Life Inside A Suburban Hot Zone

My wife and I live in the midst of a full-blown hot zone.  This may sound a tad dramatic, but it’s true.  When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he spent quite a bit of time in the hospital and, subsequently, in a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation.  Somewhere along the way, he picked up Clostridium difficile, or – as we’ve come to know it – c-diff.

C-diff is a nasty little bacteria.  Those most at risk are people who’ve been undergoing antibiotic treatment for some other disease or infection.  The antibiotic treatments wipe out the healthy flora in a person’s digestive tract, thus opening the door for c-diff.  Once the tract has been colonized with this bacteria, it results in severe, uncontrollable diarrhea:  entirely watery with up to eight bowel movements in a day, this makes the fight against dehydration a constant battle.  It also has a distinctive, pervasive odor, caused by toxins released from the bacteria.  One of the nursing forums I visited while researching this bug described it as follows: "…like something that has been dead and laying in the hot sun with just a slight tang of poop smell".  If left untreated, these toxins can cause severe abdominal pain and result in a life-threatening condition known as toxic megacolon.  People can, and have, died from c-diff.  It’s not a germ you want to fuck around with.

The bacteria is most commonly acquired in hospitals and nursing homes.  Someone will touch an object that has the bacteria on it, not wash their hands, and then transfer it to another patient’s room;  that patient, in turn, gets it on his hands and ingests it while eating food.  Once infected, it is extremely hard to fight (difficile is actually Latin for "difficult") .

It’s been nearly six months since my father began his treatment for it.  While he was in the hospital, his doctor told us about the infection and said he was prescribing Vancomyacin, which he described as "The Chuck Norris of Antibiotics".  In pill form, it is insanely expensive and, in liquid form, insanely difficult to find.  But we expected Chuck Norris to wipe out the infection, so my father could go about the business of building his strength back.  Chuck Norris got his ass kicked when a round of treatments proved futile.  So they put my Dad on a stronger dose and increased both the amount of time and frequency with which he took it.  Again with little result.  The Vanco seems to hold the worst of the infection at bay, but never truly gets rid of it.  Within five days of finishing a round, the c-diff was invariably back  When we complained that they simply kept re-prescribing medicine that wasn't working, they began trying different antibiotic cocktails.  He’s had Vanco with Flagyl, Vanco with Cipro, Vanco with Flagyl and Cholestyramine.  We thought we’d made some headway this last round by adding over-the-counter probiotics into the mix.  His stool became solid, lost the c-diff smell, and his strength and spirits skyrocketed.  But after five days of being off the antibiotics, it came back with a vengeance.

The day before he was sitting up in bed, laughing as he watched Family Guy, and had walked ten feet during his physical therapy (these were the first steps he’d taken for over half a year).  The infection came back that night and by the next day he didn't have enough strength to roll over in bed when I was changing him.  We've called in a gastroenterologist and an infectious disease specialist.  Currently, we’re in the process of trying yet another drug called Difficid, this one even rarer than Vanco.  What I’ve read about Difficid sounds promising;  the only thing keeping it from being the frontline treatment against c-diff is the cost.  Because of this, patients must try and fail at least two other antibiotics.  And that’s only if you can find a doctor who has heard of it or takes you seriously when you say there's a treatment option other than Vancomyacin.  If the Difficid also fails, however, our last option will be a fecal transplant (yes, there really is such a thing).

The reason I’m sharing all of this is that people need to know it’s out there.  People need to know how to prevent it from spreading.  According to the CDC, 14,000 Americans die every year from C-diff and 337,000 people are hospitalized because of it.  Unlike other healthcare related infections that have been declining over the past decade, c-diff infection rates and deaths climbed to historic heights and "pose threats across medical facilities."  Despite their outreach programs, my wife and I know more about this bacteria than most medical workers we've come into contact with.  Which is scary.  The only thing that will kill this bug is bleach or washing your hands with warm, soapy water.  Alcohol-based disinfectants do no good.  Yet you wouldn't believe the number of nurses, doctors, and therapists who give us a condescending look when we tell them to wash their hands after dealing with my father.  "It’s okay." They say.  "I used my hand sanitizer."  No, it is not okay.  It is far from okay.  The hand sanitizer that so many healthcare workers depend upon does nothing against this bug.  You could squeeze an entire bottle on your hands and still transfer the bacteria to the next patient.  And they should already know this;  the CDC has aggressively educated healthcare workers and facilities about this problem.

It should be obvious from what I've written that this infection has life-altering impacts on the patient.  But what people don’t realize is the effects it has on caregivers as well.  Someone must be with my Dad twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  My wife and I used to have regular date nights and would take occasional overnight trips to visit relatives, attend conventions to support my writing, or just explore new areas.  Now we only spend time outside the house together in two hour increments... and only when our son is able to stay with my Dad.  Even when I’m away from the house, I occasionally think I detect whiffs of that c-diff odor.  It’s like the ghost of a smell, haunting the borderlands of detection, and has killed my appetite on more than one occasion.   There’s financial strain involved, too, but I’m not just talking about prescriptions, ER visits, admissions,and office visit copays.  We buy adult diapers, bed pads, disposable gloves, bleach wipes, hand soap, probiotic yogurt, and wet wipes in bulk… and still go through them within a month’s time.  The financial constraints, however, are actually the least of our concerns.

More pressing is the fear of spreading this germ even further.  We don surgical gloves when dealing with my father and immediately wash our hands upon leaving his room.  We bleach everything on a daily basis:  bed rails, bedside table, lunch trays, his wheelchair, portable urinal, trashcan, checkbook, the telephone… anything he comes into contact with gets a thorough rub down. On top of this, we routinely steal the ink pens receptionists give for completing paperwork in waiting rooms;  if we returned them, they would simply be put back into the basket and could potentially spread the infection to other unsuspecting patients simply because my Dad signed his name on a release form.

And then there's also the fear.  We worry about having guests over, we worry about spreading it to friends, family, and co-workers.  We worry that we, ourselves, may already have this bacteria in our tracts, just waiting for our healthy flora to be compromised.  We worry that if they knew what we've been dealing with, friends will avoid us for fear of contamination.  We are not germaphobic, but we are vigilant.  We do not take this lightly and take every precaution to ensure that the bacteria doesn't leave my father's room, much less our home.

Sometimes it all gets a bit overwhelming;  sometimes you feel like a leper.  Sometimes you get tired.  Most people look forward to sleeping in on the weekends, but that's a luxury we rarely have.  We have to take turns to ensure that someone is awake to prepare my father's breakfast, give him his meds, clean him, and so on. But you have no choice.  You do everything within your power to keep the bacteria from spreading, including shaming those who should know better.  I would not wish c-diff on my worst enemy, much less an unwary stranger.  Nobody should have to go through this.  Nobody should have to endure the pain and indignity of this infection.  No one should have to watch someone they love suffer and weaken as the antibiotic-resistant germ grows stronger.

It takes a toll, but you find the strength and push on.  You have to.  You limit your tears and frustration to two minutes, tops;  then you take a deep breath, reach deep into your inner reserves, and muster the strength to do what needs to be done.  You change the diapers, bag the soiled linens, double bag the garbage, and do things you never thought you’d be able to do.  You have to.  Because you love this person and would want someone to treat you with the same dignity and respect.  because you want them to be well again.

That, my friend, is a first hand account of life within a hot zone.  And it only scratches the surface….

Dreaming in Text

When I was younger, my English/Creative Writing teachers talked a lot about symbolism in literature. At the time, I thought it sounded like a load of pretentious crap, to be perfectly honest. I swore to myself that I would always be a down to earth storyteller who stayed away from such ostentatious trappings. To paraphrase an Internet meme passed among authors, my curtains would be blue because that’s what color they were… not to illustrate my character’s underlying depression.


Now that I’m older (and hopefully wiser), I think I understand the role of literary symbolism a little more clearly. No one disputes the subconscious messages conveyed to us through our nightly dreams. It’s a stereotypical staple of psychoanalysis and hundreds of books have been written to help us understand what the hidden parts of our minds are trying to communicate. Think about it: how many times have you shared the details of a particularly odd or disturbing dream only to have the person you’re speaking to immediately ask, “So, what do you think it means?”

The reason I mention this is we, as authors, are basically dreaming in text. When we’re really on a roll, we don’t have to stop and consider what word, phrase, or sentence comes next; it simply flows from our fingertips to the keyboard and appears on our screens as if by magic. In these instances, we’re giving our imaginations and, in turn, subconscious free reign in the waking world. When this is done, it seems only natural the same type of symbolic imagery that peppers our dream worlds would carry over into our written creations.


This was really driven home when I wrote my second novel, Cry Havoc. I decided to challenge myself a bit with that one and see if I could write a 40,000 word rough draft within a consecutive 24 hour period. When I began this formidable task, all I knew about the story was I wanted the book to start with a city embroiled in urban warfare. I had no idea whom the characters were, what the plot would be, or where this scene of street fighting would lead, but trusted these details would reveal themselves as I wrote.


When I was editing the initial draft, things began to pop out at me. I noticed a reoccurrence of the color yellow within the pages and realized that as long as that color was associated with a character they were safe; but the moment yellow was removed from the situation, things rapidly devolved into brutality and violence. In my early 20s I’d worked in a chemical plant and after having my finger crushed by machinery was assigned “light duty”, which involved painting scaffolding and ladder cages; the color of paint I used was called Safety Yellow.


In another scene in the book, one of my main characters, Richard, had just returned to his apartment after a particularly harrowing experience. To be specific, he’d just killed an old man and looted his box of rations and supplies, despite the fact that he’d been a very civilized and sophisticated man for his entire life. An argument ensued with his roommates and Richard ended up slamming the boxes down upon a coffee table shaped like the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, shattering the table in the process. Yin-Yang is a symbol of balance between dark and light and once that table broke, things were never the same for Richard again.

Even though I hadn’t intentionally added symbolism to my work, it still asserted itself and what my teachers and professors had been talking about finally clicked into place. Symbolism isn’t a show of pretension … it’s simply the way our brains are wired. So keep dreaming in text, authors, and trust that your subconscious will lead the way.

The Forest of Waiting Souls: A True Story

When I was very young, too young to really understand the concept of death (much less reincarnation), I had a dream.  In this dream, my sister, my aunt Connie, and I were camping in a damp cave. We'd laid out our sleeping bags near the mouth of the cave and I remember looking out upon the tops of mountains rolling as far as the eye could see.  Since we were pretty much level with all these mountains, I knew the cave we were camping in was high above the earth.  Our fire cracked and popped as shadows danced over the rock formations and somewhere way back in the darkness the plinking of condensation echoed.  The fire turned to glowing embers and my aunt and sister slept soundly while I laid awake, gazing out through the mouth of the cave at a sky brimming with stars.  As I watched, a large shadow passed, momentarily blacking out the entire view and a shiver coursed through my tiny body.  I knew whatever had blocked the entrance of the cave must have been massive and fear squeezed the breath from my body.  I pretended to sleep within this dream and, at some point, must have.

The dream, however, immediately cut to the next night.  Again the fire had all but burnt out. Again my sister and aunt were sleeping while I watched the mouth of the cave, wide awake.  Again the monstrous shadow passed and again I was paralyzed with fear.  But again the dream fast-forwarded to the next night and all of the details were the same.  Only this time my curiosity got the better of me (as it often does) and when the shadow passed I somehow mustered the courage to crawl out of my sleeping bag and approach the mouth of the cave.

My heart raced as I left the safety of our campsite behind and I felt as if I were about to throw up.  But I had to know.  I had to see what it was that had passed the mouth of our cave for three nights running.

Stepping out onto a ledge, I saw the world's largest T-Rex yards away.  As soon as I was exposed, its massive head whipped toward me as its gigantic mouth opened, revealing rows of sharp teeth that were as large as trees.  It roared and its rancid breath blew like a hot, mighty wind.  The force of the wind, coupled with panic, caused me to stumble backward and the next thing I know the edge of the cliff crumbled beneath my feet and I found myself falling, plummeting toward the hard, unforgiving earth below as wind whistled in my ears.

I knew there was no way I could survive. I knew, somehow, that I was going to die.

There was a flash of brilliant light and suddenly I was walking through a lush forest.  Birds twittered and chirped overhead and the air was scented with the most delicate and beautiful fragrance I'd ever smelled. Alabaster statues were scattered among wildflowers and fountains gurgled streams of water so clear it sparkled in the dappled sunlight.

I followed a path of crushed gravel through this forest until I came to a clearing.  In the center of the clearing was a semi-circle of concrete benches and seated upon these benches were people of every imaginable race and age.  I sat in the only open spot and listened as each person told the story of how they had died, patiently awaiting my turn.  After telling my tale, the beautiful brunette sitting beside me took my small hand in hers and smiled.  She told me I could stay in the forest for as long as I wanted, but when I was ready I would have to return to the living as a new baby.  But I would return, she said, I would always return....

True story.

What's in a name?

When I wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People, I thought I'd come up with a pretty good title. My wife, however, never cared much forit. Don't get me wrong; she loves that book and it is by far her favorite thing I've written to date. But she's never cared for the title. In retrospect, I think I should have listened to her. It never occurred to me that people might get the wrong impression. It's. Not a parody of a self help book; it's not a mash up of zombies and the book from which its title was inspired. It's a dark and gritty tale with themes ranging from matricide to unspeakable acts committed in the name of survival. There's drug addiction, premeditated stalking and homicide, and a lot of moral ambiguity going down within those pages. If I had it all to do over again, I think I would name it something else. I've been told the title is clever and maybe it is. But it's not really a good indication of what lays in store once you begin reading it. What would I change the title to? That's a good question. Perhaps The Tides of Time since that's what I plan on calling the series. Perhaps something different. So here's a question: if you were to rename this book, what would. You call it?

Zombiepalooza!!!

On Sunday, October 7th from 9:00 to 11:00 PM, Jackie Chin will be hosting Zombiepalooza over on ztalkradio.com. The show will feature a live roundtable discussion with Permuted Press authors Scot Thomas, R. Thomas Riley, Scott M Baker, myself, and others. Tune in, call in, and join the party! More information can be found at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zombiepalooza-Dead-Again/437569786279838

Character Studies

It’s no secret how fond I am of Ocean and Bosley, my protagonists in The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People;  however, there are lesser known characters I’ve written about who also tend to provoke a strong emotional reaction in me.  So I thought I’d just take a moment to recognize these imaginary friends of mine … though some of them I would be hard pressed to actually call friends.

Owen from “Tiffany Shepis and the Fanboy of the Apocalypse”:  I’m intrigued with Owen simply because he’s bat-shit crazy.  What’s not really told in the story is that before the undead apocalypse went down, he was a pretty normal guy.  He went to work, paid his bills, had meaningful relationships, and really loved horror movies.  The stress of witnessing this shock-and-awe campaign of the living dead, however, caused him to snap.  He’d seen so many atrocities and felt such desolate pain that he grabbed onto one thing like a drowning man struggling for a life preserver.  That thing was his autographed picture of Tiffany Shepis.  It was the last link to a normal world and simpler time.  He just happened to turn to that defense mechanism more and more until his desperation grew into psychotic obsession.  His issues ran so deep that he even peppered his conversations with her movie titles without realizing he was doing so.  Not just throwing the names out there, but subconsciously working them into the context of what he was saying.  The sentence still made sense.  But here was this movie title that had worked its way in.  One more little connecting line to the way life had been.  Which is why I really see him as a somewhat tragic character.

xxxBuTcHeRxxx from “Cooking with Grace”:  I find this guy genuinely creepy.  People sometimes ask dark fiction authors if they’ve ever written anything that’s scared even them; for me, the answer to that question is xxxBuTcHeRxxx.  I’ve thought a lot about this guy as, for a while there, I’d considered expanding this short story into a novel.  But even without that additional information, the last two lines of the story really disturb me.  There’s nothing tragic about this son of a bitch.

Chase McGowan from an untitled novel idea I haven’t entirely given up on:  In his youth, Chase thought he was a serial killer.  The dude would see attractive women on the street and would think of them as good victims instead of sexy or pretty.  He had some pretty serious anger issues going on inside him and spontaneously had some pretty fucked up fantasies.  After picking up a hitchhiker one night, he made that leap from fantasy to reality.  Once the woman was dead, however, he was torn apart by guilt and remorse and realized that he couldn’t just callously take a life.  But he’s still a bit of a sociopath, so turning himself in was not an option.  Instead, he takes her into the woods and buries her in a clearing, near a small stream.  Twenty years later, he still visits that spot in the woods.  He lays on the ground with his ear pressed to the gravesite and talks with her.  He hears her replies, but I’m not really sure if it’s actually her spirit or simply Chase’s own guilt trying to convince his apathetic side to do the right thing after all these years.

Memory Wilkes from a novel entitled Nowhere Fast that I haven’t entirely given up on:  Memory grew up in a poor, backwoods town in West Virginia.  Her father is the town drunkard and spends more time at the local bar, The Smoke Shop, than he does at home.  Her mother suffers from schizophrenia but has never been treated or institutionalized for it.  She stays at home and her disability checks are the only real income the family has.  However, this also means that 17 year old Memory is stuck with caring for her little brother and sister and running the household.  In a town where pretty much everyone is poor, her family is considered trash.  Parents warn their kids not to befriend the Wilkes children and any time a petty crime is committed, the suspicion automatically falls on them.  Though she’s still a virgin, she has the reputation of being a little whore who will put out to anyone, anytime.  All Memory wants is to fix the old pickup truck her uncle left for her in his will and leave all of it behind.  She longs to move to Charlotte, NC where she can be just another face in a teeming crowd, anonymous and nondescript. In an attempt to earn the money needed to make her fantasy a reality, Memory makes a very bad decision, leading to a chain of events that only get worse with every turn.

Agent Meat:  Named after on online buddy from the early nineties, Agent Meat is an interdimensional creature who is part of the ruling elite on a conquered Earth.  He’s humanoid, but his lipless mouth is lined with needle like teeth and he has a bifurcated tongue.  His ears lay flat against his head and his nose resembles a head of cauliflower.  He favors dark, expensive suits which contrast with his ashy-gray skin and felt fedoras.  He comes from a caste-driven society, with the true upper echelon being those in the Guru class. He was born into the Agent class and is a couple rungs lower on the social ladder than a Guru.  But, as an Agent, he is as feared as he is ruthless.  When an Agent dies, their “soul” must spend an indeterminate amount of time in a type of limbo as they prepare themselves for the transition. During this period, they continue to work for the agency in various forms.  Agent Meat’s partner, for example, is Agent Brass, who only appears in reflective surfaces.  Together, these two agents root out dissidence among the enslaved, human drones who are forced to manufacture a drug the overlords’ society depends upon.  A drug in which humans are also the main ingredient.  While definitely a hard ass, Meat considers himself to be more liberal than Brass in that he has no quandaries about members of his species, called The Party, using humans to satisfy their sexual desires, even though it is forbidden.

Hey, you got your sci-fi in my horror...

This probably won’t interest anyone other than me, but I’ve been thinking lately about how much of my work blends my two most-beloved genres:  science fiction and horror.  There is, of course, the time travel element in The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People, and that’s probably the most obvious example.  But below are some of my shorter works that readers may not be familiar with:

Our Last Hope - Published in Zombonauts: Zombies in Space from Library of the Living Dead Press.  A very short tale told from the POV of a maintenance worker aboard a starship  whose sole purpose is to scour the universe for a cure to the zombie pandemic sweeping the world.

The Winter Experiment -  Originally appeared in Macabre Cadaver Magazine and reprinted in Ghosts and Demons from Static Movement.  In this story, an obsessed researcher kidnaps and tortures young women in a desolate, mountaintop cabin as part of an experiment in scientifically documenting the manifestation of the mythical, Japanese snow woman, Yuki-onna.

I Eat The Dead -  Published in The Book of Horror 2 from Living Dead Press.  This tale centers around a machine called a Richter Cone, which captures an expelled soul at the moment of death and extrudes it into a physical form.  This device results in a subculture of the feeder/gainer fetish whose food of choice is the human soul.  The story follows a couple who begin with a tender, if not unique, relationship and follows its deterioration as their fame within this particular community skyrockets.  I really like the concept a lot but, to be perfectly honest, I’ve felt for quite some time that I could have given it a stronger ending.

Mental Man - Published in Corrupts Absolutely? from Damnation Books.  This story follows a PTSD afflicted detective imbued with super powers as he tries to get into the head of the Suburb Slayer, a serial killer who slaughters entire families and leaves taunting messages scrawled in blood.

Losing Control - to be published in Bloody Ghost Stories from Static Movement.  I really like the universe I’ve created in this one.  It’s about a man who works for a covert organization as a metaphysical janitor, of sorts.  The premise is that there are dead spots between dimensions called Cut Scenes where passing souls can sometimes become entangled.  Utilizing a person who’s in a medically induced, persistent vegetative state as an eavesdropping device into the afterlife, our protagonist uses astral projection to help move them along.  When sadistic serial killer Albert Lewis is executed, his soul latches onto one of these Cut Scenes and constructs his own hellish reality.  Passing souls are captured  like flies in a spider web and their belief in their own perceptions integrates them into Lewis’ deranged fantasies.  It’s our narrator’s job to journey into this nightmare world and set things right.  I can almost see myself expanding this one into novel length at some point in the future.

I’ve also got a couple of new ideas kicking around an am thinking once I’m clear of all contractual obligations that I might release a short collection of my scifi/horror creations.  I figure why the hell not?  You see a lot of crossovers in film (think Alien, The Thing, etc);  but in the realm of the printed word there’s a distinct lack of these tales, I think