#thefirst20

As promised, here are the first twenty pages of Part One in my current project. Note this is the first rough draft, so forgive any grammatical, stylistic, or flow errors. I'll be revisiting all of this on down the road when the book is nearing completion.

The Procyon Strain: Book Two Excerpt

on writing (IV)

This evening I finished Part One (of Seven) in The Procyon Strain: Book Two. The book is running at just under 100 pages at the moment, and at this rate will come in around 450 pages. I've shortened the prologue, eliminating a lot of original material in order to launch the reader into the main story at a quicker pace. As the sequel to The Procyon Strain: Book One, Book 2 picks up where the first book left off: on the verge of the national (and global) zombie outbreak. Whereas Book One is predominantly character-driven, with bits of actions peppered into the narrative here-and-there, Book Two is predominantly story-driven and chocked full of action. It's a different breed of writing than its predecessor, but that's what I'm wanting: I would like each book in the series to be significantly different than all the others so that each is unique and memorable in its own right. 

Book Two encompasses the first three days of the zombie apocalypse. According to a handful of scientists and mathematicians, a zombie plague in the look and feel of Romero could demolish society's infrastructure within 72 hours; with that in the background, Book 2 follows the main character through those 72 hours, beginning with an outbreak in downtown Cincinnati and climaxing with the nation's infrastructure collapsing. The book itself is slated to be divided into seven "parts" (think of them as "Acts" or long-ass chapters). The entirety of Part One takes place downtown, between Fountain Square and Liberty Avenue, and it contains a lot of what zombie fanatics like: mayhem and pandemonium. The first twenty pages of Part One will be posted on here tomorrow; you can read it, you can skip it, you can love it, you can hate it. It doesn't matter to me. I write to have fun, not to make money; if that weren't the case, I would be the epitome of failure. A disclaimer is always a good thing to have to soften the blow to your pride.

[Easter Sunday]

I am guilty, ashamed of what I've done, what I've become.

These hands are dirty. I dare not lift them up the Holy One.

You plead my cause. You right my wrongs.

You break my chains. You overcome.

You gave Your life to give me mine.

You say that I am free. How can it be?

I've been hiding, afraid I've let you down.

Inside I doubt that You still love me.

But in Your eyes there's only grace now.

Though I fall, You can make me new.

From this death I will rise with You.

Oh the grace reaching out to me!

How can it be? How can it be?

#downwiththesickness

The stomach flu sucks. I’ve got a pretty decent immune system (I attribute it to eating dirt and drinking dirty stream water as a kid), and I only get really sick about once a year. Maybe that’s why debilitating sicknesses feel so life-threatening. Sunday night (when it all went down), I remember being bent over the grass in Blake’s front yard, spewing my guts out, and then collapsing in the grass and just lying there shaking and staring up into the clouds. 

I feared someone would have to call 9-1-1. 

It just felt so scary. 

I never did care for vomiting. 

This is how it went down: I started feeling nauseous when Ashley and I got back to her place from picking up the girls in Lexington. I attributed it to a combination of too much fiber and too little food; subsequent trips to the toilet, sitting there and squeezing and clutching onto the sink counter with white-knuckled fingers, assured this attribution. I felt fine driving to Blake’s for the season finale of The Walking Dead, but video games made me feel sick to my stomach. The onset of diarrhea, coupled with involuntary spasms and spewing fiber bars all over Blake’s lawn, led me to the conclusion that I was, indeed, sick (and not just suffering from too much fiber, though I don’t that helped). I knew I couldn’t make it home without having to pull over on the side of the road, so I sped to Ashley’s. By the time I pulled into the driveway, I looked pale as a ghost, couldn’t stop shaking, could hardly walk, and felt pain all over. She knew what I was thinking, could read it in my eyes, and she said, “Anth, you’re fine, you’re just sick. You’re not dying.” I couldn’t keep warm all night long, and I couldn’t stay hydrated, either. Monday is remembered as a mere blur: lots of sleep, Ashley telling me to eat crackers and shoving Sprite down my gullet, and then Amanda showing up somewhere in the mix and thrusting a banana down my throat. “He won’t resist if you get him when he’s asleep,” she said. I felt a little bit stronger Tuesday, but two slices of pizza from a restaurant in Kentucky soured my stomach. I felt sick much of the day Wednesday, and Thursday morning I recommenced vomiting. Most of Thursday was spent passed out in bed, the hours passing in a dream-like state. The end of the sickness didn’t come until Saturday morning: a one-hour poop in the dead of night that literally raised the water in the porcelain bowl by about 2-3 inches. Seriously, it was FILLED. UP. I sat there at 3 AM thinking, “It’s so amazing how much I’m releasing, I’m not even mad it’s keeping me up!” I was bummed that I left my book in the main room; this wasn’t the sort of poop you could waddle away from in safety. 

{pictures}

front porch reptile lessons!

Amanda entertains the girls as I slumber

thug-life: nature

April Fool's Day

I'm writing this from Mom & Dad's house.
They're in New York City for the week, and I'm dog-sitting.
I'm looking forward to adventures in the park, Netflix, and lots of reading.
Oh: and I want to get a decent amount of writing done, too.

Adventures in the park are dependent on the weather. March started rather hopeful, with warm temperatures in the fifties and sixties. We're on the cusp of spring, and I couldn't be happier: after this winter's gauntlet of snow- and ice-storms, I'm ready for the trees to come into bloom and the grass to green. March has merely been a temptress, as the cold weather has returned. Ashley and I had a camping trip for Red River Gorge planned for last week, but the cold weather put a nix on that. I'm hoping Ohio will wise up and get its ass in gear. With sixty degree temperatures today, maybe such wishful thinking isn't the equivalent of a shot out of the dark.

The end of the month wraps up my journey through a variety of materials on the Great War: histories, memoirs, novels, atlases, pictorial guides, I devoured it all. Next up on my tramping through history is World War Two, but I'm taking a break from nonfiction and indulging my appetite for adventure, mystery, and suspense through the written word. My "Reading Queue" for April includes works of fiction by Stephen King, Michael Crichton, and Justin Cronin (and maybe a few oddballs here-and-there). Oh, and of course I'm still plodding through N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God.

In other news, did you know one of Obama's Secret Service agents is a shape-shifting Reptilian alien? Most people don't know this, but the United States Government is conniving with Reptilian aliens, giving them sanction in vast underground cities scattered throughout the western states. We give them shelter (their planet went face-down a long time ago), and they return the favor by giving us technology. We garnished their attention with the nuclear bomb, which told them we had become an advanced species. Unfortunately, the United States government is merely a pawn for these aliens, a chess piece in their game for global (and cosmic) domination. Obama's socialist leaning is a tool to create a One World Government, which will open the door for the Reptilians to take over without mass destruction of the planet. This little video below is but one piece of the conspiracy: because of Obama's role in the long-term plans of the Reptilian race, they're intent on protecting him, even to the point of putting a few Reptilian staffers on his Secret Service detail!