Photo courtesy of www.123rf.com
The new season of the AMC television series The Walking Dead premieres on Sunday, October 13th here in the States. Fellow author and Walking Dead fangirl J.A. Garland and I are too excited to wait so we’re blogging about the show! I’ll post a link to J.A.’s blog at the bottom of the page.
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My hubby and I are big fans of The Walking Dead. As much fun as I have watching the show – and yelling at the characters – I never expected to learn a lesson about life from a show about zombies.
As an author I am a complete pantser. For those of you not familiar with the term, a pantser writes without outlines, relationship arcs or character sheets – we write “by the seat of our pants.” Get it? When I begin work on a story I know who my main characters are, how they meet, and how the story begins and ends. I also have a few scenes in mind along with random bits of dialogue that occur somewhere in the middle; everything else gets made up as I go along. This process, or rather the lack thereof, explains why I have been working on my debut novel for a year and am still several weeks away from publication.
In real life, I’m the complete opposite; I’m a plotter through and through. Purchases of any significant dollar figure, say over one hundred dollars, are researched ad nauseam and vacations are planned down to the last possible detail. Or they were – until the zombies came along.
The Walking Dead is filmed in Georgia – which also happens to be my home state. Being the good fans that we are, a few months ago my hubby and I decided to go on what we dubbed The Walking Dead Driving Tour. In a very un-Izzy like move, I didn’t plan anything. Nada. The only decision made in advance was the date.
It was one of the best vacations that we have ever had.
On the Saturday morning selected for the beginning of our adventure, we piled into our faithful Highlander and hit the road. The filming locations are scattered over a wide area in and around Atlanta, but never fear – they’re easy to find with the aid of the Google Map created by some seriously diehard fans. No, I’m not kidding – there really is such a map. (Click HERE for map.) Throw in that marvel of modern technology – a smartphone – and you have the makings of an awesome road trip.
As my husband drove, Bossy Poots and I navigated. (Bossy Poots is our name for the pushy disembodied female voice on our navigation app of choice, so named because she gets downright irritated when you don’t do as she instructs.) Even with The Map not all of our excursions were successful; some areas weren’t accessible. The road to Hershel’s farm dead-ended at a fence and the prison was off-limits due to filming. No matter, good company and good conversation kept everything running smoothly.
As the day drew to a close my husband asked where we were spending the night. I didn’t know. For the first time in my adult life, I had not made reservations in advance. Did I freak out? No, I did not – also a very un-Izzy like move. It was late Saturday afternoon – and Memorial Day weekend to boot – and we had nowhere to stay. So, as my hubby cruised along I-75 my trusty cell phone and I researched hotels and successfully booked a room. It was at this point that I realized that in spite of my lack of plans, everything was all right. The world continued to spin and the sun did not explode into a million pieces; there weren’t even any great disturbances in the Force.
Lesson learned.
Going forward I’m going to change things up and do a little less planning in my life and a little more in my writing. I can’t wait to see what happens in both!
I hope you’ll join me tomorrow when I’ll detail our excursion to the gristmill where the finale of Season 2 was filmed.
Now click HERE to hop over to J.A.’s site and see what she has to say!
So jealous you did a Walking Dead filming road trip! I want to do one of those! Looking forward to tomorrow’s post
Hi J.A.! The trip was short, but it was such a blast! Thanks for stopping by and commenting.