Happy Howl-a-ween to those of you who celebrate such things. I’ll post costume pics later.

Two years ago on this night I embarked on a fantastic journey. I planned to write 60,000 words of a novel, tentatively title Zombie Zoo, during the month of November and “WIN” NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month]. It was my third attempt at a decent novel and I had this killer idea. What if an at-risk teen girl, one who might have said, “I hope you all die,” to her family, where to be one of the few survivors of a massive pandemic? I had the idea as early as 2009, I think, so it had been rattling around for a while. I had a list of 42 odd scenes and figured if I could write 30 of them at about 2000 words a scene I would have most of a book. And that’s pretty much what happened.

I hadn’t figured out the ending. So that took three attempts and another six months of stumbling in the dark to get right, but I knew at the end of November I had a winner. I ‘planned’ to publish it the following August [Oh, how brash are the ignorant.]. It didn’t make it out until January of 2014 and has undergone a significant round of editing since then. It has done quite well for a debut self-published novel: a couple awards, a decent amount of sales and average reviews of 4 out of 5 stars.

One year ago I started writing the sequel, STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS, and things did not go quite as well. I managed 35,000 words, but couldn’t seem to find my footing. So at the end of November I felt like I had about 20 great scenes that didn’t really hold together as a book. I continued working on it, adding another 25,000+ words, even as I marketed and published ALL IS SILENCE. In the last year I have also written 28,000+ words on a 25,000 word novella, a parallelequel to ALL IS SILENCE, called Toils and Snares. I still need a few scenes to call it a draft.

So, National Novel Writing Month this November I will be aiming to write 60,000+ words in the Deserted Lands Universe. See you in December. If you want to help motivate me, please consider becoming a fan of my Pubslush Crowdfunding Campaign for STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS.