Sometimes Things Evolve

When I finish working on the scene I'm writing tonight, Dead Stop will cross the fifty thousand word threshold. It wasn't originally envisioned that way.

Dead Stop was originally envisioned to be a quick forty to fifty thousand word zombie novella about one night at a truckstop when the dead decide to drop in for a bite. The premise was extremely simple, kill a bunch of people in bloody fashion and see if the others could get out alive. But of course with me, nothing ever works out that simple. 

First the characters came alive. Then certain questions arose like...what if some of the characters were related to these zombies? Or, what if some people were just badly injured and had to be cared for? Then this weird sense of intellectual honesty demanded I go and research corpses, decomposition, and embalming so that I could make the most authentic zombies possible. And since the story is told from several characters points of view, they had to each have their own personality and 'story' so they would stand out. I've even looked up a couple of native Spanish speakers in order to make one of the waitresses a tad more authentic.

So now I'm at fifty thousand words and approximately sixty five to seventy percent through the story that wasn't supposed to be this long in the first place. 

But it's a rocking story...and it's going to get finished. It's just going to be a full novel when it's done.

It's premise is still the same. The time it covers is still the same...one night. It's just...

...evolved.

One day I will start a simple project and keep it that way. I will! Really! I hope...

And no, that isn't the final cover art. It's just a placeholder till I can either come up with something better or contract for it.