YOUR ZOMBIE IDOL

The votes have been counted, my friends. The Zombie Idol has been named.

Before I reveal your Zombie Idol, however, I just want to say a few things.

Tomorrow, this blog will return to all the normal topics . . . I'll be telling you the exciting news about Suite Scarlett, I'll be reporting on the comings and goings of various writers, I will be dispensing writerly wisdom. And it is not far-fetched to assume that I may even be paid a visit by Our Favorite Writer of Wizard Fiction. It's been too long and too quiet--she is almost certainly biding her time.

But now . . . now the zombies are still with us. It is a golden hour.

Though I started Zombie Idol, I certainly didn't do it alone. First, I have to thank Your Celebrity Judges: Meg Cabot, John Green, Justine Larbalestier, and E. Lockhart. They joined me in looking over the hundreds of amazing zombies that came our way.



Your Celebrity Judges spent many hours reading your entries.

But it wasn't Your Celebrity Judges who made Zombie Idol happen, either.

It was YOU.

You knew that the humble zombie is too often shoved to the side, smacked over the head with a shovel, or blasted with a shotgun. You know that many people only see zombies as the homicidal, shambling undead . . . and okay, they are the homicidal, shambling undead . . . but there's so much more to them.

YOU were the ones who set aside whatever it was you were doing . . . homework, mindless web surfing, looking at LOLcats, practicing magic tricks, juggling, doing important research on communicable diseases . . . all to put a zombie in a book.

YOU inserted a zombie into Gone with the Wind.

YOU had a zombie eat Draco Malfoy's brain.

YOU made Bella Swan into an undead girlfriend.

YOU converted the works of Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dickinson, Melville, Proust, Byron, Joyce, Plath, Kipling, Lewis, Conrad, Elliot, Kafka, Shakespeare, Wells, Poe, Tolkien, Salinger, Atwood, Sendak, Frost, Twain, Carroll, Jackson, Nietzsche, Dumas, Woolf . . .

YOU were the reason I have now read a zombified version of Love Story by Eric Segal.

YOU forever changed Faulkner for me by writing the line, "My mother is a zombie."

YOU big-upped the wisdom of Austen with the line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single zombie in possession of a good appetite, must be in want of some brains."

Oh, some called you mad . . . but did you care? Hell, no! You wrote on, long into the night, knowing that somewhere out there . . . in some dark street or graveyard . . . a little zombie was getting his chance to shine.

They tried to stop you, didn't they? They tried to drag you away! They didn't want zombies to have a chance in Fine Literature. But you fought!



Sometimes, it came to violence, but you never backed down.

I don't mean to get sentimental here but . . .

*sniffs*

. . . it's all been down to you, every step of the way.

And now . . . now we will crown our zombie. The zombie chosen by you to lead all zombies in our revolution.

The winner of this very, very, very close race is . . .







How to Be a Zombie, by Adrienne.


I am now proud to present Adrienne's acceptance speech:

"It is a great honor to be held in such high zombie esteem. I am proud to have been chosen amidst so many brilliant competitors, especially Danielle's retelling of Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout. I will always make sure to take my corpses out from now on, and I think Danielle would do well to write a new "Cautionary Tales for Children." It would be the must read for wise parents and children alike.

This marks a new course for me, as I think I will pursue zombie research and writing full-time. Look my illustrated line of inspirational undead posters and greeting cards to hit a graveyard near you in the coming apocalypse. And finally, for all my fellow necromancers, may the living never have their shotguns at the ready, any may your stares be ever steely and blank. Our time draws nigh, friends."

- Adrienne

There are few things I want more than a line of inspirational undead posters and greeting cards.

Tomorrow, news and updates . . . tonight . . . let us toast our ZOMBIE IDOL!