J. K. Robinson is the author of multiple works of zombie fiction, including the World of Ashes and Zombies Red Glare series. His author page is here.

Wallace: What made you start writing?

Robinson: I think, that like a lot of writers, it’s an impulse. Sometimes you have an idea and you run with it, other times you’re bored out of your mind and creating a fantasy world is the only coping mechanism you have. But sometimes, well, a lot of the time, you get upset at a particular movie or television show where the plot is either too predictable (every SitCom ever) or took a twist you just didn’t particularly care for and you think you can do better (“Jurassic Park III”), and then sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night with a genuinely original idea and it turns into an obsession to get it on “paper” from there… Man that really sounds mental. Afraid I don’t have a good rebuttal to that.

Wallace: What made you interested in the zombie apocalypse genre?

Robinson: The cinematic travesty that was George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead.” I wanted to find the original script, roll it and bop him on the nose with it and say, “No! Bad hippy. Bad.” I saw this movie as a farewell treat with my family about six hours before I got on the bus to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO for Basic Training. What a letdown, and what a monumentally low opinion he and most movie audiences have of the military. It didn’t take to the end of Basic for me to realize actual Soldiers wouldn’t have a problem adapting to shooting zombies rather than enemy combatants, and the inordinate amount of time I had to consider the problem more thoroughly during my deployment to Iraq, the more I realized the truth was a stark difference from the Hollywood portrayal. Go figure.

Wallace: What gave you the idea for your “World of Ashes” series?

Robinson: I was in a really dark place when I started writing the first book, and I think the first half of the book reflects that in a way you’d never see in me now. It was in a way a fictional war journal, recording more my feelings than actual events during my time in the “cradle” of civilization. Despite what the media propaganda would have you believe, Iraq in its current state is a wasteland unfit for human habitation by First World standards. If you see pictures of the devastation wrought by tornados and hurricanes, then imagine it’s all dusty instead of wet, that is what the southern part of Iraq looks like in a perpetual state of poverty and civil war. It’s brown, there is no other color and it’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen. To make matters worse, my command structure was what was known as “Toxic,” meaning instead of building the Army’s future leaders, they abused my friend M.J. Jaenichen until she killed herself. I’m not the only one in the unit who lost their shit after that, believing we were next on the command’s list to torment, and it’s that betrayal that caused a lot of mistrust in me. That too, is reflected in the main character to the nth degree.

Wallace: You’re a veteran; has your military experience influenced your writing?

Robinson: Oops, I feel like I covered that in the last answer. It’s really all one and the same. Since “World of Ashes” was conceived as a fictional war journal, my personal journal in fact, I had to base the main character on me, and the other characters on people I actually knew. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, the Antihero, are all pillars in my real life. I don’t want to spoil anything, assuming you want to read the series, but the series isn’t about the ultimate Rambo-type charging headlong into hordes of idiot undead. I had to consider hard and long what would make a mindless creature a threat to me? George A. Romero’s zombies just aren’t a threat. I could see them taking out an isolated town in a state that wasn’t 2^nd Amendment Friendly, like Illinois, but at some point some Private in the National Guard is going to accidentally shoot a zombie in the head and the word will spread faster than those stupid white-paper fuses on cheap firecrackers burn. So how do you keep the classic zombie feel, and not make them a totally new kind of monster like Max Brook’s ultimate sellout? Well, you gotta bend the rules, and I’ll get to that in the next couple questions.

Wallace: You proclaim your Libertarian beliefs; how does this affect the writing of your novels?

Robinson: I saw a comic one time that was drawn by a very Left leaning artist depicting a lifeguard in a tower over a pool, and in the pool were a bunch of floating bodies of drowning victims. The caption below said, “Libertarians make bad lifeguards.” And honestly I couldn’t agree more. I think the world is too safe. We should remove the warning labels, let the chips fall where they may. They’ll only stick the fork in the electrical socket once, that sort of thing. I’m a terrible parent.

But seriously, I think Republicans are warmongering opportunists, and there is literally proof that most high ranking Democrats are Communists. Neither one of those sounds very American to me, or at least not as far as the Constitution is concerned. I mean, I did this totally crazy thing and actually read the Constitution and Bill of Rights in their entirety, and I’ve never been more certain that every currently serving politician from the rank of Governor to President should be in prison. I think, that in a real zombie scenario, they would make matters worse long before they made them better, and then “better” is going to be a very intrinsically valued word. I firmly believe, after Hurricane Katrina, that our government will use any large scale disaster to circumvent your 2^nd Amendment rights, and once that one is gone you’re no longer a free man, but a subject. Enjoy that.

Wallace: What gave you the idea for your combination of zombie apocalypse and science fiction “Zombies’ Red Glare?”

Robinson: An episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise” featuring zombie Vulcans. It was great, I don’t care if you don’t like Trek, alien zombies is still a conceptually rich environment. The problem was I know what a bulkhead is, and a watertight door. It took careful consideration to craft a futuristic world where it might be possible for a zombie virus to infect a ship like Captain Kirk’s. I think a lot of it had to boil down to the type of zombies I chose to feature, and what a futuristic, somewhat peaceful world might consider a reasonable security measure.

Wallace: In your opinion, what is the main driving appeal of zombie fiction?

Robinson: The overwhelming desire to shoot people and not go to jail for it. I’ve heard a lot of psychological mumbo jumbo about the metaphor of consumerism and zombies, and they said the same thing about the Borg. It’s all hippy tripe. You get a guy drunk, then ask him what would be the best part about the zombie apocalypse, and he’ll tell ya, “I wanna shoot my neighbors… after they get infected, of course.”

Wallace: Do you have any opinion on popular depictions of zombies?

Robinson: I’m not a fan of that recent movie… what was it, “Brad Pitt Runs from Zombies” I think? Meh, it was an okay movie in its own right, but it wasn’t “World War Z.” As I see it, and keep in mind I’m probably horrendously insane, there are three kinds of zombies: Romero’s; the classic undead that meanders around and mindlessly gnaws on your face when you are too lazy to run away. Walkers; as coined by the popular series “The Walking Dead” these are more modern Romero’s but with a more believable capacity to swarm and devour you. And finally there are Runners; as seen in the “28 Days Later” movies, they’re not really zombies. They’re infected with a virus that doesn’t kill them, rather it makes them violently insane and rather like rabies the victim eventually starves to death from lack of interest in eating. For “World of Ashes” I combined the best of both worlds and found what would make zombies an actual threat to the training I had. Runners would be virtually impossible to defend from, and it would be even scarier if they got back up until shot in the head. I took a little knowledge from Anatomy/Physiology class and fudged some facts and magically we get: Rulkers… No, that doesn’t sound good. They rage, then then die and come back as Walkers.

Wallace: Do you have any future projects in the works?

Robinson: An anthology of first-hand accounts about the deployment of HHC 2-3 BTB, 2BCT, 3^rd ID during Operation Iraqi Freedom V, in reference to the highly suspicious death of our friend SPC Mary Jane Jaenichen and what we feel was a subsequent cover up. Tentatively I’ve titled it “Nomad 2-3.”

Wallace: What is your advice for aspiring writers?

Robinson: “It is only after you have lost everything that you are free to do anything.” -Tyler Durden