Steven Ormosi: (waves) How are ya?
Ian: And Scott Thurlow.
Scott Thurlow: (nods) How you doing?
Ian: Alright, this is the first interview for Life After Death. Steve, you had conceptualized Life After Death. Can you explain to us the process of creating it?
Steve: Well, I had the initial idea, a long time ago, a long time ago. I mean, you know, maybe not that long , in comparison. Two or three years ago. I wanted to do a novel about zombies, but I wasn’t really ready to take on a project like that yet. Life After Death was more of a thing that I could look into all the different tropes that encompass zombie movies or post-apocalyptic movies. I could explore them all, in their own separate stories. So, I basically told you guys about it. You were both really excited about it and that’s how it kind of got started, doing this.
Scott: I just want to interject. Because we love zombies and also like to write.
Steve: Pretty much, yeah. So, we started writing the stories and the plotlines, storylines, came up out of that, out of the first ones that we did. All of our original concepts and ideas were a lot different than what we eventually came out with. I think it turned out really well. It has definitely helped, at least my writing has gotten better because of it, which I’m happy about. And hopefully it continues to get better, as we get deeper into the stories and plotlines that are developing for LAD.
Ian: Alright, Scott. How did you get involved in Life After Death?
Scott: Well, you just heard the first half of it. As Steve said, we all were kind of a little writing circle, group, if you will. We were interested in the same kind of things, in terms of literature, in terms of genres. IE: zombies, horror(general), of course, post apocalyptia. So, being that we are trying to improve ourselves, as artists and as writers, I thought it was an awesome way to start up. See where it took us. It was a pretty bumpy ride, but we saw it through.
I think, the greatest thing, as Steve said, it just helped us become better writers. We’re becoming ones, now, as we continue to work on it. And seeing, as it develops, where it takes, where we go, with characters, storylines, and settings. See how we can improve ourselves. Also, get ourselves out there as a brand. As LAD Publishing, perhaps, and we can branch out to other things. Of course, this is our main project and we are focusing on it. A lot of time and effort and research into it. See where it goes, where it takes us, and in what way.
Ian: Alright, what separates your work from the mass quantity of other zombie related material? Why should we read Life After Death over any of the others?
Steve: Well, I think a big thing is that it’s not solely a zombie book, not solely zombie stories. It’s more about the people after the zombies have already massacred and destroyed the world. So, when you see a zombie movie, a lot of times, it’s about people running away and being scared for their lives. Most people don’t stop and think: what happens to those people afterwards, they are still equally screwed. That’s kind of what we are trying to deal with. The putting back together of society, after..
Scott: The rebuilding.
Steve: Yeah. Exactly. After it’s destruction, pretty much. Seeing how people deal with that destruction, not only on their own personal level but on a societal level, as well.
Ian: Anything to add, Scott?
Scott: No, pretty much.. Actually, I think one of the lines, from one of Steve’s story, goes as such, I believe, correct me if I am wrong: “Once the apocalypse becomes mundane, world peace goes out the window.”(1) Which, I think, pretty much sums up what we are trying to explore. As he said, most of the other genres, or the other things in the genre, that you will see, read, hear about, is about people struggling, running away, it’s all just action. It doesn’t really explore how it would be like to live and try to regain humanity, itself, as a species, now that they’re fighting this threat that they never had to face before. How do you fight something like that? What’s it like to live through something like that?
I think that’s what makes LAD stand out or a little bit different from all the other zombie related things and apocalyptic related things out there. It’s that we are exploring our characters, not just fighting, well they are fighting zombies. That’s, sort of, only a little part of it. It’s not the entire thing. Not the be all, end all. So, that’s something we are trying to do, to inject our setting, our world, with a little bit of a different spin. See how that goes, and then explore our themes within that.
Ian: You mentioned characters, and how it is a character driven story. Either among your own writing, or your fellow writers writing, redundant, what are some of your favorite characters from Life After Death?
Scott: Well, I’ll go first. I am a big fan of the man behind the camera right now. He has a character named Theo, which he introduces him in the first story of issue one.(2) I think we discussed this, but it was interesting because, you as a writer did not like this character. But me as a writer, myself that is, reading the story, I sort of identified with him. So, that little interesting aside. Theo stood out, initially, as a character that I liked.
I obviously like my character, unnamed of course, from the first story.(3) The readers will get his name later on. Of course, being that it was my first character, the one I put probably the most time developing, getting a feel for, obviously I have an affinity for him, as a character.
I don’t know. I think we have more characters to come that we haven’t even seen yet, so we may surprise ourselves with what comes out.
Steve: For me, I’m always kind of self-conscious, or self-degrading, about my own stuff. So it’s tough to pick one of my characters. In terms of your guys characters, I love the Drunk.(4) He’s great. Always good for a laugh. You know, laughs are important, especially after the end of the world.
For Scott, actually, I think my favorite characters of yours, so far, is one that was introduced before, but just got his first actual story.(5) It’s Strizzy and his stall.
Scott: Oh, yes.
Steve: I like that story, I like his mindset.
Scott: Thank you, buddy.
Steve: I guess, my favorite character that I’ve written, so far, is Bruce Jenkins,(6) who is supposedly the..
Scott: He’s a good character.
Steve: ..the mayor’s brother. I don’t want to give anything away, but..
Scott: Spoiler alert!
Steve: ..that’s not necessarily confirmed.
Ian: Don’t worry, no one’s watching.
Steve: That’s not necessarily confirmed yet. A lot more stuff to come from him in the future, which should be good.
Scott: Who’s your favorite character, Ian, J. Ian Manczur?
Ian: Well, I’m not self-conscious. I love my own writing. So, I love everything I ever created.
Scott: But who’s your favorite character or a character you like?
Ian: I particularly agree with Steve, that the Drunk is perhaps one of my most brilliant creations… in all modesty.
Scott: Can you tell our no fans what the Drunk’s actual name is?
Ian: Mike Allen. Which I don’t think I… aside from my own personal commentary on my website,(7) I don’t think I’ve ever actually mentioned his full name. In fact, that might confuse people because I do mention him as Mike in this coming week’s volume 4.
Steve: I think you might have said his name. (grabs Volume 1)
Ian: I didn’t say his name in ‘The Drunk’ originally.(8)
Steve: No?
Ian: Speaking of which, you’re grabbing right now(in reference to Steve holding the magazine), not you Scott(in reference to Scott’s hands on his crotch, which he moves away with resignation), Steevo. (laughter) What are you holding right now?
Steve: This is the first volume that we..
Scott: Of Life After Death.
Steve: Right, of Life After Death, the magazine. The first two we actually put out in physical form. We have since gone to putting them up on the internet on the blog that we have. We are going to be moving websites soon, though, so look out for that. This is just the first issue. This is what I am going to be reading from today.(9)
Scott: We will all be reading excerpts from issue 1.
Steve: Right.
Ian: Is there any future… Now you mentioned that you are going from.. went from a physical magazine to an online publication. Is there any future plans to return to a physical representation of Life After Death?
Steve: Yes. In fact, I think after the sixth or possibly seventh issue, we are going to do a collected edition in kind of a novel format.
Scott: It would be more of an anthology. We were talking about rearranging the order of them a little bit. We’ll see how it goes.
Steve: Right. We’ll have to look at all that stuff when the time comes.
Scott: We are planning to put out another physical product.
Steve: We should have that. That will contain all the stories, the short stories that we have up on the website now, and the poems that we have up there as well. And I guess we are going to try to put any art that we have, which isn’t much at this point.
Scott: Ask us about art.
Steve: I don’t want to talk about art.
Ian: I don’t want to talk about art either. Any artists watching this: you suck. Just kidding, please send us stuff.
Scott: If you think you can actually do something, work with us. Let us know.
Ian: What has been the greatest difficulty in creating the magazine, speaking of art.
Scott: That. Art. Art is the greatest difficulty. I will look directly at the camera and tell you, as we all know. It was hard because it isn’t our forte, so we had to sort of wing it. We got some good results, but it took a lot of time and effort and, again, we can’t do everything, all of us at once. So, we sort of had to cut our losses. It was a good experience and I’m glad we put out two issues. They looked great. In the end, it was an amazing time, but just trying to get everything to come together, as well as being on top of the writing, editing, and everything else we were trying to do. Because, we mentioned the blog, we were still trying to set up things with that. We were trying to push it out in other ways, too. It just became more convenient to.. get it out.
Steve: Deadlines for artists have been, in my experience, kind of tough to maintain. Not only that, but doing the layout of the book. I had never done anything like that before. That was kind of a learning experience. I think it could have come out better, but at the same time it didn’t come out too badly. It’s a lot easier now that I’m not spending seven or eight hours doing that the day before I wanted it to come out.
Ian: Anything else that I, that you would like to mention?
Scott: Check out our site.
Steve: Yea, just go to the site. www.lifeafterdeath-comp.blogspot.com
Scott: Gotta remember it, but we have other ways of checking us out.
Steve: Or check us out on Facebook.(10)
Ian: Which is Life After Death, no need for a - or a comp.
Steve: Just throw in Life After Death.
Scott: Straight up Life After Death. You’ll probably see a picture of this(points to Volume 2 cover). So, you can check us out in other ways on the various internets.
Steve: All seven of them.
Scott: We also have business cards.
Ian: Hmm, yes. Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time.
Scott: Thank you, J. Ian Manczur.(nods)
Steve: Thank you.(waves)
Ian: And those of you watching us, read our shit.
Scott: Thanks for reading.
_____________________________________________________
1 Our World
2 Theo’s Story
3 All You Fucking Zombos
4 The Drunk: A Prelude of Ed’s & The Drunk’s Christmas Special
5 Fresh Grinds From Strizzy’s(Reluctantly Added, "Scummy") Stall
6 The Big “It”
7 www.smoothedcube.blogspot.com
8 I did.
9 We recorded partial audio readings of our stories from Volume 1. They will be available sometime in the future.
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