Spurred on by my recent piece of writing (Night Of The Living Love, Actually), I’ve decided that I want to write a full-on zombie novel; without the mushy love story (I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know!). I want to write it differently though – it’s from the point of view of a girl living in the only zombie-free area in the world, and what happens when the barriers break and all the protective measures fall, and a group of zombie rights campaigners have to lead a group of people who are completely inexperienced at fighting and totally unprepared to battle zombies, in a war to save the world. All sounds very cheesy and lovely, right?
So, we have our main character, who starts off about as anti-zombie as you can get – a young American who’s managed to escape the virus ravaging the country, only to discover that the rest of the world isn’t doing too great either. She’s a blogger (I promise that’s where the similarities with me end!) and eventually discovers that she cares about the zombies and doesn’t want to fight them, but must if she wants herself – and her family – to survive.
I’m not going to divulge any more than that, because I plan on uploading it to fictionpress and posting it here for you all and I don’t want to spoil it, but if you see me jabbering on about zombies over the next few months, that’s why. I’ve already started my research – that is, I’ve read Max Brookes’ “Zombie Survival Guide” and have just started on “World War Z”, I watched some of “Dead Set” (I’m sure it would’ve been helpful if my novel was set in the Big Brother house, but alas, it isn’t) and I’m going to watch “28 Days Later” and many other zombie films, no doubt scaring myself silly in the process.
I don’t want my novel to be some ethical yarn about how even zombies have feelings and are human (no they don’t and no they’re not, otherwise they wouldn’t be zombies!) – I want it to scare the reader and make them see this as a potential future and think about what they’d do. I’m not saying I believe that in the future there will be zombies, but we’re already starting to see the outbreaks of a possible zombie apocalypse, what with the bath salts craze… I kid, honestly. Still, I don’t think there’s anything scarier than the psychological warfare some authors utilize so well, creating the impression that however supernatural and improbable, this could happen one day – or may even be starting to happen at this very minute.
In other news, my sleep pattern is still messed up but I’m hoping that existing on about an hour of sleep in the past 24+ hours will mean that I’ll fall asleep almost instantly tonight and get back into a routine. I’m going on holiday in 5 days, which is very exciting, and I’m 18 in 9 days, which is very very exciting! There’s free Wi-Fi in some areas so I’ll try to keep you all updated, but things are going to be sporadic. I have a big weekend ahead too – especially Saturday, where it seems things are a bit non-stop – but I promised I’d keep blogging regularly now that my exams are over, and that’s what I intend to do. Particularly now that I’ve started writing again, I can start blogging about what this was actually intended for – my writing! There’s also the good news that I’ve started reading for fun again – I was worried that studying English would ruin reading for me, and I don’t think my frayed relationship with Wuthering Heights will ever be repaired (sorry, Emily Bronte, but your ever-changing narrative perspective and use of dialect annoyed me, even more so when I had to analyze it, and it’s just not going to work out. It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s studying English A Level). However, I’ve started reading World War Z and can’t wait to read more once I’m all caught up on sleep, and after that I’m going to re-read one of my all-time favourite novels, “To Kill A Mockingbird”. That’s probably the only text I’ve studied that I haven’t ended up at least disliking, if not hating, and I think that’s because it’s written in a way that’s easy to relate to because we can remember those lazy childhood summers where the tiniest thing became the hugest adventure, and because I had a brilliant teacher who made the book come alive. Health-wise, things still aren’t great – now waiting on a specialist and a chest x-ray, which isn’t going to be fun – but it’s all progress in making me better, and if it means I’ll be able to do the half-marathon for BCH, I’m all for it.
the life of a moomin 