New Book in the Works

With a book finished another one is ready to take off.  I very rarely have much down time between projects, always have at least one story brewing while working on another. For months I’ve been toying around with an idea, it actually began a few years ago when I wrote “Rapture”.  Rapture was on the surface a basic Zombie Apocalypse tale. But once finished it just never seemed DONE. There was more to the story I knew.  The characters had somehow gotten their hooks in me and I knew there was more to their story than I had been able to capture in a single book. I thought at first it simply needed a rewrite, you know the second draft where you add and remove scenes, deepen character backstory, etc. But I realized very quickly it needed more. I needed to see how the disease began and not just the middle of the story where people were running for their lives. I realized it was no longer about zombies, but instead about the men and women struggling to survive in a world gone mad.  The question became “who were they and how had they gotten where they were and how would it all end”. That was the birth of “Revelations” the book I am currently preparing to write. It will fill in the back story of how the V came to the US, how it started and who were the people on the front lines before it spilled over to destroy the lives in “Rapture”. There is a lot of excitement for me, not only do I get to return to a scenario that fascinated me, I get to reacquaint myself with two of the protagonists, I get to fall back in love with them, get to take their relationship deeper than I was able to.

As of this date I haven’t yet put fingers to keyboard on the new manuscript, I’m still at the research stage. Each story has some research involved, some more than others, and this one ranks up pretty high since I’m creating a pandemic that plans to wipe out the world. There are things as basic as setting locales, making sure I have proper weather patterns in parts of the US and abroad, there have also been very long hours on the CDC website trying to work out their operating patterns for outbreaks of unknown origin. This research of course led to research about the military units that would be assigned to assist in these situations, which led me down even more roads. In the past week I’ve research Death Cults in Mesoamerican culture, Amazon weather patterns, fauna and flora, Brazilian Military, Army Special Forces units, Military ranking and address, CDC departments, CDC procedures, protozoa’s, bacteria, viruses, parasites and malaria. I’ve also made in depth character profiles for my main protagonists. I still have a few more things to research (military weapons, slang, etc.), a few emails to the CDC to send (fingers crossed they respond) and more setting profiles to create.  This is the fun part of writing, the wonder and excitement of learning new things, discovering new worlds.  Next comes the plotting and then…THEN is the hard part, the getting yourself behind the keyboard every day, rain or shine, healthy or sick, inspired or not, and WRITING.

I love EVERY minute of it. The hard work and the play. I’m really excited about this one, really excited to share the journey with you.

I’ll write soon,

L