging the head, or of removing it from the body. It was the season of light infantry weapons, it was the season of dark pursuits through abandoned sewers. We had everything at the local mall before us, but there were too many zombies in the way. In short, the period was so far like the present period—except for, you know, all the frickin’ zombies.

Go and enter!

Here are the 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 entry to 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 Maureen and the other judges.

Round one: this week on insideadog . . . deadline, end of day, February 14th. The first five semi-finalists will go up to voting on the 15th. The prize for winning this round is the final copy of Maureen Johnson’s Suite Scarlett.

Round two: next week on Maureen Johnson’s blog . . . all entries submitted between February 16 and February 21st, with the next semi-final on February 22nd.

This all leads up to the crowning of the ULTIMATE ZOMBIE on Monday, February 25th.

5) You know who picks the winner? YOU DO! It’s ZOMBIE IDOL!

This just in: Justine adds a zombie to James Joyce’s Ulysses.

117 thoughts on “Zombie Zeitgeist Redux”

  2. i like my books to look clean and new too. i was brining my books to my teacher to let her borrow them and my copy of Pretties got a scratch on it from my little clip on my assignment book. i was so sad. it’s like right on Shay’s face. 🙁

  4. I try SOOOO hard to keep all of my books PERFECT
    But somebody always borrows them (even after I tell them that NOBODY ON EARTH is aloud to even TOUCH my books)
    and no matter how hard I try I’m not aloud to buy another book even with my own money… 🙁
    Because ,qoute, “You have a perfectly fine book right there Netta!”
    Yeah, one that’s been torn to shreds
    yep that’s just great
    *sob*

  5. wait…thats shay on the cover of pretties? i always thought it was Tally…. i could be right, but i also could be wrong…

    BUT anyways, back on the subject of miss treating books, i let my friend borrow my copy of Extras and she used the cover slip as a bookmark…and it got all like…stretched out (if you would call it that…since paper really doesn’t stretch). i was rather bummed out…

    i never was the kind of person to post a lot on these…but it is rather entertaining =]

    hehehe

  6. Going back to what someone said a while ago about arguing on the internet…

    “Arguing on the internet is like the Special Olympics: even if you win, you’re still retarded”

    Don’t know who said that, but I find it insensitive yet hilarious. 😛

  7. Books are great when they still look perfect after being read a million times. But they’re still great with the front and back covers off and a million dog eared pages. A book is like a person. The outside doesn’t matter. Its what is INSIDE.

  9. was it just me, or did other people think of Scott’s April Fools Day prank last year when you read about the zombies? With the zombie on the Extras cover?

    Somebody above me probably mentioned it, I’m just too lazy to search.

  10. Yeah, I have to say that I try to keep my books nice, but it’s inevitable when all my demented friends steal my books to read for themselves. I don’t get too freaked unless it’s like totally destroyed and unreadable. A whole bottle of blue glitter glue just exploded all over me, while I was doing my History project.

  14. I’m sooooo entering this. It sounds amazing.
    Can’t decide which book to do, though.
    The of… Harry Potter 7, Eclipse, The Bar Code Tatoo, The Divide, or So Yesterday.
    I’m leaning towards So Yesterday and Eclipse.

  19. Wow, one week ago Serafina you were wishing for snow, now, your wanting it to be moved.

    URG! I hate when you have to bring a whole text book home just for one freakin question!!!!!!!

    Theres this really hot guy that i like……and i think hes been like flirting with me latly. Ok but his mom is a sub and he came up to me today and said (she had subbed our class ysterday) “My mom thinks your really cool. she likes you a lot.” and of course i smiled i mean like, parental approval, yea!! but then i had to think why she would tell him that? why did he tell me? has he talked about me? did he ask her? I was a tad, like, EXCITED!!!

  21. yeaaa, the only thing that bugs me about that cover is that Zane was always said to have dark ink black hair, and yet i see no inky looking hair there!
    im still thinking its tally…but i guess its up to your imagination

  22. no…thats Tally-wa all rite. who said it was Shay? oh well. alls i no is that that looks absolutely NOTHING like poor image-ruined Zane-la.

    i dont let people touch my books. hehe. all the guys are always trying to touch my books. when its mine, i wack em before they can get within two feet of it. and when i let them touch it and tell them its a library book, they sigh in defeat. MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

    -Lizzy-wa OUT! 😈

  23. My friend knows (guy friend) how much i hate ppl doing stuff to my book so today he took my book and started to rip it!!!!!! he started tears the cover and i yanked it from him and hit him constantly on the arm, stomach, and across the face.

  24. Ha, I’m obsessive about keeping my books perfect to. i literally start to panic and get all sad if my book gets torn or the cover is dented.

  25. That’s mean Bran-la! He actually RIPPED it?!?! My friends will steal it but they’ll never go that far.

  28. ok so back on the keeping books in perfect condition, i like to have good books they don’t have to be perfect but just good. So over the summer i let my bff Drew barow my copy of twlight and when i got it back it had no cover and half of the title page!!!!!!! i mean wtf?????????? treat my books with respect!!!!!!!11 urggg
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

    it made me so mad…….

    Sophie-LA
    Word-LA
    😉

  30. you guys do know you can enter more than once, right?

    and i still want snow! i just want it to snow enough that they cancel the whole day, not just do a delayed opening, cuz they’re almost worst than normal school.

    dude, no cover? ripping it? wow, none of my friends are that bad. thankfully.

    and i was the one who said it was Shay, cuz even if it’s not accurate, it totally is supposed to be. really. it’s Tally, Zane and Shay, and then Tally, and you know, Aya.
    and that stupid ink-black hair thing….that Zane is really annoying. nothing like the actual Zane.
    lame marketing…

  32. wow Bran-la…..that stinks! he’s ripping the cover! that is just mean. it’s like book torture! so is it the same guy who’s mom likes you?

    i have 2 guys in my math class that i kinda like and they both flirt with me. it’s kinda funny because we just got a new seating chart today and like i’m right inbetween them so the whole time there like kidna competing for my attention. the one is like really strong and hott and nice, and the other is like really sweet and personality-wise he’s a lot like me. i don’t know which i like more.

  33. Yeah, today was totally like teen soap opera at school today. It was all like *Gasp* you can’t like him, I do. But he likes her so OMG but they don’t know they like eachother, so will you tell her that he wants to ask you out? *Sigh* but he bought her flowers so that must mean something,right? Huh, No way. That would mean she’s cheating on….Like totally freaky drama. With everyone. Very very meaningless petty drama.

  35. Oh, and i LOVE to keep my books clean but yes, its whats on the inside of the book that matters most! 🙂

  37. i use to think that too. but then Scott-la explained that it was Shay…well at least i think he did. it was a long time ago.

  46. Omigod. This contest is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. If it hadn’t just passed deadline, I would have totally submitted and entry. It probably would have been “7 Habits of Highly Effective Zombies.” Wow, that book would have been a bajillion times better with Zombies in it.

    Because I’d totally make the top 100.

  47. …Why is Eclipse literally bloodstained?

    Then again, I’m one to talk… my copy of a book about Anne Boleyn has a semitransparent, completely translucent page due to dropping it on my breakfast. It was an accident! Swear! But I was eating toast with a great deal of butter, so… Yeesh.

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