Visceral, gritty, and unforgiving, GRIEF EATER is a zombie story such as you’ve by no means learn earlier than.
When Kristina rises from her violent demise, she’s not the identical fragile lady her household as soon as deserted. She’s rageful, highly effective, and hungry—for the blood of those who had been supposed to like her. With a newfound craving to see vengeance and grief served, she launches right into a once-in-an-undead-lifetime journey throughout blood-slicked highways to the scorched Australian bush and her hometown. As her physique fails and her thoughts fractures, she’s left with one closing query: Is she right here to forgive, or to feed?
A transgressive, gory examination of queer id and located household, GRIEF EATER sinks its enamel into trauma and what it means to be devoured by grief.
Flashbacks can work in the event you do it proper.
After I was at Clarion West, just about ten years in the past precisely, our very first teacher, Paul Park, dropped some knowledge into our heads that makes an entire lot of sense. He instructed us to “Keep within the current second.” Preserve tales within the current. Don’t soar away into flashbacks (until, presumedly, you realize what you’re doing). His reasoning was that flashbacks can find yourself pulling a reader away from the primary narrative at the price of momentum. I feel he’s proper, however I additionally assume that generally you possibly can justify flashbacks, if you can also make them be just right for you the precise approach. Now, there are many individuals who don’t love the flashbacks in Grief Eater (in line with early evaluations, thanks for studying, reviewers!) and a few who discover that they actually work. I’d wish to assume that by and enormous they do!
In Grief Eater, Kristina, the primary character, dies within the opening chapter and is was a zombie. Uh, spoilers, I assume? Anyway, her story, which turns into a revenge narrative, wanted to have context if it was going to hit with any emotional weight. I suppose I may have began the story earlier and confirmed the reader chosen scenes from her childhood and younger maturity, however that didn’t really feel proper. I needed to drop you into the motion, so that you study her previous whereas she stalks her approach into her future, her enamel and fingers sharp.
Quick tales generally beginning novellas and novels.
There are lots of writers who check out a narrative thought with a brief story first. My favorite might be “The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Her Discipline-Basic and Their Wounds” by Seth Dickinson which grew to become the novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant (💔) or “The Metropolis Born Nice” by NK Jemisin, which grew to become the novel The Metropolis We Grew to become.
For me, the Grief Eater world started with the protagonist of my quick story “Don’t Pack Hope”, who would later be named Josh. I put a number of fragments of my coronary heart into that story and was delighted when it was picked up by Nightmare Journal, after which reprinted in Wastelands 3: The New Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams. Nonetheless, I knew I wasn’t achieved with that world. I knew that Kristy, Josh’s finest buddy, who grew to become Kristina, had her personal story. And I knew that, in contrast to lovely Josh, Kristina didn’t make it out of town alive.
Josh is a really particular character to me, so I hope you get pleasure from a narrative from his perspective in the event you test it out.
The lightning bolt second is unimaginable.
Grief Eater is a revenge story, but it surely didn’t begin out that approach. No, the primary draft had my protagonist, Kristina, being pulled in the direction of her horrible household by an invisible compulsion, a necessity to seek out them, to face earlier than them, to seek out herself seen. It wasn’t a very dangerous e book, however I knew that one thing wasn’t fairly proper with it. As I normally do, I let the concept roll round in my head for some time. The narrative made itself snug in my lizard-brain till someday within the bathe, it hit me. Kristina shouldn’t be pulled. She ought to hunt. It was an oh god, eyes vast, am I actually doing this second, and it was unimaginable to expertise. I feel I actually laughed out loud.
That second and that feeling will all the time remind me to have a look at my protagonists and ensure they’re robust and lively. They need to transfer as rapidly as they’ll in the direction of the issues that they need. And what Kristina needs is the blood of the individuals who wronged her.
Music can unlock unimaginable issues.
I usually hearken to instrumental music (normally Zoe Keating, Explosions within the Sky or numerous online game soundtracks) after I write. For Grief Eater, I knew that I wanted to play one thing savage whereas I wrote. I wanted one thing heavy, one thing post-rock. And fuck, I like post-rock. I like massive daring ridiculously lengthy songs that swoop by a bunch of various time signatures (Schizm by Device, I’m you). I like songs with melody and wonder but in addition with droning guitars and flickering drums and distortion. Enter the unimaginable post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. “Mladic” from their album ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! grew to become the theme tune for the novella. If you happen to haven’t heard it, it goes for a full twenty minutes (!!!) and adjustments and evolves all through. I solely did a little bit music principle in class, so there are individuals that may in all probability clarify precisely why it’s so cool in technical phrases, however all I do know is that it fucking rocks. It genuinely helped me to take the story to darker and extra intense locations. Have a hear.
Villains are generally unrealistic, however generally their individuals actually are that dangerous.
The villains of Grief Eater are Kristina’s mother and father and her older brother. After I was enhancing the novella, I had a dialog with my editor, Holly, about whether or not I ought to tone issues down a bit, significantly their violence, neglect and homophobia. We determined to not go in that route, and I’m so glad that we preserved the characters as they’re. I can respect that such horrible characters could appear a tad unrealistic, but in addition, individuals like that, sadly, completely exist. Certainly, the sins of Kristina’s household have all been pulled from conditions I’ve personally skilled (not the homophobia, thank god!) or that my youthful brother skilled, or which were skilled by buddies of mine who’re additionally within the LGBTIQA+ neighborhood. Queer and trans individuals do expertise violence and homelessness because of being expelled from their household properties, though we after all care for one another in our chosen households. There are, nonetheless, loads of villains whose violence and hate we do expertise, generally from a really younger age.
In his novel “The Issues They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, he writes of the horrors of the Vietnam warfare. He talks about “story reality,” as in, generally actual reality is so unbelievable that you should write about it in tales to totally perceive the load of it. Trauma and villainy are like that generally.
Whereas Kristina’s household are horrendous individuals, she additionally has her finest buddy, Josh, and a supportive Aunt, Jill. I needed to make it possible for although darkish, her story nonetheless has components of sunshine. I hope you get pleasure from it.
Emma Osborne (they/them) is a queer fiction author and poet from Naarm Melbourne, Australia. Emma’s writing has appeared in Uncanny Journal, Nightmare Journal, Shock Totem: Tales of the Macabre and Twisted, Apex Journal, Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Pseudopod, Podcastle, the Overview of Australian Fiction, the Yr’s Greatest Australian Fantasy and Horror, GlitterShip, Kaleidotrope and WASTELANDS 3 edited by John Joseph Adams. They’re a graduate of the 2016 Clarion West Writers Workshop. “Grief Eater” is their debut novella. They presently dwell in Sunbury with their girlfriend and three fantastic cats.
Emma Osborne: Bluesky | Instagram
Grief Eater: Bookshop.org | Amazon
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