That Zombie Thing, or Day 12

I ought to be writing, but the truth is that I'm so damn exhausted that I need a break, even if it's a short one.

The last time I posted almost two weeks ago, I said that my vampire-and-alien novel Undead and Inhuman was on the verge of collapse.  And it did.  I was a little sad by that because it was a concept that I really liked, but I gave my reasons for stopping it, and it's ultimately better to stop a struggling story sooner rather than later.

But in the wake of Undead and Inhuman, I've resurrected my desire to write a zombie book.  This was originally going to be the online project, but then I just transferred it over to the book.  There's also another zombie project I'm planning to do, but it just started coming to mind this week and I'm not really ready to talk about it.

At the moment, the novel doesn't have a title.  I've just taken to calling it Zombies, but I know I'll have to come up with something catchier later on.  It's set in a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains and focuses on the townspeople trying to cope with the zombie apocalypse, which I think is a nice shift back to the Romero-style stories of characters barricaded in one location rather than a Cormac McCarthy-type road trip in search of a safe haven.  Not that there's anything wrong with those road stories; it's just a bit refreshing to go a little more old school.

I would still like to make my July 30th deadline on the first draft, but I've been lagging behind on it and might have to keep going into August.  However, my progress had still been impressive.  I started the novel about a week ago, and I'm over a quarter of the way through it.  I don't remember how much time I spent doing research for it (there wasn't really that much to do), but the prep work in figuring out the town took just a few days.

All in all, it's been twelve days since starting the project, which brings me to another thing.  Notice that day counter in this post's title?  I'm going to commit to providing daily updates on how the book is coming along, whether there's been a mountain of progress or just a little trickle.  I've been feeling a little less self-conscious and shy about outing myself as a writer, and it's always fun, I think, to give a day-by-day account of how something is changing and evolving whether it's a book or a poem or a full-blown career.

Also, it'll help keep me sane, and at this point, I'll try just about anything to keep my head on my shoulders.