Lesa’s Comments on How it All Started
In February of 2009, my brother, my two sons and I started a text-based role play game. My sons quickly dropped out, as there were no cool graphics, just . . . text. My brother, Matt, and I kept writing, working on a storyline that was set in a hospital in Lansing, Michigan. We each started with just one character. I had Keith and Matt had Eric.
Since our other co-writers had left the game, we knew that it was going to get boring fast unless we brought in more characters. I added Ernie while Matt brought in Jack, Autumn and Lindsey. I quickly commandeered Lindsey from him to even the numbers a bit.
As time went on and the story grew, I added the doctors and nurses while Matt introduced Snake and the other bikers. Eventually I added a couple bikers of my own, Wombat and Helga.
As we continued to write, we decided that it might be fun to put our story into book form, which was no easy task since the individual threads from the message board had to be interwoven to read smoothly. Once we had the story put together, we went back and added more to it. By this time we knew the characters well enough to do some writing for each other. There were times that we even lost track of who wrote which part. I often borrowed Matt’s bikers for a fight scene, since I love writing action. Matt, on the other hand, prefers to concentrate on the survival side of the story. Sometimes he would throw Keith or Doune into something he was writing. We always gave the character’s “owner” a chance to make changes, ensuring that everybody stayed in character. There were many times that I had to ask Matt to “Snakify” something for me.
As we continued fleshing the book out, it kept growing and we soon realized that it was going to be very long. We had heard that this wasn’t a good idea for a first book. At this point, we had three options. One possibility was to leave the book unfinished and state that it was part of a series, which I was dead set against for a few reasons. Our second option was to take some scenes out, sticking with the original framework and leaving us with just a single book. By this time we’d put almost three years into the writing, research and editing while still working our day jobs. Our families were more than ready for us to be done with the project. While we were also ready for a break, we were not ready to give up the little zombie world we’d created. This led us to our third option. We decided to take out the last few chapters and end the book at a different point. We would save the other chapters for a possible second book, assuming there was enough interest. We had to do a lot of rewriting to tie up as many loose ends as we could, and this was much more difficult than we had expected. There were a few issues that couldn’t be completely resolved, as they would play a part in the next book if we decided to go through with writing it.
Once the book was finally done and we’d had a day or two to rest, we knew we had to write the sequel.
To those who have read the first book, thank you for your time. If you liked it, we’re thrilled. We had no idea how the book would do and we’ve been very pleased with the response so far. If you didn’t like it, we still want to thank you for taking the time to read it. This isn’t a book for everybody and we understand that. For those who have left a review, we really appreciate it, along with the constructive criticism.
Dead, but Not for Long 