I was diagnosed in the summer, ten days prior to my 71st birthday. The finding hit like an anvil dropped from the sky. Not due to my condition. I felt and feel fine. But rather for the shock to the spirit and the heavy fate the word “cancer” implies. And that it came at a moment when our very planet sits grim and benumbed. Wars, threats, shouting, violence – it seemed that our entire world had been diagnosed. With circumstances implying that it was far more than my own life on the line.

"The reason I love zombies…" The speaker has skin the hue of a soft-shell taco. At his jaw line, the taco has been ripped away to expose bleeding gums and skeletal teeth. His right cheek has been chewed into hamburger, the bloody bulge of which keeps his loose eyeball from popping out and rolling across the floor. All of this make-up. I think. "…is that I hate them so much." Love? Hate? Zombies? Sounds like the perfect Halloween romance!

I did not sit down one day and decide to write a novel entitled, "Chop-Chop the Killer Whore." There’s a story behind it. A true story. And the story begins on Sept. 29th, 1958. On that day, in tiny Wyoming, Illinois, my Aunt Donna was murdered.