Don Miskel

Don Miskel: Zombies, Sugar Weasels, and Devilish Deals

Some people would say Don thinks too much. By his own admission, his mind is constantly bombarded by concepts which he readily contorts into twisted tales of black comedy and horror. According to his mother, he was trying to spin stories for laughs at a time when most babies would be content with dining on the contents of their noses (his mother didn’t say anything about snookers. That was Don taking creative license to elicit a response, which is something he loves to do)…

Dark sense of humor aside, Don is quite serious about the craft of writing. Along with the passion for storytelling is the frustration of not having enough time to get it done. “Some scribblers do so to pass time while a smaller number of us do it to maintain sanity; you can guess which category I fall into… I write,” he declares. “It has little to do with monetary gain or recognition, though those are nice. I’ve penned stories when I was dead broke, so it’s something that courses through my veins and is necessary for breath. My responsibility is to entertain and inform anyone who picks up one of my tales with a quality product.”

Though the bulk of his published work at this point consists of anthology contributions, Don’s 2012 novel demanded expansion. “I was at a party in my hometown of Chicago and was nearly jumped by a raving fan of the first iteration of my zombie book, Dead Assets. She was enamored with the premise but wanted to know what happened to so-and-so and what when the sequel was coming out. I mean, she was SERIOUS! I didn’t have the nerve to tell her I’d done the book as a one-shot. Her sentiment was repeated by others in the following months. I found myself putting other projects on hold to revamp and expand Assets with pleasing results. I now have loose plans of rounding it into a trilogy. In fact, I was so impressed with her enthusiasm, I wrote a character based on her into the 2014 version.”