Zombie Zeitgeist Redux

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

  1. lol i think i’m going to zombify “Little Women” (gag)
    how’s this sound:
    “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any zombies,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. 😛

  2. thats hilarious i just realized these posts are on a different time zone – i was like “wow, its lunchtime” lol its dark out here – like dinnertime 🙂

  3. OMIHECK Teel-La! I was SOOO almost going to do Little Women! That is too funny! But I didn’t. That book SCREAMS for a zombie! Gah. Would have been better with one. LOL!

    Audrey-Sensei, you can still enter.

  4. yeah i kno i could have kept going but im not nearly as talented as scott-la 🙁
    ugh this sucks i have a huge project due monday and my mom is making me finish it tonight aaarrrgghh!! i’ll never get it done 🙁 🙁 🙁
    so i g2g, people

  5. My school did Macbeth, the play, where all the characters were zombies. It was pretty weird…

    What if instead of being made “pretty”, you were made “zombie”…same mental capacity.

    Or would that just be strange and sacriligious?

  6. hey, sorry, ur getting sick of me, but how do you get onto westerboard, i mean, i forget my password and user name, does it mean my name, screen name, or this name-lanie-wa-la-sensi???????? and my password? i tottaly 4get that! its been like 2 yrs. since i made a thingy for this ah-mazing sight… if you know, plz tell me, i wanna c it!!
    :confused:
    💡
    😆
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    idk what they are but oh well!!
    😀 😛 🙂 🙁 😀

  7. omg!! woopsy! i ment 4 that to go on s.facts!!! lol geeze i am stupid…oh well !!!

  8. Wow, your entry made me smile. Hilarious! (In a way it reminds me of your book, The Last Days…wonder why…hm.)

    It made me think about entering–but I’m assuming here that I’m too late to enter anyways–but I’m no writer. (At least, not any more…I used to write a TON, but nothing that ever really interested me and I’m also in the hating everything I’ve ever written stage.)

    Anyways, I try to keep commenting on your blog, you’re an amazing author and among one of my favorites. (Right up there is Anne Rice, Neal Shusterman, and Stephenie Meyer.)

  9. You make blogging look like a walk in the park! I’ve been trying to blog daily but I just cant find writing material.. you’re an inspiration to me and i’m sure many others!

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