1. We live in the 21st century with the latest, greatest technology yet. What makes you love Victorian times so much?
Honestly,
my love is a very complicated love. When I was a little girl, I think
it was more about the prettiness and perceived "goodness" and
"innocence" of that age - obviously, I didn't know better! In reality
the Victorian period was really just as gritty, dirty, and mean as our
time is. And as an adult, capable of understanding shades of gray, I
find myself adoring both the beauty and the squalor, the technological
advancement and the relative "simplicity," the lords and ladies and the
uppity street urchins. It's just such a busy, fabulously engaging time.
It offers me a ton of material to work with. (And at heart...I'm still
all about the prettiness. The Victorian aesthetic is just in my blood.
It's what I respond to.)
2. I tried to wrap my mind around it a few hundred times but I just can't see a connection between the Victorian era and zombies. What inspired your deep love for the undead? Perhaps you have a forbidden love with a Bram fellow of your own? ;D
Yes. I have a corpse I
regularly visit. *poker face* Not really. XD But the Victorian age was
definitely full of cheap horror fiction - penny dreadfuls were
everywhere, Gothic chapbooks. Real Victorian young people were seriously
gobbling down stories about vampires and ghosts and teenage suicides
and moaning crypts and being buried alive and then hiding the material
under their pillows lest their parents find out. I think if someone put
D,D in an actual Victorian girl's hand, she'd totally understand at
least that part of it.
As for the zombies - I just love monsters! I was
raised on horror as a kid, but unlike my mother (from whom I got the
bug) I was never frightened by the monsters on the screen, only
fascinated by them. I decided to go with zombies to tell my story
because they're just really unique monsters, in terms of their humanity -
they are us. There's great horror and great tragedy in that.
3. If you were reincarnated, who do you want to come back as? (why I do I have a feeling it might be someone from the Victorian era? haha)
If I were
reincarnated...I think I'd want to come back as Lily Elsie (a gorgeous
Edwardian actress) or some writer from the Victorian or Edwardian
period, like Gaston Leroux. (The Phantom of the Opera is my favorite
book ever!)
4. What are some of your favorite books/movies/TV shows about either zombies or the Victorian era that you think everyone should watch/read?
I read a ton of
classics, and a lot of classics are so different from the legacy they've
inspired, so I always recommend going back to basics. The Phantom of
the Opera, for instance, has a whole cast of amazing side characters
that almost never make it into modern interpretations (including strong
female characters and characters of color!). Frankenstein (which is
Georgian, not Victorian) is partially told from the point of view of the
monster himself, and he has such an amazing, heart-breaking voice and
story. And of course I love costume dramas.
As for zombies, or other paranormal things to watch -
Dark Shadows, definitely. A movie is coming out based on DS in April,
and I'm determined that young people everywhere will sample the source
material, which was a HUGE inspiration to me in my youth. I used to tape
it (yes - cassette tape) every day and rush home after middle and high
school to watch it. It's a soap opera from the 1960s, but it was
actually gothic/paranormal - after including a vampire, Barnabas
Collins, to boost ratings, the show went delightfully insane. Satanic
ceremonies, witches, zombies, werewolves, time travel, it's all there.
It can be slow-going, because it is a soap opera, but I think it
physically shaped my brain growing up. Part of Dearly is definitely in there.
I also love zombie movies like Boy Eats Girl, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, and Zombieland.
5. Can you possibly share anything about any future work of yours? Whether it concerns the Gone with the Respiration series or something new. Your fans and are DYING to know!
I'm working on book two right now, and I'm not going
to say anything! But I'm also working on some non-zombie things, too,
for my own amusement. These projects are unsolicited (meaning no one's
seen them, and no one's paid me anything for them), but I always have to
have something I write for me. One involves creatures from the deep,
and the other involves creatures from deep underground...
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I'm very honored to have had Lia on the blog today, this is such a great interview and she's such a great personality I can't wait for more from her!
Check out more from the lovely Lia Habel on her website LiaHabel.com. Her Twitter: @liahabel and Facebook.
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