New Zombie Story

I’ve been working on a new zombie story. It’s for the imprint of Booktrope I belong to, Forsaken, and it will be an ePenny Dreadful. If you don’t know what a Penny Dreadful is, it’s a short, cheap story—cheap in price, not content. This one will be electronic, shorter than 100 pages, and probably 99 cents—I’m not exactly sure of the price.

I actually started this story back in 2010 but never finished it. When I found it a few weeks ago on my thumb drive, I read through it and thought, Hey! This isn’t that bad. I can work with this. So I started edits.

It’s not terrible, but it’s not stellar either. I feel meh about the story. I can make it work, though. It’s just going to take a little time. I’m always the worst critic of my work, but I seriously hope it turns out all right.

I think my biggest problem with it is that it’s so short. I stopped writing short stories and novellas a while ago because I didn’t like being constrained by length. I want to be able to take as long as I need to develop my characters and tell my story. But I’m viewing this as a challenge.

On an amused note, it was fun to see how things had changed over the last 5 years. When I was writing this story, we still had flip phones, and they make an appearance in the text. I was chuckling as I read this. Flip phones! I can’t even remember the last time I owned a flip phone. Probably 2010.

I know, I know. There are people in the world who still own these. I have a few in my family. But every time they pull them out, I have to refrain from laughing.

Remember trying to text on those things? It was the most painful process ever! You had to hit the keys multiple times to get the letter you wanted, and you had to hope you didn’t hit it one too many times! My, we have come such a long way.

Although, I have to say that I miss my phone with the QWERTY board. I was so fast on that thing. Took me no time at all to send a text.

But I digress.

At first I thought I would take the flip phones out because they date the story, but then I left them in—because they date the story! They may seem silly to us now, but back then, it was completely normal.

I don’t have a title for the story yet, and I dread coming up with one. Titles are such a source of stress for me. Maybe I should just call it Bane of My Existence.