We’re totally in the picture WAY top left. Good luck finding us.
Last night my husband and I went to see Postmodern Jukebox in concert. If you haven’t heard of them, they take modern and famous songs and do covers in an older music style: do-wop, Motown, big band, etc. It’s a completely different way of looking at familiar songs.
So why is this relevant to my writing?
I’ve realized the entire basis for my writing style rests on the unexpected. I’m not good at creating new fantastic worlds or beautiful timeless romances or thrilling mysteries. What I am good at is looking at familiar things from a new perspective. This is what drew me into writing satire.
It’s exciting for me to take something tired, yet true, and make it engaging. I love the element of surprise – setting up a story so the reader thinks they know where it’s headed, then turning somewhere completely unexpected.
Read through some of my poetry or short stories and you’ll see what I mean; my park poem is about an adult, not a child, and my rain story is about a leak in the ceiling, not standing in the rain. Many of my other poems and stories touch on the same theme, but you’ll have to trust me on that for now since I don’t have many up on my blog yet.
In any case, this is why my first novel Zombie Love was born: we’ve not seen many stories from the perspective of the zombie, and I find that concept fascinating and exciting: just as I find Postmodern Jukebox’s Nickelback done to Motown music.