Zombie City: Episode 4: first draft finished! & cover reveal

So, I've finally typed in the last word of the first draft of Zombie City: Episode 4. It's been a bit of a struggle to find the time and energy to work on it since starting the job I started back in January, but I'm riding high now that I've got a complete object to refine. It clocked in at just over 31K words, though I don't know what it'll be once I've finished editing it. My plan is to give it a quick preliminary polish--I know there are a couple of plot points that need to be put in line--and then send it through to my brother to get some feedback (he served as beta-reader for all of the previous episodes, and is a pretty insightful dude). I'm not sure when I'll have it ready for publication--I've gotten a bit fed up with myself for making predictions that turned to be pretty far off base--but hey, one step closer.

The offer I mentioned in previous blog posts is still on the table: sign up for my newsletter (by putting your email in the white box on the right) and I'll send you a coupon for a free copy of the story on Smashwords when I finally hit the publish button. If you're not signed up for Smashwords and don't want to sign up, let me know when you get that coupon email, and I'll find some way to send you a PDF. (The episode will go live on Amazon, but I won't be able to make it free there.)

Thanks!

Zombie City: Episode 4 UPDATE

Here's the bad news: it's the end of February, and ZC4 isn't finished.

But wait! There's good news too! Episode 4 is almost finished, like 80% of the way there. And it's got all kinds of crazy stuff in it: punks and hippies and bikers and squatters and inter-group conflicts and urinary catheters and nearly-naked women shooting people with shotguns and someone getting smashed/electrocuted/burned-to-death by a toppled light tower... and more!

Perhaps the best news of all is this: after having put ZC on the backburner last November because I didn't realize people were actually reading it, I've now managed to reconnect with the story and the main character. You see, for nearly two months I didn't write or re-read or even think about Zombie City--all of my creative energies were being put into other projects, primarily my murder-mystery Dry Shores--and I kind of fell out of touch with Shane and his world. In January, just a few days after discovering that Zombie City was developing an audience of its own, I began trying to write the next episode. But between starting a new job, and coming down with the flu, I didn't get much done. And what I did write took tremendous effort because I'd sort of fallen out of touch with the story.

Well, I'm back in the Zombie City groove now and I'm having a lot of fun brutalizing Shane and destroying San Francisco. My hope is that I'll be able to stay in the groove after finishing Episode 4 and move right into Episode 5, which I'm guessing will be the final act that wraps everything up.

The apology-offer I mentioned in my last blog post is still on the table: you can get a free copy of Episode 4 by signing up for my email list in the white box farther down on the right. Sorry, again, for taking so long to get ep4 out there, but I'm hoping you'll think it was worth the wait.

Where the hell is Zombie City: Episode 4?

Back in December I mentioned I hoped to have the fourth episode of Zombie City out by the end of this month. Well, the end of the month is here, but the fourth episode isn't. I'm still working on it, and have a long way to go before it's ready. Why so far behind schedule? Work and the flu, to put it plainly.

Anyway, I'm sorry I'm behind schedule, and I'm hoping that any readers waiting for Episode 4 won't hold it against me. At the risk of setting myself up for failure again, I'll offer a new tentative release date: I hope to have the fourth episode out by the end of February.

And to show my contrition is real, I'd like to make another offer: when the fourth episode is ready, you can have a copy of it for free. Sign up for my email list--see the white box farther down on the right side of this page--and when the episode goes live, I'll send out an email with a Smashwords coupon code for a free copy.

Sorry again about the delay.