JulNoWriMo 2014: Zombies Get their Unhappy Endings

Zombies! 

Most people know that I'm a realistic fiction writer most of the year. I'd rather have a box of chocolates and bouquet of roses for weapons than a sword and shield most of the time, despite the lack of real defensive properties of flowers and candies. There is one time every year that I hang my proverbial genre-niche hat and break out into another genre. I don't mind that the genre I write in is a very tiny subgenre. It's something different and that's all that matters. And that genre? Supernatural Horror. Because I write about Zombies.

As is very consistent with my normal writing, I am terrible at finishing things that I start. My zombie novels are no exception to this pattern. Of the three zombie novels (and one short story) that I've started, I have finished one of those things. The short story. This year, my goal is to finish at least two of those currently-in progress novels. And those are the two I want to ramble about for a few minutes here. 

Boarded-In: The Hell Academy Boarding School was never quite as it seemed: rules were broken constantly, people were worse behaved there than they ever were in public school, and not everyone came from the background they appeared to. But when eating flesh becomes the new fad in school, Rachel, Jake, and Carol realize they are really in for far more than they originally had bargained for.

Carney-Vores: Bucca Park is one of the nation’s biggest collections of rollercoasters and Mallory Skyy cannot keep herself away any longer. Despite a shocking ride-related fatality only a few weeks before her Spring Break trip to the park and many hushed secrets about the place, she drags her boyfriend to the park anyway. There’s more thrills than the attractions as they battle through this Zombie Park.

So, those are the two stories that I'm focusing on this Zombie July over on JulNoWriMo. Alongside my Camp NaNo novel SKY OF STARS, which is a traditional romance / chick lit within my normal series. Why these two novels? Well, the easiest reason / explanation is because they are the two oldest, so they should be the ones to be finished first, I think. But also, they're the two that are the most planned out and I have a pretty well-established plot for both of them. And then there's the cheating reason... That those two are both already over 10k, whereas my third unfinished zombie novel is sitting, currently, at a whopping 800 words. (It was a very sad realization that of the 9k I had written last summer in Zomb-Chicka-Bow-Wow, most had been lost.) Yeah. I don't know what else to include in this post. But Zombies! They will be had. :D

Carney-Vores, Quiet Winter Nights, and a General JulNo Update

I'm participating in the JulNoWriMo vlog again this year with Sundays being my standard day to post. If you're clever, you realize that's today.  Well, I filmed my vlog this morning at 6:15a when I first woke up and I completely forgot to mention anything about my own novel progress whatsoever.  Thus, a blog post about it to link in the video description was necessary.

I've been working more on Quiet Winter Nights in the Big City than I have been on Carney-Vores, simply because I hadn't planned nearly enough of Carney-Vores out when July hit and I'm still working out all of the kinks and the layout / setup of the park itself. It's hard to BS your way through a novel if you don't even have a setting established! Especially one that takes place in an amusement park; it's quite difficult to put them on rides when you're not sure what rides even exist in that section of the park... So, I spent almost three hours this morning working on building one of the seven sections [admittedly, one of the other sections is just the entrance portal, so that'll be all of thirty seconds to make: platform for the monorail from the parking structure, restrooms, first aid, information, food, drinks, and six staircases leading down into the six themed areas of the park].

I did take screen shots, however, which not only shows the layout of the area [it was the Horror section that I made, in case you're wondering], but also the descriptions and stats of the rides that are there. So, that's going to be helpful.  Once I put all of the images together, I plan on uploading them to my JulNo Drive Folder that I've been sharing with everyone.  That way everyone can see what I see!  Yay!

So, Carney-Vores has been stalled at the end of Chapter Two for most of the week until I plan out some more of the park. I'm thinking that I can have them go into the Horror Section for Chapter Three and Four, that way there is some progress on that novel this week, too.

Quiet Winter Nights... however, has been getting a lot of love, especially after my rewatch of Scrubs recently [QWN is set in a hospital]. It's already into chapter seven or eight, so that's awesome. I'm pretty happy with the way it's progressing, so yay! I added a lot more character images into LSB recently for my main characters, so that's actually starting to come together way nicer than it has been in the past. Time is just so hard to get for little stuff like that RE: details.

My word count as of right now is: 47,332 Words.  Definitely pleased with that!

Until next time,
--erin