A Pride planning committee takes on zombies in ‘The Z Word’
DENVER — The annual Pride celebrations are quickly approaching and as organizers around the country finalize festivities —a zombie apocalypse looms on the horizon.
In the world of “The Z Word,” the latest novel from Colorado-based author Lindsay King-Miller, protagonist Wendy and the rest of the Arizona Pride committee are busy planning Pride while she contends with a messy relationship with an ex, a new crush and the aforementioned zombies — all while trying to find emergency contraception.
King-Miller playfully explores serious elements of the queer experience, contrasting everyday challenges of the LGBTQ+ community with fantastical ones in her debut novel, which was released earlier this month. A queer horror writer, King-Miller’s previous book, “Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls,” was based on her advice column.
Rocky Mountain PBS sat down with the author to learn more about her inspiration, embracing individuality, and the boundaries that must be drawn to maintain it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Rocky Mountain PBS: You have a deep appreciation for horror. Where did that come from?
KM: I've written scary stories from the time I was really, really young. Those were the first creative things that I ever remember writing.
I was reading Goosebumps in as early as second grade, and I got a young author's award in the elementary school for a total Goosebumps rip off.
After dabbling in lots of different kinds of writing in the last couple of years, I've come back to a place where I mostly write horror, and that feels really good.
I don't know that I'll be here forever, but right now it feels like very much where I'm supposed to be.
RMPBS: There seems to be some intersection between horror genre and the queer community. Why do you think that is?
KM: I think there's this link between horror and “otherness.”
What is forbidden, what is not socially acceptable — what parts of yourself you have to suppress to fit into society.
The metaphor for queerness in a lot of horror is right there.
The first real vampire novel was Carmilla, which came out some 20 years before Dracula and is explicitly about a lesbian vampire.
It's not really queer positive, but it's it's been there from the beginning.
And then in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” there's also a very easily available reading of the vampire as repressed queerness — queer desire that can't be articulated, so much so that it becomes monstrous.
I think other forms of monsters and other kinds of horror tropes, even when they're not written to be a queer allegory, have been really easy for queer people to relate to.
An Illustration by D. H. Friston accompanying one of the first appearances of Carmilla, the story of a young woman who seduces then preys upon young women.
RMPBS: Why did you choose zombies for “The Z word?”
KM: When you write about zombies, they almost demand to become a metaphor because you're writing about humans who aren't human anymore,and that fear of losing your humanity, losing your individuality.
I didn't sit down to be like, “I'm going to write about zombies, and it's going to be a metaphor for rainbow capitalism and the corporate assimilation of the queer community.” I just was like, “Wouldn't it be sick as hell if some dykes on bikes were fighting zombies at Pride?” But the more you write about it, you start to think about like, what is dehumanization? What are the forces that take away who we are? What are the real threats of erasure?
Then the more you think about that, the more you think about how those forces are at work in your own life.
RMPBS: Were there any “kill your darlings” moments — anything in the novel that you had a hard time letting go of?
KM: There was actually one thing that I went to the mat for.
This may sound silly, but, there's a sex scene in the first chapter of the book, and my editor was like, “I think maybe we should move this to later on. Let us get to know these characters first before we get into the sexy part.”
I took my editors advice on almost everything, but that was one thing that I was like, “No, I really want it to be in the first chapter.”
Yes, it has plot implications, but I also just liked it and wanted it.
RMPBS: There are some sexy scenes in the book. Societally, being queer can be fetishized — oftentimes ignoring the emotional and intellectual elements that can come with it. Why is it important to highlight the sexual aspects of queer love and connection regardless?
KM: Honestly, partly because it's just fun for me to write.
There's also this stereotype of the bisexual person being a cheater, being promiscuous. And I wanted to write that. I wanted to write a character who was a bi character who does have a fairly casual relationship with sex. And who did ruin her last relationship by cheating.
None of those things are actually because she's bisexual. It's just who she is as a person. She makes a lot of messy choices in her relationships because she's not fully thinking them through, or because it's easier to do that than to really communicate how she's actually feeling.
I wanted to write somebody who does these stereotypical “bi things,” and is still an interesting, well-rounded, dynamic character.
We don't have to necessarily prove that we're one of the good ones by always behaving perfectly. We can be messy and still be a worthwhile person who has a story that is worth telling.
RMPBS: There was a unique pacing to the novel, making it easy to breeze through. Would you say that your background in poetry and short stories impacted your ability to achieve that?
KM: It’s definitely a fast-paced book, and partly that's because I wrote it really fast.
I started writing “The Z Word” for NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write a 50,000 word, novel draft in the 30 days of November, so the first draft was written really fast. I think that sense of urgency kind of carries over into the story.
One of the big things that happened in the editing process was actually figuring out ways to slow it down a little bit, let the characters develop.
RMPBS: How are you able to touch on such unique characters without stereotyping? For example, Logan, the goth drag queen, and a guy who's a little bit “ditzy.”
KM: I based some characters off of people in real life, but then throw in some different personal traits. I mix and match things from real life to try and come up with a person that feels real.
I also think about character in terms of what I need them to do for this story to work. How do I make their interactions interesting?
So I have Logan, who is smart, but he's not an overthinker. He pretty much just says whatever he thinks. Sometimes he says things that are a little bit goofy. And then having him as kind of a foil for Wendy, the protagonist, who is a very internal person who struggles to communicate, having her be a bit baffled by this person who she's attracted to.
How will they navigate that? It's fun to play up those contrasts.
RMPBS: There are modern elements of queer signaling throughout the novel - specifically through fashion.
What's the value of queer signaling in the LGBTQ+ community today?
King-Miller: There’s a history of queer people, when it was not at all safe to be out in public, finding ways to communicate with each other that they are queer in a more subtle or coded way.
Obviously things are things are different in 2024 and there's more and more safety in being “out” although though it depends on where you are. Right here in Colorado, I think we're pretty safe to be public.
In other states in the US and other countries in the world, it's getting more dangerous. So there's still value in being able to do the “nod” or the “wink,” or whatever it is that lets somebody know that, “Hey, we're on the same team,” even if we can't necessarily say it out loud.
RMPBS: The Z Word touches on the conflict between capitalism on activism. Where did that come from?
KM: There’s a lot of frustration and disappointment in going to Pride these days and seeing people in T-shirts with corporate logos in rainbow pattern.
It feels like it has become about branding. For a lot of these companies, it's not really about liberation, or who is in danger, because there are a lot of queer people in this country who are in danger.
I have a friend right now who is on the road looking for a place to live. She had to to flee a red state because she's trans and she was going to lose her health care.
These companies that are selling rainbow logo T-shirts for pride aren't necessarily showing up to support the people who are losing their health care or, or losing their jobs, or being threatened for being queer. Especially for being trans. Trans people are in the most danger right now.
As soon as being “pro gay” or being an “ally” becomes something that you can buy, becomes an aesthetic that you can consume rather than like a thing that you're actually doing, then that becomes a distraction from the people who are doing the actual work.
RMPBS: Are there any other societal reflections you used throughout the novel?
KM: I actually think the novel feels almost a little bit dated to me looking at it now, because I wrote it in 2020. I edited it throughout 2021 and 2022, and the attacks on LGBTQ people, and specifically trans people, have actually gotten so much more severe in just the last year or two. I feel like the novel maybe doesn't even fully depict how severe the threat is in some red states.
There's some stuff in there, too, about queer people choosing their own comfort over the safety of the rest of the community. Like queer Republicans.
One of the plot threads that is important is that in addition to all of this other stuff that's going on, Wendy is trying to find emergency contraception. It's hard because for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it's the zombie apocalypse.
So there are all of these other things, getting in the way, but it's also set in Arizona and it is a place where pharmacists can refuse to provide people with emergency contraception if they just decide that they don't feel like it. So that's in there, the obstacles to reproductive health care.
It's all connected in this general attack on bodily autonomy and attack on, anyone who doesn't engage as a “legible reproductive member of society.”
RMPBS: What's the next book you're working on?
KM: It's coming out from Quirk in the fall of 2025. It's called “This Is My Body.”
It’s an exorcism story about a lesbian single mom who begins to believe that her teenage daughter is possessed by a demon.
I am having a lot of fun with this one. It's not as funny as the Z-word. It's definitely not as sexy. It's going to a darker place.
RMPBS: The Z-Word is your first novel. Is there any advice you share for other first-time novelists?
KM: The best advice that I can give to people who are trying to write a book or trying to get a book published, is just stick with it and have patience, because it's hard.
It's my first novel, but it's my second book. My first book came out in 2016, and I really thought when that book came out, “Okay, I'm a writer now.”
I wrote a [new] book proposal that I sent to the publisher who put out my first book. Nobody was interested in it. I felt for a while like I had swung and missed.
It took eight years before I sold another book.
The most important advice that I can give to anybody is have patience.
You might have to try a few different things before you hit on the one that's going to open doors for you.
Be patient, be persistent, and do it because you love it.
Elle Naef is a multimedia producer at Rocky Mountain PBS. ellenaef@rmpbs.org