Facing a phobia by writing it.

I get my best stuff in the middle of the night, the early hours of the morning, anytime really where silence surrounds me. I guess this is because my day job and family life forced me to be creative with my writing time. I can't write in the day, or the very early morning, or the evening. So it is night or nothing.

That routine is now firmly ingrained, and as soon as the sky darkens and the silence settles my fingers fly over the keyboard. My very best ideas come in the darkness. As I'm falling asleep, as I'm waking up, as I'm looking at the clock thinking, damn I've got work in five hours.

Tonight is different though, as it has been for the last couple of weeks. Because usually I write about love and happiness and fantasy. Sure I've made myself cry from my writing, but always in a heart broken kind of way. But then I always know what's going to happen don't I? And if I don't like it I can change it... but I digress. The point is over the last couple of weeks I've been trying something different with my writing. I've purposefully chosen to write a book which creeps me out. I mean seriously creeps me out. Night has settled, the wind whips around the building, and I open word and start writing about... zombies...

Not a problem you'd think right? Wrong. Because I'm what some people might call a bit of a freak. Why you ask? Well, truth of the matter is I have a quite horrifying zombie phobia.

Yes I'm being serious. A phobia which doesn't even have a name. Hell even clown phobias get their own name!

Thing is it's not a silly fear, or a bit of worry, but a full blown, oh shit phobia. This goes back to my childhood, where courtesy of some pretty bad parenting, I was forced to watch several zombie movies. I know from watching them now that in reality they're not that scary, but to a seven year old child, they were terrifying. I guess the zombie phobia was created then whether I liked it or not, by some neural interaction I had no control over, and it has never gone away. You could fill a television schedule for several days if you added all my zombie nightmares together, and then some. The bastards always run really fast too!

Now I'm a rational adult as well as a trained scientist. I know in reality the chances of any kind of zombie attack is minimal at best. I'm also pretty survivalist stylee anyway, so if zombies did attack (yeah I really am saying that), I'm probably better prepared than many. I have a plan, I have supplies, and I have zombie slaying weapons. I'd do okay I reckon. Does that lessen the phobia... erm no.

Because that's the thing with phobias, no matter how irrational they are, no matter how many times you tell yourself to stop being stupid, it makes nada difference. According to the American Psychiatric Association, a phobia is defined as, "...an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. In most cases, the phobia involves a sense of endangerment or a fear of harm. For example, those suffering from agoraphobia fear being trapped in an inescapable place or situation. Symptoms can include breathlessness, panic, nausea, dizziness and fear of dying." Mine tend to be panic and an intense desire to zombie slay. I know right? It's totally fucked up.

So I decided quite recently, as a professional grown up (snigger), a published author, and mom of two, I should really think about doing something about this bloody phobia once and for all. I mean don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting I should ease up on the vigilance, but surely I could minimize my security sweeps?

But how to go about it I wondered, and then it hit me. I would write a zombie book. I would work through my oddness by putting it on paper. Confronting my fear and slaying it! Two weeks in, halfway through the book I have titled Waking Dead, and I won't lie, I am beginning to regret it. Because it's the early hours of the damn morning. The house is silent, the kids are in bed, there's just me keeping watch... and I'm writing about the living, or in my book, the waking fucking dead. Every creek, every bang pulls me from the page and each time a slither of fear snakes down my spine. Not even real fear though, false fear manufactured by the weird neural connections in my brain that allow this phobia to exist.

For the first time ever my own writing has scared me. I open the page to continue the story and trepidation hits me. I have to mentally psyche myself up to write the zombie scenes, and even when I'm killing them off I'm thinking about puss and blood, and gore and such. And worse I can't even judge the effect it will have on others because my own reactions aren't really normal. My beta reader has refused to read any more after suffering a zombie induced nightmare the day of reading so I'm kinda sailing in the wind. I add humor in an effort to force myself into it. I sprinkle in the romance to make me smile, and I've (for the first time ever) written the ending already, just so I know my hero and heroine survive, but throughout all of this two questions refuse to be answered.

Am I really doing this phobia any good? And will my readers even like what I've done?

And here's the worst bit I need a yes to those two questions, I really do. Because this book, the first book, immediately turned into five books. Waking Dead bled into Waking Alive, and then Waking Human came to me, oh and what about Waking Changed I had to do that, and finally I needed to finish it all didn't I? So there had to be Waking Up.

Five zombie books, each becoming increasingly scarier, increasingly zombier. It's going to take me ten months to write them all, and several more to promo them. But I feel like I have to do this. I must face the phobia head on. I must somehow create love out of the horror! If not for me now, then for the characters which are already running round my brain.

I WILL do this!

Whether I have any readers left at the end, well, that's as much a mystery as the phobia itself...

Emma x