Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you.

I actually wrote my first zombie book way before I got the job on 'Saturday Night Live.

I think 'G.I. Joe' is a perfect example of how I'm the world's worst businessman. If I were smart, I'd be writing 'World War Z Part 12', but I have to go where the muse leads, and I've always been a huge 'G.I. Joe' fan. I always wanted to know more about these characters, these little plastic figures I played with as a kid.

They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.

During the Qin Dynasty, all books not relating to practical concerns such as agriculture or construction were ordered burned by the emperor to guard against "dangerous thought." Whether accounts of zombie attacks perished in the flames will never be known. This obscure section of a medical manuscript, preserved in the wall of an executed Chinese scholar, might be proof of such attacks.

I wrote 'The Zombie Survival Guide' because I wanted to read it, and nobody else was writing it. All I've been doing with everything I've written is answering questions that I had.

Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack.