Sometimes people ask me what inspired a story and I'm happy to ramble for an hour about how it came to be, explaining all of the history and science and meaning behind the story and the characters and the symbolism.
This is not one of those times.
My story, Not Like Other Ghouls, is now available in Strangely Funny VII, an anthology of funny horror, exists for one very simple reason:
The title made me giggle.
Seriously. I came up with the title, and I had to write a story around it.
It is a story about Adele, an autistic zombie who has attention deficit disorder. And she is not like other zombies, because she has no desire to create new zombies, because this story is an allegory about being asexual.
But maybe, if she was friends with or fell in love with a human, maybe then she would feel that desire. Because this is also a story about being demisexual, which is the term for when you don't feel attraction for someone unless you have a connection with them.
And here is where this story is a little… awkward for me. You see, originally the love interest was not a love interest. He was a friendship interest. So I thought it would be a great idea to base the character on one of my friends.
And then I thought… eh, what the heck. Let's add some romance.
Completely forgetting until I submitted the story that I based the character who is now the love interest on my friend. Oh and did I mention I might have a teeny tiny little bit of a crush on this friend?
Yeah. So…
Luckily, said friend thinks this whole situation is hilarious and encouraged me not to change anything.
It's a great title. There's a reason I don't write about people I know... :-)
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