In Praise of Heathens

Earlier this week I received a somewhat anonymous email from someone regarding my Kickstarter campaign for my series Death’s Doormaking some fairly interesting accusations and suggestions. I decided to correct some of the copious spelling errors he made in the interest of readability, other than that, here it is word for word.

“You must be aware that your God will reject your soul if you continue to support zombies. God will not save you if are attacked by zombies? Don’t you know when you die it’s Heaven or Hell????? Horror movies and science fiction are not real and will make you crazy. What more do you need to know? Why are you spreading Satan? I will pray for your soul since you are a HEATHEN and can’t be saved.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve ever read something of this ilk but it is the first one directed at me personally. As lovers of all things strange, weird, horrific, occult, dark and generally scary it is a common misconception that we are some kind of witches hellbent on raising the dark lords of the Underworld to take over the souls of a godly world. Sadly, I must make this public statement to this gentlemen to assuage his fears….

Quite frankly, we just don’t have that kind of time or power.

As you can imagine, sir, it is a time consuming task keeping up on matters of the occult and supernatural. It is still a somewhat inexact science and simply asking the dead to raise from the grave and explain their true philosophical, anthropological and historical nature is hardly ever very successful in a way that could be harnessed for the alleged nefarious plans you seem convinced we, the children of the darkness, are hatching. 

You mentioned the risk of being attacked by a zombie along my planned travels and I won’t say that possibility has not crossed my mind. I mean, what’s the point of hunting ghosts, zombies and ghouls if you never actually expect to find them? It does seem fairly silly but let me rest your mind at ease. If I do come across an actual, lumbering, brain-eating member of the undead I promise not to let it take over the world. I will, however, giggle like a school girl, jump up and down and sing Queen’s rock classic Princes of the Universe at the top of my lungs….oh, and kill the damn zombie.

While your assertion that imbibing in the horror and science fiction genres will cause severe mental disturbance is admirable, I am happy to report most of us are already a little whacky in the brain pan. Not in dangerous way but in a perfectly safe, and highly profitable for Hollywood, kind of way.

To address my personal deity’s rejection of my soul into everlasting peace you failed to take into account the fact that MY god is pretty open minded. They are super excited about my project. See, I did this thing where you sit quietly and ask the universe what you should do with your life. It said I shouldn’t take silly ignorant fools who tell perfect strangers they are going to Hell too seriously.

As a rule, we are an astonishingly diverse group of highly intelligent, social and passionate people. The support we give to our genre’s authors, performers, artists, filmmakers, actors, scientists and authorities far exceeds any sports fan with a season pass and some face paint. We are people who will travel around the world to simply get a book signed and shake the hand of the people who’s work touches our lives, made it brighter and made us realize we are part of something wondrous. We are a terribly jolly bunch and rarely sacrifice small farm animals at our gatherings. In fact, our gatherings tend to involve bright costumes, upbeat music, lots of hugs and sharing of knowledge. We are a beautiful clan, sir, and you would be blessed by your god to be a part of it.

In a time when the nightly news is more terrifying than anything George Romero could come up with I am happy to share my adoration for the true understanding of human nature that is impossible not to glean from a study of the undead I am embarking on. If, through my research, travels and interviews I ever feel my soul in serious peril I promise to drop you a line.

Until then, in the pursuit of the undead you have to knock on a few doors…let’s bust some of them down, shall we?