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I don’t have much to say about this week’s Doctor Who episode, “Mummy on the Orient Express.” Shocking, I know! Especially given the lengthy screeds I’ve been writing about episodes for a while now. “Mummy” is the closest to a classic-era Doctor Who episode we’ve gotten so far this season: outer space, a monster, a mystery to solve, and an enclosed setting. No timey-wimey crap, no “secret origins” for the Doctor or Clara, just a welcome, straightforward adventure. It’s a good one, too. One of the better episodes this season.

The train in space conceit is stupid, and basically only exists because they needed something that sounded exotic when the setup was first mention at the end of the 2010, Eleventh Doctor episode “The Big Bang,” but it’s not so stupid as to be distracting. (Except maybe for the occasional train-snaking-through-space establishing shots, which put me in mind of the Soul Train animation more than anything else.)

I’m still having trouble getting a handle on Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor. I liked who he was in the first four episodes of this season, but then suddenly they started writing him as manic and kooky, which doesn’t work for this Doctor. He needs to be more grounded, and he needs to stay grounded. In “Mummy,” he’s a little bit of both, and it’s no surprise to me that the scenes where he’s grounded and in control are the better ones.

**Very minor spoilers follow**

I also don’t quite understand Clara’s actions at the end of the episode when she decides to continue traveling with the Doctor. There’s no reason for her to lie to Danny about it except to force more narrative tension into the plot. Why not have her own her decision and then let Danny decide for himself how he feels and if he still wants to be a part of her life? Imagine how much better and more mature that scene would be than whatever inflated “confrontation” that waits for us down the line. Also, why lie to the Doctor about Danny being okay with it? The Doctor obviously wants her to stick around and doesn’t necessarily care if Danny is okay with it or not. It all feels very forced.

The TARDIS Data Core mentions there were a couple of deleted scenes for this episode, including one that “revealed that Maisie was present near the campfire on the beach in the end, explaining that when the Doctor implanted Maisie’s pain and trauma into himself, he took them away from her for good.” I think they should have kept that scene in. It would have gone a long way toward explaining how Clara found it in herself to forgive the Doctor for the way he acted in “Kill the Moon.”

No real neepery this time around, except that the Doctor offers somebody some jelly babies and says at one point, “Are you my mummy?” Sadly, the lack of a reference to the classic 1975, Fourth Doctor serial “Pyramids of Mars” is a missed opportunity.

Just like it says up top: There are only five days left to win signed ARCs of Die and Stay Dead and Dying Is My Business! Enter the Goodreads giveaway today!

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, please review the guidelines here.)

I’m very pleased to have six-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Lisa Morton as my guest. I’ve known Lisa for a long, long time, despite living on opposite ends of the country from each other, and her tireless work in supporting and promoting the horror genre is legendary. She also happens to have a new novel out called Zombie Apocalypse! Washington Deceased. Here is the publisher’s description:

There is nothing to fear, but fear itself . . . and Zombies!

A novel set within the Zombie Apocalypse! mythos created by Stephen Jones for his bestselling trilogy, Washington Deceased is sent during the second half of Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback, when the zombies’ intelligence is increasing and they have formed themselves into a society, and an army. New York and Los Angeles have fallen to the walking dead and there has been no news out of Chicago, but Washington DC is still holding out and the South is still free. Time is running out, though, for the battalions defending Capitol Hill . . .

As the most powerful symbols of American democracy begin to fall, the President and her advisors must be protected at all costs. But what if there are people in her own government who are prepared to do a deal with the living-dead invaders to retain power at any cost?

Meanwhile, “Zombie King” Thomas Moreby is making his own plans to rule the United States as his control increases across the country. Moreby claims to have “foreseen” his victory, but there are emerging factions in his own ranks who are starting to question their role in the war between zombies and humans.

And how does the mysterious New World Pharmaceuticals fit into the New Zombie Order?

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Lisa Morton:

Zombie Apocalypse! Washington Deceased is a big, cross-country sprawl that charts the fall of the United States during a (surprise!) zombie apocalypse. As such, this is not a horror novel of subtle chills and quiet terrors, nor does it venture into SLC (Spring-Loaded Cat for the uninitiated) territory. I wanted it to disturb readers, to occasionally gross them out, but overall to create a sense of terrible doom.

The pivotal sequence in the book is a battle that occurs around the White House. At this point in the book, martial law has given way to a provisional government that’s holed up in a secret underground bunker complex beneath Washington. Zombies have overrun the world, leaving scattered pockets of human resistance. The acting president believes retaking the White House — the architectural symbol of American power — is crucial in unifying these fighters, and it needs to be done while there are still enough human forces left to unify.

The ensuing battle was important not just for setting up plot points that play out in the second half of the book, but also for setting up that sense of dread, that unnerving feeling that you’re right smack in the middle of watching the final, definite failure of your way of life. Two protagonists fly into the scene; only one makes it out alive, and her faith in their efforts is so severely shaken that it changes her.

One of the things I knew early on that could easily derail this sequence was the believability factor. The reader needs to be thinking, “Oh my God,” not, “But that doesn’t make sense,” or (in case the reader has military knowledge or experience), “They wouldn’t have that tank in that situation.” Now, I’m far from an expert in war machinery or strategy, so I started researching this stuff early on, even while I was writing earlier parts of the novel. I spent weeks, maybe months, reading up on skirmishes and battles, military leadership and chain of command, guns, armor, drones and their missile payloads, tanks, RCVs (Route Clearance Vehicles), the layout of Washington (and especially the grounds surrounding the White House), and all the military bases and supply depots within a day’s drive of Washington. I studied reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts that had been made into bit torrent files by Wikileaks, I read books on politics and government, I went to the websites for all the bases and looked at what they made and stored (did you know you could do that? I didn’t), I watched YouTube videos of guns and tanks and drones in action…and slowly I began to chart out the sequence.

It wasn’t enough to know merely how an RCV would work; it was equally important to my uses to know how these pieces of equipment would fail. In some cases I just plain had to guess, or make something up. You can’t find quite everything online, after all.

Watching America’s high-powered arsenal fall before the zombies was central to this sequence, and to building that all-important dread. Wound around these big set pieces were the smaller actions of the two protagonists who are in the middle of the conflict. I chose one of these two to be the main point-of-view character in the sequence, and so the horror had to be experienced through her eyes. She’s been involved with planning this attack, and now she’s watching it fail, very badly. For all the research into machinery and weapons, it all has to come back to what one person is feeling. Without her, it just becomes a big, spectacular but empty battle. With her, I hope it worked as a large-scale, adrenaline-pumping, realistic exploration of shock and awe.

Lisa Morton: Website / Facebook

Zombie Apocalypse! Washington Deceased: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” Her most recent releases include the novella By Insanity of Reason (co-authored with John R. Little) and the novel Zombie Apocalypse! Washington Deceased. She lives in North Hollywood.

New York Comic Con was this weekend! It was an amazing experience — and also completely overwhelming. There were over 150,000 people crammed into the Jacob Javits Center (a record-breaking attendance number, apparently). Look at this shot of the Javits Center entrance hallway, and this was only Thursday afternoon:

It got considerably more crowded as the weekend went on. But even though it was complete sensory overload, I had a great time. I handed out a ton of promotional postcards for my urban fantasy series to a crowd that seemed kind of meh about something that wasn’t a video game, movie, or TV show, but hey, I got the word out and you never know. I also got to see a lot of good friends in the industry while I was there. Here’s my friend Fred Van Lente with his frequent comics co-creator Ryan Dunlavy:

I got to see a few good friends who came from out of town for the event, too, like Amber Benson, F. Paul Wilson, and Laird Barron. Here’s Laird now with Ellen Datlow:

I spent a lot of time with my friends at the Orbit Books booth, including Alex Lencicki, Ellen B. Wright, and Laura Fitzgerald. It was a good place for me to go chill out when Comic Con became too overwhelming, which was basically every fifteen minutes. Here is a picture of Laura and Ellen with author Sam Sykes:

But of course one of the best parts of Comic Con is the cosplay. There were so many amazing costumes on display this year. I have such a huge amount of respect for cosplayers, they put so much creativity and effort into their costumes, and then they put themselves out there in the public eye without fear. Here is one of my favorite cosplayers from the weekend:

I have no idea who she’s supposed to be (I think the character is from a video game?) but she was so into it and so hilarious with her war cries that I had to take a picture. If anyone knows who she’s supposed to be, let me know in the comments, okay?

Here’s someone cosplaying as Omega from the 1973 Doctor Who serial “The Three Doctors”:

Needless to say, I loved it! There was a ton of Doctor Who cosplay at New York Comic Con, and I’d say 90% of them were dressed as the 11th Doctor, complete with fez and bow tie, while 5% were the TARDIS and 5% were “other,” such as Omega, which definitely wins for originality. I’d also estimate that 99% of the Doctor Who cosplayers were women. (Tellingly, I didn’t see any women dressed as Amy, Clara, or River, just the Doctor or the TARDIS. This, I believe, is because Amy, Clara, and River are such poorly written female characters, but that’s a blog entry for another time.) Here are two girls who came in adorable, homemade costumes as the 11th Doctor (I think?) and the TARDIS:

And here is a Dalek posing with a young 4th Doctor cosplayer (with Marge Simpson checking her cellphone in the background):

You can see the rest of my photos from New York Comic Con here, including lots more costumes. I swear I didn’t just take pictures of Doctor Who cosplayers! Anyway, I had a great time at the convention, managed not to spend too much money, and will definitely be back next year. I’m just glad there’s a year between Comic Cons. It’s exhausting, and I’m pretty sure I’ll need the full twelve months to recover.