The Ashley Parker series, for those not following it, is a fun story of a college co-ed with college co-ed problems, stuck with the ancient responsibility of killing zombies. With a katana.
Fortunately, the series has author Dana Fredsti, who knows from zombies: Among other jobs, she worked extensively on Army of Darkness. She was good enough to sit down with us and discuss writing, zombies, and flannel pajamas.
Gamma Squad: How did the Ashley Parker series get started?
Dana Fredsti: With a phone call. Seriously. I was at work one day (yes, I have a day job) and got a call from Lori Perkins, an agent and editor, who asked me if I wanted to write a zombie series. The specific perimeters were, “I want Buffy, but with zombies. And different. And the heroine’s name is Ashley.” As a huge fan of Joss Whedon and George Romero, my answer was an immediate “yes!” And thus are legends (and book series) born.
Gamma Squad: What’s your process, as a writer?
Fredsti: My process is heavily invested in pajamas. I like to write in my pajamas and will change back into them after going out into the world. I have written at coffee houses and on public transit going to and from my day job, but nothing kickstarts me into the writing mode like donning the official writing uniform of flannel pajamas. Then I choose either background music or a background movie, shoo the cats off my keyboard, and get going on either research or pick up on whatever scene/chapter I left off on the previous writing session .
Gamma Squad: Katanas are pretty common in zombie fights, but as you’re a trained sword fighter, you actually have a different take on it. Is it difficult to translate a martial art like sword fighting to the page? Do you have to take any artistic license?
Fredsti: It’s funny because my sword fighting style of choice is rapier and dagger, not katana. The rapier, however, isn’t an ideal weapon against the undead so I couldn’t see it working for Ashley.
I do think being trained in any martial art is a plus for an author when writing fight scenes because you have a visceral sense of how it feels to actually use weapons or feel the impact of your fist hitting someone’s flesh. Filming fight scenes, especially big battle sequences, while not anywhere even close to what it must be like to be in the middle of a real fire-fight, at least gives you a feel for being in combat with chaos all around you. For me, having a theatrical combat and marital arts training background made it easier to translate the experiences into fiction.
As far as artistic license, I have never actually stuck the business end of a katana (or any sword) through a zombie’s eye socket and the closest I’ve come to whacking one in the skull is chopping a melon in half… so big “yes” on the artistic license.
Gamma Squad: You’ve got an Evil Dead connection, I understand. How’d you get involved in Army of Darkness?
Fredsti: I got involved in two areas of the film via two different people. One, Brian Thomas, was hired as the onset armourer, brought me on as his assistant at the beginning of production before the Deadite scenes were filmed. I was also training with Dan Speaker and Jan Bryant at the Academy of Theatrical Combat at the time, and they were hired to choreograph the fight sequences. Dan brought a group of his students on board to act as fight captains and help train the extras, as well as work as sword-fighting Deadites.
So I spent the first few weeks working on distressing plastic armor, dressing extras, fixing broken straps, and then the rest of the film training extras in the basics of broadsword and shield, choreographing fights between Deadites and soldiers, and performing them in front of the camera with a bunch of other Deadites and soldiers.
Gamma Squad: And, of course, we’ve got to ask: What’s your favorite zombie movie that you’ve seen recently?
Fredsti: My favorite recent zombie movie is Warm Bodies (who would have thunk a zombie fairy tale could be so sweet and yet so gory?), followed by The Dead, which made slow zombies scary again. My favorite ‘silly as hell, what were they thinking?’ recent zombie movie was Zombie Apocalypse, with Danny Trejo and Mariel Hemingway. So many things wrong with that movie… it was a Bad Movie Night special.
The latest Ashley Parker novel, Plague Nation, is in stores this week.