Zombies and Books and Blogging, Oh My!

I have come to the conclusion that my brain is now inhabited by zombies. They stagger around in there all day and night, groaning about something or other, and rapidly devouring every idea which isn't related to them.

In an email of in-depth critique to fellow blogger and new online friend, Vera, I wrote the following:

Daisy raised the Desert Eagle with trembling hands, taking aim at her husband's forehead. No. Not her husband. The walking corpse across the lawn was NOT her husband. She squared her stance, both hands on the pistol to contain her shaking, and blinked back her tears. As he staggered towards her, she whispered through gritted teeth, "I love you," and pulled the trigger.

And I liked it. I liked it so much, in fact, I haven't been able to get poor Daisy out of my head for almost a week now. My mind is full of questions: How did her husband get infected? How did the zombies come to be? What is the world like? Where will she go from here? Can she find love in a zombie apocalypse? What happens next?

So I showed the little snippet to my fiancé. He, quite literally, bagan bouncing about on the couch, flailing, and shouted at me, "Where is the rest of this?! I wanna read this book! Write me the rest of this book!"

I, of course, grinned like an idiot in my pride that a little nonchalant example I'd written in a 5AM haze, had grabbed someone.

So I showed it to another friend, and another, and received similar reactions. Even when I explained that I'd like it to be a romance of some sort. I mentioned their reactions to Vera, and she too mentioned an interest in reading that book. Hell, I want to read that book.

Seeing as I want to read the book that is rapidly forming in my head, I figure I may as well write it. And maybe the book after it too. It seems to me that Daisy and her hero, whoever he might be, wouldn't be the only ones to find love in a destroyed world with zombies, slavers, and the like around every corner.

You see, I want to write zombies no one has ever seen before. Well, maybe someone has, but I certainly haven't. And you're not getting any details out of me today. I want to write about crazy religious extremists, slavers, biker gangs, military contingents, cults, terrified families, resilient children, badass old folks, and one frightened woman fighting to survive her grief and the world.

I spent the better part of the last two days writing down ideas. Zombie ideas. I tell you, they won't leave me alone. Most of my conversations, these last few days, have been about zombies. Thoughts on how they came to exist, how they function, who they should eat, who poor Daisy could meet along her journey to maybe falling in love again. And I liked every word I scribbled down; even my dinky little outline. Just yesterday I wrote more about a zombie apocalypse than I've managed to add to Sleeping Lady in two weeks. Now, I'm not going to abandon dear Abigail, but I'm definitely going to write this zombie book. I think I can handle concurrent works in progress.

While blogging and social networking sites have been thoroughly distracting me from working on Sleeping Lady, this may not be a bad thing. After all, I'm making about as much progress with Abigail's story in my head as on paper. And paying too much attention to blogging did, however inadvertently, give me the idea to write zombies. And I do love zombies.

Now I just need a working title for the zombie book. Any suggestions?

Muses and Movement

I wake up daily with the intention to write. Daily, I write down what I ate and how I feel in a composition book, I write posts on forums, emails, comments and things on Facebook, text messages, silly notes to my fiancé...

But I don't work on my story.

Perhaps I'm distracting myself with television, reading on my Kindle, surfing the net on my phone, etc... I don't deal well with silence. I'm not one of those people who needs absolute silence to create. In fact, my best work seems to be born in the midst of chaos, noise , and multitasking.

In high school and through my college courses I always studied and wrote papers and stories with music blaring or the television on and a billion instant messages pinging in the background. In all that chaos, I made art.

Now, it seems the television has grown interesting enough to distract me. The sounds of children playing, teenagers giggling as they walk past the paper thin walls of the glorified tin can that is my house, vehicles driving through the trailer park or pulling into my shared driveway, and the occasional earthquake or catfight are enough to cause me to leap out of my seat in the throes of a mild panic attack if I don't have the television streaming dribble into my living room to blame the sounds on. Blaring music just isn't enough. Even now the creaking doors of my neighbor's little green pickup just made me jump.

I suppose it doesn't help that silence doesn't seem to exist in my little trailer park near the airport. Of course, if it did, I'd likely start imagining sounds to frighten me and waste hours trying to find television programming or music capable of drowning out the scary sounds in my head.

Perhaps I've list the ability to focus through the chaos. Perhaps my story isn't interesting enough for me to push everything else to the background. Perhaps it's time I stop whining long enough to give my muse a chance to speak; maybe I'm drowning her out.

Welcome, Potential Someday Readers

So here's the plan. I'll write the novel, you'll read about the process (and perhaps read some snippets here too) here, then we'll see about some beta readers, make some editing, blurbs, and cover art happen, then publish to Kindle at least... If the novel turns out to be decent.

I'm brand new at this. I've never written anything more than a short story, but I have a mad love for words and my brain is just about bursting with ideas, so I figure it's time to start making a body of work. Maybe I'll come up with some short stories along the way to novel #1, but I tend to think in novel length and am much too addicted to extreme character development (Thank you, years of theatre) to be at all confident in my ability to write a whole story in a couple dozen pages.

The idea here is to take you, dear reader, along with me on the journey from wannabe to real deal... Or from zero to author... Something like that. I'll gladly accept suggestions for anything and everything here too.

As it stands I'm a whole 1500 words into what I think will turn into a paranormal romance set in the Alaskan bush with a working title of Sleeping Lady Story. I don't know if this will turn out to be a novella, a longer than average short story, a full length novel, or even a series or serial. I started it with no plan in mind whatsoever; not generally the brightest thing to do when one decides they'd like to write a novel, but the hero and heroine (at least their basic natures) popped into my head along with a rather pretty opening scene and I was overwhelmed with the need to write, so I jumped right in. So far, it's going incredibly slowly, but well when I can be bothered to write.

In any case, welcome to my mind! And thank you muchly for taking the time to read this.