There Was A Lot of Competition

I'm honored to announce that The Rainbow Reader has bestowed upon Eat Your Heart Out the much-coveted award for Pioneering Use of a Cheating Ex-Stripper Girlfriend-Cum-Gun-Wielding Warrior Babe in a Zombie Apocalypse.

My book was up against a lot of heavy hitters in this category, and it only squeaked to the top by a very slim margin. This award means so much not only to me but to all the gun-wielding ex-stripper girlfriends out there whose hard work against the zombie regime goes virtually unnoticed. Raise a glass to the warrior babe in your life, and then slam that glass down into the eye of that zombie that's gnawing on your leg. (Seriously, dude, it's right on top of you.)

My thanks to Salem West. And you should check out the other clever awards for some pretty boss books on her list here. 

Honored to be Mentioned

This week, The Rainbow Awards anointed my little zombie-novella-that-could, Eat Your Heart Out, with two Honorable Mentions in the categories of Best Lesbian Debut Novel/Book and Best Lesbian Sci-Fi/Fantasy!

I'm deeply grateful to have had my story considered for this award. With the publication of my own little queer book, I have slowly throughout this past year been immersing myself more and more into the world of queer literature, and much like a virgin on her wedding night, I am discovering it is bigger than I imagined! The Rainbow Awards are great because it is an effort of love that achieves positive and inclusive visibility for all aspects of queer literature.

From the website: "More than 480 books, almost 150 judges, all over the world, and many, many submissions, from indie publishers, from mainstream publishers and a lot of self-published authors."

I was very impressed with the list of winners (more titles to add to my To Read list!), and with the positive comments from some of the judges for each title. Even the Honorable Mentions got blurbed. For EYHO: "Funny, engaging and oh yeah... zombies." –Julie W."Fast paced, action packed story with a different spin on the zombie genre. I really liked the chemistry between the MC's". –Tammy.

I want to thank everyone involved with these awards (it seems like a massive undertaking!), and everyone who has read and reviewed Eat Your Heart Out over this past year, and especially Steve Berman of Lethe Press and Alex Jeffers of BrazenHead, for all your extremely awesome support of my endeavors and of queer fiction in general. Let us continue to move gayly forward!

Look How Red My Face Gets When I Say "Penis!"

Here is video from a reading I did at Velvet Revolution, the student-run reading series at San Francisco State University!

The first 8 minutes is a chapter from Eat Your Heart Out, and the last four is a bit of a short story or somesuch called "Off Your Chest" (it's about a movie star and her sexy times).

Observe how I attempt to calm my nerves by avoiding eye contact AT ALL COSTS!

Live-blogging Pretty Little Liars

A more accurate title might be "Stream-of-consciousness Blogging PLL." Since it will not be "live" by the time you read this. Also I may edit it to make myself seem as though I have some sort of grasp on how to spell and grammer good.

So Pretty Little Liars is baaaaasically the most ludicrous show on television. And I mean that as a compliment. I am in love with it.  You know that part in Whip It! when Ellen Page's parents are all, "No Roller Derby for you! It will interfere with your schooling and stunt your growth and turn you gay and make you move to Austin!" And Juno is all, "But I'm IN LOVE with this!" And that guy from Home Alone is all, "I told you! Gay!" You know that part? Yeah, my love for PLL is like that part of that movie I just described there.

Anyway, I've had a lot of sugar and caffeine and there's a super storm outside my window, so here we go:

DO I EVEN HAVE TO TELL YOU THERE WILL BE SPOILERS???

There will be spoilers.


Season 3, Episode 1

An animal shelter for pocket dogs?! Is this the best thing, or the BEST thing?

Doesn't Emily still have a hole in her stomach? Put down the vodka!

Bringing up your dead girlfriend at a party. Dowwwner.

I'm so glad they haven't changed these opening credits.

But I thought the only shovel in all of Rosewood was locked up in "evidence" at the "Police Station"!

I think the name of their crack mystery team should be Conclusion Jumpers.

No one besides Jayne is blaming you.

The anniversary of when you hooked up anonymously with a teenager in a bar bathroom? Super romantic.

Spencer is always trying to go on little dates with the other girls, and they are always like, "No thank you I have a boyfr--wait, what am I saying? Yes please! Can we wear costumes?"

Pretty lax security for a criminal insane asylum there, Rosewood.

LESBIAN ANGST! ..oh wait...That's just regular mourning angst. My bad. Carry on.

"Someday, we will all have jubilation." Hannah is my favorite.

The one thing these ladies should have done on their summer vacation was take a dang self-defense class!

Aaaand now they all have ulcers!



Wellllll that was fun for me. You know what else is fun? Heather Hogan's recaps at AfterEllen.com. Check 'em out.

Poetic Amusings

Recently, I came across a folder full of shitty poems I wrote for my mandatory undergrad class. They are hilarious, as I am seemingly incapable of writing poetry unless it is super emo (hilarious by nature) or intentionally a joke (jokes are funny even - or especially - when they fail!). It's not that I don't enjoy reading the occasional poetry book, or admire those who take writing poetry seriously. It's just that I really, really suck at it. Therefore, I thought you make like to laugh with/at me. Here are some poems plus doodles I did in my workbook during class:

Prompt: definition poem ("blank is blank")
This prompt is causing trouble
For my poor distracted mind
My eyes seek something solid
My pen could then define.
There's snow and brick and paper
And people all around
But a headache's creeping in
And like a tape rewound
This poem will end where it began
As nothing, safe and sound.


Prompt: dramatic poem from pov of family member.

My Dog Talks About Our Family Vacation

You are all smiles, tight, pulled at the corners, stretched
Over a face meant to frown.
I know what's up.
I know it is too good to be true
Too much to dream
When I've been in the yard all day

Chasing after phantom squirrels
Evasive as the wind, endless.
You've been stacking objects on top of other objects
In that thing that takes you away.
You can't catch me with that sweet allure of people food
Straight from your plate to my watering mouth.
I'm wagging my tail but I'm not happy.
I'm chewing your treats but I don't want them.
Because the next thing is hands
Choking, pulling -- damn this collar!
Your cooing voices urgent and annoyed --
At me? I've done nothing.
Yet here I am. One more smile from you,
Same false promise, as he door shuts and my cage is locked.
My voice reverberates of the tiles; the water in my dish dimples.
I crash back and forth, nails scraping, slipping.
I lie down and seem to sleep forever
Dreaming of the squirrels,
My phantoms.

 

 

Prompt: imitation poem

While you were out
Your brother was in --
In me.
He has a tenderness,
A passionate caress
That I have never known
From you.
I orgasmed

At least
Six
Times.
But I feel really bad about it.
P.S.
Don't forget to pick up Suzie from ballet.

 

 

Prompt: a song to welcome spring

Spring spring time to sing
Time to interrupt sleep stupid birds
Spring spring the blooms it brings
Trampled by rushing boots
Spring spring play on the swing
Not while this wasp lays eggs in my bed

This One's Just Punny

The little boy in the bike accident
Looks to his mom and says, check it out, ma,
No hands! Waving stumps in the air
As he flies down the hospital corridor
In his wheelchair.

 

 

Meanwhile....

Hello, friends. Do you know what I did last month? I will tell you what I did last month.

I FRIGGIN' GRADUATED!

You may now address me as Master Ingram, but it is not required.

Holy balls, it feels weird to be finished with school. Congruent with graduating, and as part of my final project, I finished writing the manuscript for All Good Children, a dystopian horror novel I've been working on for over three years. Completing both of these things at the same time has me feeling...I don't know...empty, in a weird way. I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS!

So. Two huge parts of my life have come to a (exciting and satisfactory!) close. What's next?

Well I'm looking for an agent and continuing to send out short stories. I'm writing less but trying to be okay with that (permission to take a break, please!). And, uh, I don't know. Figuring it out as I go. It's fun and scary and amazing and overwhelming. Here is a picture that represents my feelings right now:

Goddamn I wish I could marry that baby. But not in a pedo way. No pedo!

GUESS WHAT ELSE??


Eat Your Heart Out snagged itself a couple of tasty reviews over the past weeks!

The Bay Area Reporter says, "With a dry wit and a sense of the absurdity of the situation (zombies? In the middle of Ohio? Who would notice the difference?), author Ingram keeps the action brief and the tale short enough to avoid indulgence. It's a romp you can sink your teeth into."

Rue Morgue Magazine proclaims: "This is a clever character study splattered with recognizable horror tropes, in which the heroine confronts not merely zombies but herself, resulting in a tightly paced, humorous tale about the perils of being emotionally repressed and menaced by the undead."

The generosity and kind words of these two reviewers makes my heart go VRREEEEEEEEEEEEE!! (that's a good sound. my doctor might disagree.) (BrazenHead has a dedicated page for EYHO here)

The Goldie Awards are this weekend! THEY ARE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. I hope everyone is having an excellent time at the convention, and I wish I could be there! Good luck, everybody!

I've got good excuses over here!

I'm really bad at blogging in general, but lately I have a GOOD EXCUSE. It could even be a REASON. See, I don't have the internet at my current personal dwelling space. So I have to trek to a coffee shop or something to get any real work in that area done. There's only so much an iPhone can do before it gets annoying (or before I get distracted by Words with Friends).

SO ANYWAY

Eat Your Heart Out is a Goldie finalist in the Speculative Fiction category! There is some pretty stiff competition here, but I am excited to be among them! Hopefully I will get to attend the conference, if I can swing my work schedule the right way.

Okay that's all I got. OH...the website is updated with a bit of press and event info. See you in a month or something!

Do you have a book club?

Well, mayhaps you should start one. Hey, Lambda Literary seems to think Eat Your Heart Out makes a wonderful March selection. Maybe your group would too!

Here are the reading group questions my friends helped me come up with (it was fun!):

....I was gonna copy and paste, but it didn't work out. Here's the PDF: here it is.

A Few Nice Things

YOU GUYS!

Thank you for coming to my reading all them Fridays ago! (I think it was like two Fridays. IRREGARDLESS) It was super great to see everyone, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who bought books from me. I'm also super appreciative of your skills in coming up with obscure foods on the spot! To anyone thinking of doing a reading in a family-friendly environment, I highly recommend asking your guests to provide you with names of foods to replace all your family unfriendly swear words. It's chaotic and great! Furthermore, you guys, you all raised $71.50 to help feed some kibble (and maybe give some vaccinations or something) to some dogs and/or cats at ARF! And thank you again to Half Price Books for hosting the event! (They also featured me on their Meet the Bibliomaniac blog, check it out!) (P.S. If you have any pictures or vids from the event, please send 'em my way!)

So listen, here is a Save-the-Date-type announcement: I will be reading at Velvet Revolution on Wednesday evening April 4th! More info as that happens, BUT I am very excited because VelRo is a great place to read (this is also an open mic, so you should read too!) due to the immense awesomeness of the students who run it, attend it, and provide snacks and beverages for it!

Also, you guys, I am not sure if you have heard of this tiny, mom-and-pop organization known as the Lambda Literary Foundation, but in case you have not they are kind of the tops. The Tops! And so anyway, they reviewed Eat Your Heart Out, and oh man, it was kind of a heart-stopping moment for me. Here is a snippet: "You’re going to love Devin. You’ll lust after Renni Ramirez, too. Hey, even I did as a gay man. Let Ingram take you on a wild zombie adventure. You’ll come to appreciate just why zombies have popped up on the popularity chart of late." Read the full review here!

In another surreal turn of events, Eat Your Heart Out was reviewed across the danged huge ocean in award-winning U.K. horror magazine Black Static! Check out this international acclaim: "...If you fancy a rip roaring zombie action story where the girl gets the girl, written by an author who has a sense of humour and knows how to play the tropes of this subgenre with a virtuoso skill and invention, then Eat Your Heart Out is the book for you." Insanity!

In other writing news, I have completed a first complete draft and revision of my latest manuscript, All Good Children. It was so much more emotional than I wanted it to be! Seriously it raked my heart over some hot coals and then like stomped on it with cleats and then like yelled obscene things at it. In the best way possible. AND NOW I have to turn it into my professor for my final MFA creative project. I am so nervous that "nervous" is inadequate to describe this thing I am feeling. I AM POOPING MYSELF EMOTIONALLY. That's better.

If You're in the Bay Area....!

it's me!

Come to my FIRST EVER book reading! (I might pass out or vomit, giving you just a hint of the antics to be found in the novella, actually...)

Here is the brief blurb about the event from Half Price Books:

Book Signing with Dayna Ingram
Join us on Friday, February 17 at 7 pm to meet author Dayna Ingram for a book reading and signing of her newly published zombie/horror novella Eat Your Heart Out. It's "a ridiculously entertaining novella" according to Publishers Weekly. Don't miss this chance to buy an autographed copy of her work. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to ARF, Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation.


And here is the RIDICULOUSLY long press release I wrote because I've never done this before and sometimes the Internet is not the greatest teacher (but it means well):

Half Price Books to Host Zombie Reading

On February 17th, 2012, Half Price Books in Dublin will host a reading of Dayna Ingram’s zombie novella Eat Your Heart Out, released in December 2011 from BrazenHead, an imprint of Lethe Press. Fifty percent of all proceeds will be donated to ARF, Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation.

“Let’s face facts,” says author Dayna Ingram. “Dogs and cats are the real victims of a zombie apocalypse. They are either forsaken for shotguns in their owners’ desperately selfish attempt to keep themselves alive, or they are sacrificed—however misguidedly—to the undead hordes. We may not be able to do much for these helpless creatures in the Zombacolypse, but we can certainly help them now.”

Eat Your Heart Out is a breakneck tale of lesbians and zombies, opening on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee's Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez—hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise—and actual zombies, leaving Ashbee's hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can't lock. Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend? Will Renni's experience slaughtering motion-captured CGI monsters save the day before the army bombs the town? Once bitten, how many zombies can a person expect to take out before succumbing to infection? Who is the mysterious Deus Ex Machina, and what is he doing with that bone saw? All of these questions and more whisper behind the scream of the single most important thing Devin needs to know in order to survive: is Renni a top or a bottom?

In their starred review, Publishers Weekly calls Eat Your Heart Out, “a ridiculously entertaining novella….a no-holds-barred action-packed romp, filled with rich descriptions, detailed sensory input, sexy flirting, and zombie fighting in the best cult tradition.” EDGE Media Network raves, “It has the charm of an indie flick and the drive of a community theater production of Zombieland. It is extremely well written for its genre…and chock full of sarcastic humor and biting dialogue.”

Out author Dayna Ingram recently migrated to the Bay Area from Ohio in pursuit of her MFA at San Francisco State University. She started working for Half Price Books almost four years ago as part of her Antioch College undergrad co-op program. Eat Your Heart Out is based on true events from that one summer in ’08 when Michelle Rodriguez rode into town on her Harley and the two ladies fended off some zombies for the better part of an afternoon. That…that may have been a dream.

The reading will begin at 7pm, February 17th, followed by a signing, at Half Price Books, 7898 Dublin Blvd, Dublin, CA 94568. Come dressed as a zombie at your own risk!



ALSO ALSO ALSO

I need a real Author Photo that I didn't take with my shitty webcam. I know this.

It's Like a UFO Sighting!

Sometime this past week, The Outer Alliance recorded a podcast (Podcasted?) of a "Queer SF&F" panel, where a buncha readers sat in a room and discussed queer science fiction and fantasy. Man, I wish I could've been in that room. But I kind of was, in spirit, because around the 57 minute mark an audience member asked for some lesbian horror recommendations, and two of the panelists (Melissa Scott and JoSelle Vanderhooft) recommended Eat Your Heart Out. JoSelle actually blurbed the book many months ago (so awesome!), and Melissa commented that she actually doesn't like zombie stories but she liked Eat Your Heart Out.

My book transcends your personal preferences!

Additionally, Eat Your Heart Out got a brief shout out from reviewer Peter Tennant of Black Static as a novella that impressed him in 2011.

Yay!

Zombies and lesbians, together at last.

EDGE Reviews Eat Your Heart Out

My favorite line: "Despite sounding like clichéd fanfiction written by a horny devotee, "Eat Your Heart Out" is tender yet ruthlessly gruesome."

SPOILER ALERT! Might be best not to read this if you want some yummy surprises in the novella itself.



Eat Your Heart Out
by Katie Drexel
EDGE Contributor
Thursday Jan 5, 2012

Many an afternoon has been spent in idle repose by darling lesbians dreaming of being swept off their feet by an action heroine in a summer blockbuster. One would not be remiss if one guessed that notable lady-loving actress, Michelle Rodriguez, might be a common lead in these fantasy films. It should come to no surprise then that the B-actress making a cameo in Dayna Ingram’s,
"Eat Your Heart Out" is a dead ringer for Ms. Rodriguez. The book is dedicated to her after all.

Like many heroes in the zombie genre, protagonist Devin just wants to go to work, get through the day and go home to her hot girlfriend without too much hassle. Like any other hero in the zombie genre, Devin realizes quickly that this isn’t possible. With the help of stacked actress Renni Ramirez, Devin must save her co-workers, and her cheating girlfriend, Carmelle, from zombies, "pseudo" zombies and a militia of rogue zombie hunters before she can call it a day. Devin, our protagonist and self-antagonist, is the underdog that action movies simultaneously love and hate. She grew up on Nintendo war games, is an excellent shot but freezes mid-combat. We love her for her bravery but want to smack her for letting the team down. It’s no wonder that Renni falls deeply in love with her.

Despite sounding like clichéd fanfiction written by a horny devotee, "Eat Your Heart Out" is tender yet ruthlessly gruesome. This sweet zombie novella needs to be made into an A or B movie starring Ms. Rodriguez, right now. It has the charm of an indie flick and the drive of a community theater production of "Zombieland." It is extremely well written for its genre (without having to steal from a certain author whose name rhymes with Kane Bausten) and chock full of sarcastic humor and biting dialogue. But instead of a predictable hetero couple falling in love in the war zone, two lesbians embrace their mortality amid the smell of putrid flesh and find true lust.