36 Hours Revision, IV

I'm sitting in my aunt's kitchen and the cocker spaniel is staring at me. I think he wants to go outside. Vacation is nice. Anyways, I've finally finished the revision of "36 Hours", the novel I wrote in 2004. I'm still not in love with it as I would like to be, but I'm content with where it's at now. It's wholly better than the 2004 original (if it weren't, then the last six years of honing my writing skills have been for naught). I may not write anymore fiction for a while. I'm still trying to decide (my current project regarding repentance is consuming my mind at the moment). Here is the "introduction" to the book given on one of the most popular zombie-fiction websites:

Good news! My 2004 novel “36 Hours” has finally been re:published after a long several months of editing, revising, adding and deleting. Thanks to my own discontentment with the original, and to the numerous critiques of readers, I decided to slightly revise “36 Hours”, and that “slight revision” evolved into a full-scale rewrite. All in all, the novel is significantly longer. The original ran 328 pages; the newly-revised edition clocks out at 458 pages (130 more pages of text). For those of you wanting to know more about the revision, read on!

If you enjoyed the original, I am confident you’ll love this one. If you didn’t like the original, I invite you to take a second stab at it (and I confess that the criticisms I received about the writing of the original were from the heart and spot-on at times). Because of Lulu’s pricing packages, and because of the longer page-count, a paperback purchase is $24.00 (plus shipping and handling) from the link below. BUT it is available as a free PDF download, and it will be for quite some time (in the future I may raise it to $2.00, so if you’re interested in reading it in the future, download it quickly!). I loved writing this book (both in 2004 and six years later), and I hope any of you who decide to read it will enjoy it also. I hope it will be a good contribution to the growing library of zombie genre.

Now to the changes made. First, I’ve changed the font size and margin width (the font size is smaller than in the original, and the width is larger, helping to keep the page count down). I’ve also changed the font type from Arial to Palatino Linotype. The perspective, originally 1st-person, is now 3rd person; I did this because I am more comfortable with 3rd person, and 3rd person deals with some of the weak characterization thanks to my poor use of 1st person. The entire script is rewritten. Paragraphs are reformatted, dialogue is revised, there is more focus on characterization. I have strengthened the fluidity of movement (one of the biggest concerns was that my writing style jumped around a lot, a concern that was well-grounded). I’ve also made basic editorial changes. More scenes have been added. Each chapter of the book represents a single hour in the 36-hour time-line of the story. In the original (and, in a similar way, in the second edition) the chapters are lumped together in different sections: the first twelve hours, the second twelve hours, etc. The length of the third twelve hours in the original was only 35-50 pages, and this is because I got lazy and just wanted to finish the story. Most of the new scenes take place in the last twelve hours (several chapters were condensed into one to make room for two brand-new chapters with more adventures). The biggest change of all (and I wrestled with this change for quite some time before finally giving in to the urge) is the addition of a parallel story.

The original novel was told in past tense, and the main storyline in the second edition is still in past tense. The parallel story, which is much shorter and inserted between different sections of the main storyline, takes place in the present, and it is told in present tense. It takes place around twenty years following the events of the main story. This allows me to fill up some missing gaps, clear up some cliff-hangers, add more suspense, and really deal with some of the major plot issues of the original story (such as the rapid expansion of the disease’s outbreak). The parallel story runs about 40 pages long. It’s been extraordinarily fun writing these scenes, because I got to look at what the world would be like (not least politically) twenty years after the global near-decimation from a zombie plague.

If you’re interested in reading the revised edition, just go to the link below. You can either purchase a paperback copy or download the novel as a free PDF document (but for a limited time only!).

Read "36 Hours: the 2nd Edition" here!