For a guy that never intended or wanted to write a novel I don’t really listen to myself very well. I just finished writing the last story for another long in the works book.
The zombie novel began a lot of years ago as a short story called The Delicate Sound of Rain. I wrote it and really became attached to the story and the idea of that world. I started to tinker with the idea of a book about zombies but, well, I never wanted to write a novel. Never. Never-ever. So I thought, well, I can cheat it, I can write a novel of short stories. Ha-HA! Genius! I slowly began writing stories for this world and started mapping it out in my mind. I had a protagonist that I immediately connected to and was excited to work on it.
Then I hit a wall.
The zombie boom began about then and I realized that there was no way I was going to finish this thing before the boom was over and this was still a time when self publishing was the worst thing in the literary world to ever do. I loved the concept just the same but I needed to let it go. At least for a while. I figured some day, when the boom is long over and I am ready I can get back to work on the book and see what I see. I put together the stories I had as a chapbook and sold those with some other chapbooks to serve as a stopgap between my first book, BACK FROM NOTHING, and any future book.
I was an optimist, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
The chapbook was fun but had horribly small print and while it intrigued people it never really wowed them. For some reason I’d tell people at comic shows that I wrote books and they’d be surprised to not see pictures in the books. Weird.
So 2012 comes and I realize that it’s time to start putting some projects to bed. I had let a couple long standing projects sit and wait for a time when the world cried out for these works and well, that day never came. But they deserved to be finished and released.
The big one was the novel, A SHADOW OVER EVER, which I had begun work on in 1994. I had written, edited, changed, edited, changed, and worked on and submitted it to publishers for years. Now that I could get things published on my own it was the right time to do it so I set about the task of getting the thing edited then fixing those edits and working to get it put together and out. It was a huge project and a huge book. And I love it.
I am not sure how well anyone else loves it but I love it. It represents a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of friends that have come and gone in my life during those many years.
With the novel done it was time to move my gaze to two other projects, one being the zombie novel. That book had sat around for years and years as I waited for the bubble to burst and it never did. Which isn’t to say people are not darn sick of the undead but, well, I don’t care.
So I got back to work on crafting a world of the living dead.
The ideas have changed, the world has changed, my main character has changed some, but at its heart I love what it is. I won’t say it’s groundbreaking or any nonsense like that but it’s different. It’s very different. And I like it.
I have a LOT of work to do. There’s still editing to work on and layout and story order and all that fun but man does it feel good to be done. To have it done.
The journey, so far as that story, is complete.
Will people like it? Like what it says and where it goes?
Not sure.
But I like it.
I like it a lot.
And that’s a heck of a start.
…c…
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 