S2 E9 - Fear and Loathing

Outro

Hello my survivor friends.

Welcome back to the apocalypse.

In this episode I wanted to give all y’all a bit of a breather from all the tension and action. That last episode where KJ has to escape across the river was harrowing. Death, destruction, fear, tension, cats and dogs living together – real end-of-the-world stuff!

My editors and I had a multi-day discussion as to whether she would bring her boots with her. Tim said to tie the boots around her neck. I just couldn’t see how she could swim with the boots around her neck.

I rewrote it 3 times. Tried a compromise. Long distance swimmers actually have these waterproof floaty bags they put stuff in and tie to their ankles. But it was getting to complex and awkward, so I sent them a text that read “I don’t care about the @#$%@ boots!”

It’s running joke between us now.

I figure in the Hollywood version of the story this scene will give them an excuse to have the heroine take her clothes off! Of course, by the time Hollywood is done with it there will be sea monsters, laser beams and aliens.

So – I wanted to take it easy on you this week. And I gave you that tense reunion scene as a flashback so you would already know the outcome and it wouldn’t require so much stress.

Then we got them all together back at the school.

A bit of a holiday gathering if you will.

The security of the group.

The gathering. Not the quickening. The gathering.

It’s odd how strangers can come together for a common purpose in times of crisis.

We see this all the time, right? We see people who in normal times wouldn’t have given each other a second glance pull together when things get weird.

Which reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson quote; “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

You wouldn’t find anyone more suited for the apocalypse than Hunter S. Thompson. He loved alcohol, narcotics and guns and hated authority. He was a good writer as well. If you’ve never read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” then you should put that on your list.

At the time, in the late 60’s when this story was first serialized in Rolling Stone, it created a sensation. It was a new type of journalism that blended reality with the surreal – they called it ‘Gonzo Journalism’. He writes in a sort of surreal expression of the ‘now’.

There have been two pretty good adaptations of Fear and Loathing. The first called “Where the Buffalo Roam” with Bill Murray as Thompson and the second eponymous title with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, written and directed by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame.

‘Eponymous’ is a lovely little Greek word that in this sense means “having the same name as the book”. You’ll recognize that Greek word for “name” in there, “onyma”, that you will also find in “synonymous”, "pseudonym”, "anonymous” – and a bunch of other common English words.

Anyhow - that period of the late 60’s and early 70’s, when Thomson was writing, produced an impressive burst of creativity. Culturally, people started to think outside the box of the 50’s and 60’s. It was a golden age of sorts with a lot of experimentation.

Wow, that was a deep rabbit hole to explore from just one offhand quote!

I could go on forever!

But I won’t.

Happy holidays to those of you that embrace the winter solstice!

That would make a good setting for an apocalypse story, wouldn’t it? Times square on Christmas or New Years with zombies in Santa outfits!

Would make for some great comic juxtaposition.

We’ve got 11 more chapters to go in Season 2. Yay!

As for updates… We’ve got 74 people in our Facebook group now. A nice little tribe.

We’ve passed 53,594 total downloads and our last 30 days was over 11,500 downloads – so thank you for going into your listening app and giving it a like and a review.

I appreciate it.

The first season is live on Amazon Vella if you want to read the manuscript form of the show.

Amazon Vella is a serialization where each episode is released individually in a series. I’ve been dropping a new episode every week and I think I’m up to chapter 6 or 7. I’m not sure, people with Kindle unlimited can probably read those.

So if you have an Amazon subscription of some sort, at least go poke at it and let me know what you think – leave a comment or something so I can follow the bread crumbs.

This is where I don’t go off on a 500 word rant about how awful of a horror story Hansel and Gretel is.

Instead I leave you with a hearty Feliz Navidad, and Feliz Nuevo Ano.

See you in 2022.