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Today I want to tell you a story. It’s a story about a story called The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery. The fiction adventure is by Michele W. Miller, a third-time novelist by night and New York lawyer by day. A member of the recovery culture, herself, 12 Step members figure significantly into this zombie apocalypse adventure.
Suddenly, planet earth is zombified. Those who are affected, start feasting on nearby others, who either become lunch or morph into the zombie ranks. A new take on a New York minute turns an ordinary day into the end of the world. Few survive. As they start to find each other they find they have something in common—the addict gene. They are alcoholics, addicts or adult children of alcoholics. Weird eh? This doesn’t make them immune to zombie attack but they are not the first to be sniffed out and munched on for zombie feasts. Maybe it’s because addicts have already come back from the dead. Could it be we aren’t fresh enough for the undead?
The few that find each other decide that, together, they have to leave the city where they are outnumbered about 2 million zombies to each survivor. They seek out a more rural setting. Along the journey, they meet another clean and sober survivor who brings some inconvenient truth to the ranks; along with avoiding a world of zombies they have to stay clear of dozens of unattended ticking time-bomb nuclear reactors that would soon start leaking and eventually blow up from failed cooling and inattention.
They escape the urban sprawl of the nuclear dependent North East, for the countryside, where maybe, just maybe a colony of fellow uninfected humans could be found.
The zombie apocalypse is not the story; it’s the setting. This thought-provoking commentary on 12 Step culture—our pitfalls, majesty and volatility—is the treasure inside this story. I am not a fiction writer or reader. I labor through my own perceived need to frankly discuss our collective culture, our future and the struggles that internal dogma and an ever changing outside world bring to bear on our mortal fellowship. Sometimes it’s time to put the text books and clinical studies away and let fiction get to the truth of the matter. As old as “one day at a time,” story-telling has persisted as the lifeblood of the recovery community, revealing a truth that blood-tests and fMRI scans cannot.
The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery outwits the best of investigative journalism at revealing some dear and disturbing truths about 12 Step life. Miller confronts the assertions of some of our harshest critics, tells our story, and speculates over our possible future, in a fair-minded and imaginative way.
I cried, I laughed, I winced, just like I do at 12 Step gatherings that have too much cliché, and dogmatic ritual for my liking. Not a member of the Don’t-Git-Bit zombie love-fest, I skip the moves and TV shows and judge from a distance. I appreciate the fascination with end-of- the-world stories as bedtime stories around the end of American Empire camp-fire. It’s the end of the world as we know it and we want to feel fine. Or if we can’t feel fine, let’s lose ourselves for a while. I have no interest in World War Z themes; only the 12 Step angle of this story raised my eyebrow. I’ve spent a lot of time saying that our society isn’t entitled to perpetuity and in fact, I see concerning signs of reification and decay in our 12 & 12 world.
This book ranks as a strong buy from this analyst. I don’t care if you’re a 12 Step cheerleader or critic, in a world of fewer free buzzes, you’ll enjoy this ride. It was a hard book to put down and when I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. Amazon buyers could hit the “buy button” at Amazon for The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery November 11th, 2013. Think holiday gift for someone who has everything. I assure you, that they don’t have one of these.
Michele Miller (pictured), a sneaky anonymous alias methinks, has her book available at an indie priced but with Park Avenue quality.
Preview on Amazon or go to http://michelewmiller.com/ of Thirteenth Step on Facebook.
Today I want to tell you a story. It’s a story about a story called The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery. The fiction adventure is by Michele W. Miller, a third-time novelist by night and New York lawyer by day. A member of the recovery culture, herself, 12 Step members figure significantly into this zombie apocalypse adventure.
Suddenly, planet earth is zombified. Those who are affected, start feasting on nearby others, who either become lunch or morph into the zombie ranks. A new take on a New York minute turns an ordinary day into the end of the world. Few survive. As they start to find each other they find they have something in common—the addict gene. They are alcoholics, addicts or adult children of alcoholics. Weird eh? This doesn’t make them immune to zombie attack but they are not the first to be sniffed out and munched on for zombie feasts. Maybe it’s because addicts have already come back from the dead. Could it be we aren’t fresh enough for the undead?
The few that find each other decide that, together, they have to leave the city where they are outnumbered about 2 million zombies to each survivor. They seek out a more rural setting. Along the journey, they meet another clean and sober survivor who brings some inconvenient truth to the ranks; along with avoiding a world of zombies they have to stay clear of dozens of unattended ticking time-bomb nuclear reactors that would soon start leaking and eventually blow up from failed cooling and inattention.
They escape the urban sprawl of the nuclear dependent North East, for the countryside, where maybe, just maybe a colony of fellow uninfected humans could be found.
The zombie apocalypse is not the story; it’s the setting. This thought-provoking commentary on 12 Step culture—our pitfalls, majesty and volatility—is the treasure inside this story. I am not a fiction writer or reader. I labor through my own perceived need to frankly discuss our collective culture, our future and the struggles that internal dogma and an ever changing outside world bring to bear on our mortal fellowship. Sometimes it’s time to put the text books and clinical studies away and let fiction get to the truth of the matter. As old as “one day at a time,” story-telling has persisted as the lifeblood of the recovery community, revealing a truth that blood-tests and fMRI scans cannot.
The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery outwits the best of investigative journalism at revealing some dear and disturbing truths about 12 Step life. Miller confronts the assertions of some of our harshest critics, tells our story, and speculates over our possible future, in a fair-minded and imaginative way.
I cried, I laughed, I winced, just like I do at 12 Step gatherings that have too much cliché, and dogmatic ritual for my liking. Not a member of the Don’t-Git-Bit zombie love-fest, I skip the moves and TV shows and judge from a distance. I appreciate the fascination with end-of- the-world stories as bedtime stories around the end of American Empire camp-fire. It’s the end of the world as we know it and we want to feel fine. Or if we can’t feel fine, let’s lose ourselves for a while. I have no interest in World War Z themes; only the 12 Step angle of this story raised my eyebrow. I’ve spent a lot of time saying that our society isn’t entitled to perpetuity and in fact, I see concerning signs of reification and decay in our 12 & 12 world.
This book ranks as a strong buy from this analyst. I don’t care if you’re a 12 Step cheerleader or critic, in a world of fewer free buzzes, you’ll enjoy this ride. It was a hard book to put down and when I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. Amazon buyers could hit the “buy button” at Amazon for The Thirteenth Step: Zombie Recovery November 11th, 2013. Think holiday gift for someone who has everything. I assure you, that they don’t have one of these.
Michele Miller (pictured), a sneaky anonymous alias methinks, has her book available at an indie priced but with Park Avenue quality.
Preview on Amazon or go to http://michelewmiller.com/ of Thirteenth Step on Facebook.