Welcome Back
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and since pretty much all of you reading this right now are friends and family, you know that in the last few years I’ve moved across the country (again), started a new job, and then unexpectedly started another. I originally began this Substack as a writing exercise while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after grad school. After I got my first job, a job I absolutely loved and could have seen myself doing indefinitely, my writing dropped off. Life got busy and it didn’t feel like I needed this so much anymore.
Lately, I’ve been feeling the itch to write again. I’ve picked my long-tabled novel back up and I’ve been dabbling in short stories – and I decided it was time to revive Of Microbes and Men. I can’t promise that I’ll post consistently, or that I won’t go on hiatus again in the future, but I’m excited to share my thoughts in this format again.
So, what will Of Microbes and Men look like now? I’ll still explore the ways in which pop culture depictions of apocalyptic outbreaks get the science right and wrong, but I may sprinkle in some other content from time to time. I expect this to be an evolving project, and I can’t predict where it might go in the future.
For now, I’m excited to share what I have on deck. It’s no secret that I’m a Halloween girlie. For me, once the 4th of July is over I consider it to be Spooky Season. As I keep telling my husband, if you wait until September to buy Halloween decorations it’s nothing but Christmas, and since the coffee companies agree with me (I’ve already had two Pumpkin Spice Lattes in the last week), we’re in full scary movie swing in our house. Over the last 3-4 years, I’ve been on a journey to become a fan of the horror movie genre. It’s taken a while, starting with teen slashers and working my way up to the twisted, atmospheric works of Ari Aster and the like, but at this point I can both handle and enjoy most scary movies. Most.
As I wrote about in my first post, Should I be Worried about Fungus Eating my Brain?, I hate zombies. Honestly, hate isn’t a strong enough word but I’m at a loss to describe how repulsive I find them. It’s the one subgenre of horror that I haven’t been able to conquer. Naturally, I thought this should be the year that I face my fear. My husband enthusiastically agreed, so now I’m committed to watching hordes of undead cannibals terrorize the living, and I’ll be posting about each movie with some science and my opinions.
I hope you enjoy this first series as much as I dread writing it.
-Christina
