A World On Fire – A Zombie Blog

It’s pretty hard to believe I’ve been working on this series of books on and off for the last three years. Only a few months after my daughter was born, I started the first draft of the first book. Now, she’s running around, talking a storm, and we’re already investigating some schools for her. And yet, the project continues. The first half of the first book is pretty polished. Even though I have plans to rewrite some small sections, I believe it is production quality. The second half … not so much. The problem isn’t actually writing, but rewriting. It’s a long process. I reached a scene a few weeks ago and realized I was missing key information about one of the characters. … Read entire article »

Here’s the second installment of the A World on Fire series. Quick synopsis of this section – Allison wakes from a horrible dream where she learns of a new truth, she realizes that living can be more painful than dying . Thanks again for everyone who has been so supportive of this site. In time, I’ll be adding a dedicated page to house all of the A World on Fire updates, but for now, I’m linking them all at the bottom of the post. I’m trying to release a new section each Monday and once I complete an entire chapter, I’ll combine all the sections into a full length chapter download. … Read entire article »

At long last indeed, I’m proud to announce that the very first part from a very long line of parts for the “A World on Fire” series is now released and available to download at your leisure. This first book titled Rage tells of the downfall of humanity and how a small group of survivors manages to claw their way from the ruins of Boston. With the world on fire and everything they know burning around them, the small group travels the post-apocalyptic landscape in hopes of finding an answert to the zombie apocalypse. Each week, I’ll be releasing new recorded parts of the book for free download in an mp3 format. Feel free to listen and distribute to your friends. Just note, I tried my best … Read entire article »

For those of you new to the site, A World on Fire is an upcoming series of books that depicts the fall of humanity from the rise of the dead. The books follow a sixteen year old boy through a zombie apocalypse as he struggles to become a man in the new American wasteland. While zombies are the catalyst for the story, the book isn’t so much a horror story nor is it a survivalist’s tale. It’s actually a modern day adventure story. We follow Randell’s escape as both zombies and the military rain down hell on the unlucky survivors. We follow him through a new wasteland, accidentally taking refuge in a mall filled with cannibals. We follow him through the dead streets of … Read entire article »

At long last, I managed to finish the first draft today of A World on Fire: Rage. The entire book landed at 302 pages for a total of ninety six thousand words. That’s two pages longer than my target goal and four thousand words short of being a lethal weapon in some states. The good news is that the page count is going to decrease hopefully by fifty pages with – believe it or not – another chapter being added. The bad news is that the hard work is just starting. I find rewriting to be an extremely painful process like having doctors operate on your pinky by going through a nostril. … Read entire article »

Who would have thought that after hundreds of written pages and thousands of typed words that at long last I would finally bump into the soul of the book. It took a lot of digging, but the other day, when I closed my eyes and watched one of the later scenes play out in front of me, I hit pay dirt. I discovered the over reaching theme that touches every aspect in the book. That is: Pain is the awareness of life. … Read entire article »

It’s been a long time coming, but at last, I can finally see the end of the road. With only one chapter left and thirty or so pages left to write, it appears that the production of the first book is coming to an end. It’s a strange elation of sorts. I’m happy to be reaching the end point, but I also realize that the real work is about to begin. The revision process. The lovely painful revision process which feels as pleasant as running coarse sandpaper across the skin. I’m not a fan of it, but in my years knocking out pages, I’ve come to learn the old adage that writing is really just rewriting. No one gets it right the … Read entire article »

Sometime last fall, I decided to reread everything that I had written. The first forty pages were to my liking. Sure, they needed to be tweaked, but the bones were sound. Come page forty one, the entire story died a slow protracted death. It took sheer will to finish reading my first draft. Continuing to write it was futile since everything behind me was going to be drastically rewritten, so I rebooted the entire book. Starting from page one, I evaluated every single page, cutting out massive sections of the story and adding one major new thing to the draft … running zombies. Let me state for the record that I am an old school Romero fan and I have been very slow … Read entire article »

Zombie apocalypses come and go. How many times have we seen the world savagely torn to pieces by zombies in a books and films, only to reconstitute itself in another work, then be torn apart once again. During each zombie apocalypse, the author of the work has a key question to answer: have the inhabitants of the imaginary world ever heard of zombies? For instance, in the movie Dawn of the Dead, are there such things as zombie movies? Does the word zombie exist outside voodoo lore? This is very important since it leads it influences the language of characters. If there are no zombies, can one be said to walking like a zombie having just woken up? I find the idea of colloquialisms (and … Read entire article »

In writing any story, the name of the work is a crucial piece. The best names illuminate the contours of the theme while giving light to both plot and character. Often times, when I am hacking out stories, I will have no idea of the piece’s name. When the name doesn’t come after several rewrites, I know I am still looking for the soul of the work I wrote around a hundred pages of A World on Fire before I found the title of this series. I’m not sure how it came to me, but one day, all my documents were stored in the “untitled book” folder, and the next day, it became “A World on Fire”. It’s important to note that it isn’t “The … Read entire article »

Believe it or not, I thought I’d be done by now. With the start of this month, I will have been writing this series for a good two years. To date, I have written somewhere between four hundred and five hundred pages for a book that is supposed to land somewhere between two hundred to two fifty. As you can see, I have a whole lot of editing to do. The reboot gave me a lot of new material. We see the military try to contain the situation using the local law enforcement as their proxy. We experience Randell’s nightmares as he travels through a city that has not yet been taken over by the dead but is well on its way. We feel … Read entire article »

One of the hardest things with the writing of a realistic zombie book is dealing with psychological damage. All of my characters are suffering from loss of loved ones. I’m not talking distant cousins, but husbands and wives. Mothers and fathers. In reality, that sort of grief would almost as damaging as a broken leg. Imagine losing your whole family to the undead in one shot. You’d be fine so long as you kept moving, but once you found a location far from the hungry undead maws, the emotional release would overwhelming. Honestly, as a reader, the last thing I want to do is wade through a character’s grief. A prime example of grief overpowering story was Star Trek: Generations. Within … Read entire article »

2010 is going to be a big year for A World on Fire. In less than six months, you should start receiving weekly installments of the project that started out as an itch and has since consumed my life. I’ve talked about A World on Fire: Rage quite a bit in the past few months. I’ve even posted the first few pages to give you a glimpse of the project in its current state. If you like the book, my hope isn’t so much that you buy it, but rather, forward it to a person who will like it. To me, paying it forward is ten times the value of an actual check because the story will continue to grow as more people read it. … Read entire article »

For those of you who are new to the site (welcome, by the way), this site is called “A World on Fire” after a trilogy of books that I am writing about the rise of the dead, and the fall of humanity. These are not stand alone books. Each book is but a larger chapter in a larger story. Book two starts at the very end of book one. Book three starts a mere three days after the end of book two. Seemingly innocuous details in the first book have profound implications in the third book. Characters arcs are woven in complex patterns to illuminate the overall theme of an individual rising above the horror and nightmare and a finding balance between the living and … Read entire article »

The other day, after a pretty good writing session, I came to realization that the book is almost done. Yes, there is still plenty of work to do with four more chapters to be completed, but the majority of the heavy work has been completed. It’s a strange sensation. Happiness at being so close, but sadness for a journey coming to an end. My current dilemma today resides not near the end book, but rather at the beginning of it. I’d like to start each book with a quote that is applicable to the major theme undertaken. This book opened with a quote from Corinthians and the content of the quote suites the overall apocalyptic feel, but I’m afraid it gives the book too … Read entire article »