The start of a new novel

I haven’t posted for a while…anyone miss me?

I started work on the 3rd zombie novel in what I want to pitch as a series (so, if anyone knows a decent publisher other than Gold Eagle for a horror/action series, I’d really like to know), and rather than do it full-out as a NaNoWriMo thing, I’m just going to write 1000 words a day until it’s done. I see it as about 75K, but since the plot outline is purposefully sketchy, it could be longer or shorter. Hard to say, really, since I’m only 2000 words in.

Unlike the other two novels, which were written as ensemble pieces, this one is being written from the perspective of a 20-ish woman who has been fairly isolated and sheltered since civilization fell and has to go through the process of learning not only how to be self-reliant after being taken care of by other people for the last 6 years or longer, I don’t have her background pre-zombie written up yet. I can tell I’m not going to like her at first, since I tend to have little patience for characters who can’t “rise to the occasion”. Most of my protagonists are capable people who have to overcome internal doubts and fears as they struggle to figure out how to survive, or are reluctant heroes whose struggle is to give up what they have for The Hero’s Journey.

Helen is going to be whiny, self-pitying, and clingy, and her journey is become a separate person who can stand on her own.

The plot will have her meeting up with the characters from the other two novels and seeing them as someone new, rather than someone who has been with them, so it will also give me a way to re-examine what I want as a long-term plan for the novel series character-wise. I’m also going to start planting plot points that wont’ pay off until later books, which is one of the things I like about series novels.

On top of all of that, I’m going to keep in with the social observation buried as horror plot like Romero did in “Dawn”, “Day” and “Land” of the dead, since that’s what draws me to the genre in the first place.

I need to finish posting the NaNo novel I did from last year as well. It’s all done, and went around 65K, but I quit putting it in the LJ I set up for it when I got behind in the writing in November. I’m wondering if I should post this one as well, or just e-mail to a few people so they can give me feedback. I’ll let You, constant reader, decide.

I also watched “Silent Movie” by Mel Brooks for the first time last night…and anyone who says it is a “satire” of silent movies doesn’t know the definition of satire. Most of the gags were just old Silent Movie gags that had been done by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chase or Harold Lloyd, and the few that were new were just bits he’d done in previous movies without sound. It was funny, and it had the wonderful spirit of an old Mack Sennet silent, but it wasn’t a satire like “Blazing Saddles” or :”Young Frankenstein” was.

There, I think that’s a scattered enough update. I could go on about the odd conversation I had with a cute blonde at the coffee house, but it’s just another reminder that since I’ve re-opened myself up to being a weirdness magnet, the odd experiences are starting to slowly come back.