One of my favorite childhood memories dates back to when I
was 9 years old. My family and I went to go see Jurassic Park on its opening weekend. We all piled into our big
blue van and drove to a movie theatre where my eldest sister sold movie tickets
and scooped popcorn for Salt Lake City’s movie going public.
Now, by the modern
standards of IMAX theatres and multiplexes with dozens of screens, this theatre
was not the biggest I’ve ever been in. It was quite large though, even for that
time, and featured stadium style seating which was not a common feature of
movie theaters in the area at that time. We took our seats in the center of the
theatre, the lights dimmed, and the projector started.
It was during this movie that I, for the first time, truly
appreciated the movie going experience in a theatre full of people all as
excited to see the movie as I was. Jurassic
Park had it all. Drama, action, comedy, cinematic scenes shot on a large
scale, state of the art special effects, a musical score that rivals any to
date, and plenty of audience connection moments. You know, those moments when
the entire audience jumps at the same time in response to an unexpected
appearance by a T-Rex or velociraptor. I distinctly remember one of those very
moments. Even to this day, I can picture the back of hundreds of heads sitting
in the house below me jumping at the same moment. I too was a part of that
group of people who grabbed their seats and tossed their popcorn in the air. I
was experiencing an adventure with the characters on the screen and by doing so
was connecting with a room full of strangers. It was an event made possible by
a film that started as a story written down on paper by a single author.
So where do the stories that lead to event blockbusters come
from? This is a question that I often ask myself as I sit with a notebook and
pen or in front of a blank computer screen searching for the inspiration to
write my next story. I’ve written plenty of stories to know that the answer to
this question is not one that is simple or even one single answer. Stories do
in fact have roots in all aspects of life.
Every story I’ve ever written has stemmed from a different experience,
emotion, or stimuli. AfterLife is no
exception. I won’t begin to compare
myself with the masterful writer Michael Crichton. His body of work is one that
even the best of writers aspires to be able to match. I will, however, simply state one example of
an experience that inspired me.
AfterLife started
as a dream. In the dream I was
completely surrounded by zombies. It’s
curious as to what brought on this particular dream since, up to that point,
the undead was never a genre of major interest to me. None the less, there I
was fighting off and running away from a scary group of the walking dead.
Finally, the zombies captured me, but they didn’t eat me as
I expected. Instead I was dragged to a
hospital room and was strapped to the table.
As I lay there, waiting for my fate, I overheard the zombies
talking. It was at that moment that I
realized that I was in fact the dead one and everyone who was chasing me was
alive. When I woke up, I considered the
concept. Granted, I was not very
familiar with zombie literature at the time and, therefore, had never come
across a story from the zombie’s perspective. However, I started doing research
and the story of AfterLife
began.
It started as a short story following the concept I
discovered in my dream. It evolved from
there and, well, if you read the book you know it became quite more. As I wrote
chapter after chapter though, there was always a part of me that wanted to tell
the story as if I was recounting what I had watched on the big screen in a
movie theatre full of an audience of strangers.
