I Wish I Had Something for You

OH WAIT


here is something:

You have to click on the image and zoom in.


THIS IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY!


My heterosexual platonic life-partner and I were watching some show and heard the word "contrarian", and we could not believe that this was an actual word. It sounded too much like a mystical beast, and so we began to develop a children's book series about the Contrarian, who was naturally contradictory, and he lived in the Vagina Tree (different story entirely) and fought an enemy whose origins and mystical nature we had not fully imagined (or partially imagined, or imagined at all). Anyway, then the events pretty much follow the comic to a science. Reality killed my fiction! Super sad.



Next week: It's back to zombies, people. I just can't stop!

Omniscient Foreskin

Are We Breaking Up?


    Lily knows Jane is cheating on her, but it's difficult to prove because they haven't yet set the boundaries of their relationship. Well, not officially. They did have one conversation, or exchange of words, late one night after six shots and two hits of acid. Emboldened, Lily said, "Jane, I like you. Like, I like like you. You know?" Flattered, Jane said, "Wanna make out?" Later, Lily tried to clarify: "So we're like together, like together together?" Still later, Jane solidified things: "Sure, I guess."
    Those three words meant everything to Lily, everything that words as brief and smoke-like as those three words can mean to a girl as young and perpetually stoned as Lily. She put herself to sleep with those words, whispered them into the crook of her elbow as she composed sonnets in text messages she would accidentally send to her cousin Joan on more than four occasions. In those three simple words, Lily envisioned a life, a world, entirely populated by she and Jane (and maybe one of those hairless cats she's seen in movies). "Sure," Jane had slurred, and Lily saw a white picket fence; "I," and there was Jane in the yard waving a spatula at the gas grill, wearing one of those novelty Kiss the Cook aprons; "guess," and there was Lily, dragging Maury, the hairless cat, behind her in its purple harness, leaning over to Jane to oblige the aprons' command.
    But here is Lily, now, sitting in her mom's idling Dodge Stratus, trying to figure out where Margret Winterbottom fits into her picket fence dreams. She supposes she fits atop Jane's quietly thrusting lap, the same position she saw Margret and Jane in last night at Bodie's graduation party.
    Someone outside of the car pounds a gloved fist on the windshield and flakes of thinning ice sloosh off into the road. The glove clears an oval of space on the glass and Jane's face appears, scowling. Lily locks the doors and pretends she can't see Jane.
    "What the fuck?" Jane's voice is muffled by the glass and also the roaring of the motor as Lily guns the car's engine. She's been sitting outside of Jane's house all night, and the car would desperately appreciate a moment to shake itself awake in the twenty-degree weather, but Lily is impatient. Jane stands aside and lets the Stratus zoom away, instantly pulling out her phone and sending a string of rapid text messages to Lily which mostly read as gibberish because she forgets to remove her gloves. Receiving these messages, Lily thinks they are some kind of code and spends the remainder of the afternoon trying to decipher them, which distracts her from thinking about Margret Winterbottom's tongue sliding all over Jane's stomach.
    Around midnight, Jane receives this text: "What r u saying?"
    Feeling as if she's spoken her piece and Lily is purposefully playing dumb, Jane simply deflects the text right back to Lily, as if it were undeliverable post, Return to Sender. Misinterpreting this gesture, Lily reads the text with an emphasis on the letter "u" - "What r U saying?" - and sighs deep and longingly, realizing Jane is being coy because she's afraid to be the first one to commit. Lily should have expected this and been more sensitive to it, being two months older than Jane and vastly more experienced in the world of dating (which Jane, for her part, does not realize they are doing).
    Wanting to reassure Jane, but not wanting to embarrass her, Lily texts back: "Sure, I guess."
    Jane deletes Lily's number from her phone. Lily composes a sonnet about how much she wants Jane to grill burgers in their back yard and walk Maury together, and sends it to Joan. Joan replies: "Ew, I hate those cats, they feel like foreskin." Joan is lying; she loves those cats, but even more she loves making up jokes about foreskin.
    Lily goes to bed thinking everything is okay. Margret Winterbottom goes to bed thinking she should have at least made Jane buy those tickets to the Tegan and Sara concert before letting her get to third.
    Across town, a newborn hairless kitten shivers uncontrollably, and does not know why.
 

No Zombies = No Blog Posts

It's simple math.

But I have updated the website's "Written Things" section.

Also, here's a cautionary tale about Facebook:

What's On Your Mind?

Franklin met Isabel on Facebook. He didn't even have to friend her because she knew next to nothing about manipulating her privacy settings; with one click, he knew everything he needed to know. Information that would normally take him weeks to uncover was simply laid out for him, naked, waiting. One afternoon, she posted this status update:
    “Gugh! I found a lump in my left breast! It's probably nothing serious, just like the last two that turned out to just be cysts that needed to be drained (pics up if you're not squeamish!) but now I have to make a doctor's appointment. I hate making doctor's appointments! Lolololol”
    Franklin set to work immediately. First he acquired a nondescript, white-paneled van, which was the easy part. The hard part was painting all the easily recognizable medical insignias on its sliding door. The red cross proved little difficulty, but the snakes of the caduceus kept coming out more like worms with ridiculously cartoon faces, and for the life of him he could not draw a heart that looked any better than a first grader's Valentine's Day rendering. But perhaps he was being too hard on himself. Finally, after about two days, he finished the exterior. He checked Isabel's Facebook.
    “Argh! Doc can't see me 'til the seventeenth! Doesn't he know the highlight of my month is having him squish my boobies with a giant machine! LOLOLOLOL”
    Franklin stenciled the words “Mammo-Van – Free Mammograms!” in pink letters on the side of the van, and parked right next to Isabel's car at work. He stepped out and pretended to have a smoke, or a text conversation on his phone. If anyone came by, he intended to tell them he was on break. But no one came by. He double-checked Isabel's status update to make sure her lunch break was still at two.
    He saw her coming. He put his cell phone in the pocket of his freshly pressed lab coat. He waited for her to look quizzically at the van, and then he said, “Good morning.”
    “Hi,” she said, and took out her car keys.
    Franklin felt sure she'd be ecstatic to see he was offering her exactly what she wanted – for free, no waiting, no doctor's appointments, done and done – but when she didn't jump at the chance, he grew flustered.
    He stammered, “Ever, uh, ever had a mammogram?”
    “No thanks,” she said, politely averting her eyes as she unlocked her door and slipped inside the safety of her vehicle.
    Franklin stood beside the van for a few minutes, nonplussed. His phone beeped to alert him of Isabel's latest status update:
    “BURRITOS!”
    A woman in an elegant navy pantsuit, forty-ish, approached the van. “You know, I'm probably overdue for one of these.”
    Franklin eyed her from head to foot. She'd do.

An Even Three

The other night I went bowling and drinking (the two go hand in hand, unless you're thirteen, and even then, who knows). Sometime between drink three and drink four I got the urge to jot down a story idea but found myself without paper or writing implement. So I used the Note function on my phone, which allowed me about three thousand characters to write this:

"I am being stalked by a zombie. He's unlike other zombies in that he's completely cognizant; he sits on my front porch and taunts me. I have a porch swing and he leans back in it, kicking his feet against the rail. He says, 'Come on out, little girl,' and flashes his rotted teeth at me."

This is based on a dream I had a few nights ago about facing off with a zombie named Rickshaw. He was a bit of a gentleman until it came time to eat my brain. I shot him in the head a few times but he was unfazed. Eventually, I figured if I couldn't kill him, I would have to at least neuter him. So I got a friend to pin him down while I used a pair of pliers to pull out all his teeth. I'm not sure how any of this will factor in to the story, but there will be a story. (Which, come to think of it, was also probably partially triggered, however subconsciously, by Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend.)

Man, it has been all about zombies since November. I promise you, next month I will only post about non-zombie related things. Such as crime fiction, dystopian futures, and prostitutes. What cheery topics I choose to write about!

Writing Cover Letters Can Be Fun

Hello there, [Editors of a Contest I Don't Expect to Win]:

Attached you will find my submission for your zombie novel/novella contest, entitled EAT YOUR HEART OUT. It is a novel of approximately 50,000 words in length. Allow me to tell you a little about it:

EAT YOUR HEART OUT finds Rain, a twenty-something college drop-out, struggling to breathe new life into her relationship with her emotionally unavailable former-stripper girlfriend Carmelle in the midst of a freak zombie outbreak. After Rain is bitten by a zombie, she begins not only to fear the loss of Carmelle, but also the possible loss of her own life to the dreaded Infection. All seems lost until Rain is able to team up with a most unexpected ally - the one, the only, the ineffable Michelle Fucking Rodriguez.

Told with fast-paced, whip-smart sincerity, EAT YOUR HEART OUT is not simply a zombie satire clinging to the coattails of whatever's left of the lesbian community's infatuation with Michelle Rodriguez. Okay, it is that, but it's also a deeply disturbing exposé of the American Government's abuse of power, a chilling examination of the inextricable bond between personal identity and sexual orientation, a penetrating probe into the minds and hearts of female twenty-somethings (and Michelle Rodriguez), and one hell of a zombie quest novel. With recipes!

I'm lying about the recipes.

My name is Dayna Ingram, and I'm a writer and student living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My short stories have appeared in the literary journals Collective Fallout and Livermore Street. But none of them were zombie-related, so, meh.

Quick Update

Just to link to my website, where you can currently find a .pdf copy of my EAT YOUR HEART OUT manuscript.

http://dingram.yolasite.com/written-things.php

Also note, I found a spelling error/typo on the third frickin' page just now. Frrraaaak. Oh wells.

Enjoy!

Being an adult is kind of weird.

I'm nearly 26 and doing things like budgeting my grocery list and switching car insurance providers and paying rent and washing my own butt still feels weird, like someone else should still be taking care of these things for me. Some weeks ago, I fixed a red flag on my credit report and got really excited, like super triumphant, like Take that, The Man! And it became like my best story for an entire week, and I would tell everyone as if I'd just taken down a cyclops with merely my wit and a rock. At some point I realized this was the most boring shit ever to be excited about, but it made me no less excited. I just felt weird about feeling excited. Kids are always all like, Oh man it's not fair I want to be older so I can drive and eat cookies for dinner and stay up all night and get an STD. And sure, those things are great, but no one really warns you about the bills, and the making-your-own-doctors-appointments, and the bills, and the 40 hour work week, and the bills, and all the list-making, and the bills, and the Ambien. I think if someone did warn me as a kid, though, I'd still be like, "Fuck you, Pops, you just don't want me to live my own life! I have my own life, Pops, I want to LIVE!" Then Pops, if he was smart, or a smart-ass, would toss a pen and a checkbook at my pimply face and be like, "Start living."

Anyway, I have to deal with some car insurance stuff today, and get an oil change, and go grocery shopping. But before I do that, I want to spout off here for awhile, and tell you all about how much time I have been spending on Goodreads. Man, what a time-suck. I really like informally reviewing books because it's like thrusting my opinion on the world, but in kind of a benign way that I don't have to feel guilty about. I also like reading other people's reviews. Some people get really into it, and that always makes me happy, because people being into books is kind of a huge turn-on, amiright? I also find some cool titles to check out which I will read some day if they come into the bookstore or if I get less cheap and spring for them on Amazon.

Speaking of books to read, I am currently seeking some recommendations for: zombie fiction written by women, and/or sci-fi/fantasy fiction involving major lesbian or bisexual characters (they don't have to be, like, major lesbians, but they have to be major characters, like have a lot to do with the overall story). I found this cool site the other day that lists sci-fi books featuring lesbians/bi characters, so that's awesome. Anyway, help a sister out.

In my own writing news, there is none. I'm patiently waiting on my free bound copy of EAT YOUR HEART OUT (provided by Createspace as a spoil of winning the NaNoWriMo war), and then I will probably order some more to give to friends as gifts, but I can't make it available to the public until I figure out the laws regarding fictional depictions of real people, namely celebrities. Also, I might write a short story today or tomorrow. I haven't decided yet. But I am reading this amazing book of short stories, Jenny and the Jaws of Life, that is really inspiring, so who knows.


Anyway, go read some things. Happy New Year!