Cheese and crackers, no. I am the most neurotic Halloweentown blonde on the planet, and I spend most of my waking hours working, one way or another. I'm still working a full-time day job, so I don't sleep much.

I have two series of short stories available for free online reading. "Sparrow Hill Road" is at The Edge of Propinquity and is the story of Rose Marshall, hitchhiking ghost from the 1940s, as she travels America in search of a jacket, a cheeseburger, and vengeance on the man who killed her. "Velveteen vs." is at my website, www.seananmcguire.com, and is the story of Velma Martinez, also known as "Velveteen," a former child superheroine who just wants to be left the hell alone. It's deeply silly, but stealth serious at the same time.

Twenty years ago, the dead rose. This was a problem for a while...but we got over it, for the most part. In the post-Rising world, all the balances of power have changed, but some things are forever. Bloggers Shaun and Georgia Mason, and their friend Buffy, have been tapped to follow the Ryman campaign as he tries to become President of the United States. Then things get messy.

I tell people it's what you get when you cross Night of the Living Dead with The West Wing and Transmetropolitan. It's more political science fiction than straight horror. I'm very fond of it.

Because vampires got sexy.

Look: we always need a monster that's just a monster, and things are cyclic. Zombies are the fear of contagion, they're the fear of loss of self, they're the fear of blending back into the crowd. This is the age of the zombie, where they're the only thing we can kill without guilt, and where we're terrified of becoming them someday.

I tend to think that messing with history is a form of genocide, since the ripples will unwrite countless human lives. It's not cool. So I'd "accidentally" leave my gun in the time machine, and spend an afternoon hanging out with Vincent Price. Man was a god.