With the bunny-vs.-zombies ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW, Matt Youngmark has launched Chooseomatic Books, at once a revival and a parody of the old CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE series. One difference: These tricks aren’t for kids. Here, Youngmark discusses the idea’s genesis, the unique process of penning such a title, and Chooseomatic’s future.
BOOKGASM: How did you get the idea to do a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE type book? Now, how did you get the idea to do one with a bunny?
YOUNGMARK: I was reading a webcomic where a dinosaur decided to write a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE book because he wanted to tell his readers directly what they were supposed to feel instead of, like, setting a mood and stuff. I just thought that sounded like the best idea ever. The whole thing with the bunny came about after I settled on zombies for the subject matter, and needed something to set the book apart.
Also, I thought that using a stuffed animal as the main character would allow me to maintain gender neutrality in the illustrations. Although, apparently, I’m as bad at drawing androgynous rabbits as I am at writing from a non-male perspective, because everybody just assumes it’s a dude.
BOOKGASM: What challenges does writing a book structured like this present? What’s the process behind it?
YOUNGMARK: The process included a constantly updated spreadsheet and a shitload of flowcharts! It turns out that every time you split the story along two paths, you double the number of pages, so I had to get the math worked out early on, or the whole thing would have spiraled out of control. Because I knew my rough page count in advance and kept meticulous progress notes, every time somebody asked me how far along my book was, I could answer with an exact percentage.
The flip side of this is that it was really like writing a whole bunch of short stories which all start out the same way, so I could use every bizarre plot idea I came up with. It was so much fun to write.
BOOKGASM: Obviously, it’s a good gimmick, but the book is more than just a gimmick. Your words wear your sense of humor on their sleeves. Were you attempting to ape the spirit of any humorists — or authors with at least a tangible sense of humor — while writing?
YOUNGMARK: I just try to make myself laugh when I’m writing, so I suppose I’m aping everyone that I find funny. As far as the style, though, I think it’s more influenced by my favorite bloggers and internet personalities — folks like Jerry Holkins and Lore Sjoberg — than any particular authors.
BOOKGASM: Now that you’ve got one of these under your belt, does it make doing the second and third one harder or easier? Anything you plan on doing differently, now that you’ve learned from experience?
YOUNGMARK: Definitely much easier! Although, I’ll tell you what, the biggest thing that’s slowing the sequel down is that I moved closer to work, and no longer have an hour-long train ride to sit through twice a day. A huge chunk of ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW was written on that commuter train.
The next book, THRUSTS OF JUSTICE, is a lot more tightly structured than ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW. I wanted to do something more ambitious with the plot, so your first choice sends you down the path to become one of three different superheroes — depending on, like, how appealing you find the idea of lurking ominously in shadows or fighting big cosmic space battles or whatever — and then they weave together into an overarching über-plot. But I also loved the looseness of ZOMBOCALYPSE NOW, so I’m dabbling with the third book concurrently. TIME TRAVEL DINOSAUR, at least so far, is completely stream-of-consciousness.
BOOKGASM: How far can you take the Chooseomatic brand? Any plans to do anything beyond just this kind of book?
YOUNGMARK: I intend to ride this horse as long and as far as it will take me. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS parody? Radioactive mutants vs. robot gladiators? Vampire romance? Check, check and check. My original list of ideas also includes something titled “Muppet superspies,” but I’m no longer sure where I was going with that one. In a perfect world, I’ll be able to keep doing the Chooseomatic Books series perpetually, and just slow down the release schedule a bit whenever I have something else I want to devote energy to. But, yeah, there’s plenty of non-Chooseomatic stuff rattling around as well. —Rod Lott
OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with Asylum Press’ Frank Forte
• Q&A with RIFFTRAX’s Mike Nelson
• Q&A with 7TH SON: DESCENT’s J.C. Hutchins
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