Full disclosure: I’ve been known to use words and the turn of a phrase in the descriptions and depictions of the content I create in order to get the eyeballs of a confused and attention deficit disordered nation to take a gander at my sweet, sweet prose. Some are more offensive than others I suppose, and I’d probably not have given it much thought had My Dead Friend Sarah  not received more than a few snipes related to that indiscretion. I suppose a bunch of freeloaders downloaded my novel on the few days I’ve made it available gratis expecting it to be some sort of horror story involving the otherworldly spirit of a woman who was someone’s friend. Double full disclosure: I surmised that some people might pick it up for that very reason and hoped that once they’d engaged with a few chapters it’d have won them over nonetheless, but alas, the world wants a description that leaves no surprises as has been evidenced by two decades worth of countless movie trailers that leave little story untold in the hopes of grabbing another man’s eight to sixteen bucks dependent on their locale. It’s a sad world that way, and I’ve probably already lost many readers by this sentence–those who didn’t give me a chance to come back to some  semblance of what this post’s title suggests you’ll be reading about. It’s that kind of world, and you can choose to manipulate it at your own peril–which in previous instances has been the aforementioned reception of an ugly string of words put together to critique a book after a reader felt jilted for having spent a few precious hours diving into something deeper than a ghost story. I’ll wrap up this paragraph with no apology for those who snatched my book from the internets for free, and with only a nod to the possibility that my next book’s title might be more explicit.

For quite a few years now Ariele and I have judged our homes by the Zombie Proof method. In casual conversations had with friends and strangers over those same few years, it’s become apparent that we aren’t the only souls who do so.

First things first then: For me that two-word combination is really just slang for, “Is this a home that will be too difficult to breach by an actual living evil person who is intent on binding and torturing us in the middle of the night?” That’s the reality of my irrationality, and that’s my chief fear–waking with duct tape across my mouth, hands rendered useless, face already stinging from punches to the face gone undefended and a vision of the Mrs. in a similar situation seated across from me through the tears and blur of my pain-soaked eyes. Zombies may one day be as real as we all seemingly want them to be, but until then the more relevant threat is the one, two or three sadistic beings who just happen to decide your time is up.

While any effort to research those types of home invasions will prove that it can happen in just about any kind of dwelling you call home, it is hard not to argue that the condo and apartment style living of Brooklyn that I engaged in for nearly seventeen years dramatically decreased the odds of it ever happening to me. Floors high up in the sky, multiple locked doors between the psycho and you, numerous other inhabitants of the same building on the look out for something suspicious thanks to the TSA, and, in my case, more than a few units that required numerous steps up steep sets of stairs–only the most fit gang of miscreants would dare think about lugging their utensils and tools of destruction up four or five flights of stairs. So in more ways than a few, one of the most dangerous cities in the country (at least as it perceived by anyone who’s never bothered to live there) always afforded me what same might deem a false-sense of security–especially in those sickly ticks of the clock that denote the witching hours of midnight to four. (I’ve no idea what the witching hours actually are, but for me they are the four hours of the evening that I’m most likely deep deep asleep and therefore unable to put to use what little mixed martial arts I’ve learned from the following films: Karate Kid, Kill Bill, and perhaps The Bourne Identity).

In roughly three weeks, I’ll have spent a full year away from the city living that metaphorically for me was like a warm blanket or two wrapped around the just-shy-of-new-born so snuggly stuck in the womb. And I’ll have done so without incident–and while I can appreciate the fabulous design of multiple deck doors and the light they afford, or relish in the ability to re-enter my home from its delightful backyard via this thing normal people call a backdoor, or even wonder if I could ever enjoy sleeping without the cool breeze that flows through our new bedroom during the evening hours thanks to the insane vortex of winds born from easily entered windows and bedroom deck doors–I simply can not, will not, certify this new home as Zombie Proof.

At least not until we go out and get us ourselves some suburban landmines for that there pretty yard we got now.