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A few of the guests, who had the misfortune of being too near the windows...
... were seized and feasted on at once.
-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
As some of you may have noticed, I have been participating in NaNoWriMo the last few days! Things have been hectic, as I have been trying to get ahead in my wordcount so that I can slack of (out of necessity) later on, so I can write some of my scholarly papers... Here is a wordcount widget indicating my progress!
At the time of writing, my wordcount is 25,563 words. Yes, I have just hit the midway point, 25k. On the fifth day. Yes, I have surprised even myself. And it's actually good-quality stuff! .... well, in my subjective opinion, I have improved my writing style over the last two Novembers. :)
I have been inspired by several prime sources: "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks (an excellent source for anybody wishing to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse, and also an excellent source of information and inspiration for my characters and what they're facing) and "Good Omens", by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (an excellent source of awesomeness on the subject of the upcoming religious apocalypse). And okay, maybe I was kind of sort of inspired by those Thriller dancers, last week. Or maybe they just set me on the right mental path.
I've been sort of planning my novel for the last two weeks of October, but I began to run out of time and I was dissatisfied with the plot... until I suddenly thought, well, HEY why don't I make these rebels (without a clear idea of what they're rebelling against) people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse instead? And instead of making my main character a nameless... thing... that can possess people, why don't I make him/her/it an angel? (And yes, I suddenly developed a bit of a religious tone in some places, but it's all for the greater good! ... I also surprised myself by making a bible reference, too. Crazy).
Here is the summary of my novel (as seen on my nanowrimo profile page):
Zombies have overrun much of continental Europe... and Heaven sends down Raphael, archangel of Healing (among other things) to deal with this "virus" when He really should have sent Michael (archangel of, well, pwning AKA devine retribution). Raphael copes. (i.e., gets his metaphorical and literal hands dirty)
The current person that Raphael is possessing (as angels can't walk around without some sort of flesh) is that of Toby, a seven-year-old (maybe nine-year-old?) British boy... which gets all the more awesome when Michael is, eventually, sent down to help Raphael out... and although Michael has all of these perceptions of Raphael as being a pacifist who couldn't hold his own in a battle against a lamb... discovers, to his horror, that Raphael (in the body of this child) actually knows how to dispatch with zombies better that Michael does himself. (Raphael has spent fifteen years in Europe prior to possessing the boy, in another body, and so knows how to deal with zombies so that he can survive and continue to do God's work). Awesomeness ensues. :3
Also, stuff with Raphael's previous (female) body come up as well, as Raphael wants to help the previous doctor he'd been working with, Emmanuel... and Emmanuel is still heartbroken that the woman he loved (Raphael's previous body, a doctor ironically named Florence) was killed before he could tell her he loved her. (Raphael did not and does not understand these feelings, although he loves all of god's creations (except zombies) because he is an angel.) ...And there is a lot more to that plotline than that, but I will say no further here. Yet.
Here's a free preview for you guys! This is from approximately page 37 as of my manuscript at the moment.
"Once a zombie senses you, it lets out a long, mournful groan, which is probably intended on making the prey freeze in fear and thus be more easy to catch (zombies are quite slow, if you will recall), but has the added effect of attracting any zombie in the area to the source of the groan. One zombie can easily attract an entire hoard of a dozen or even more in mere minutes – just when you think that you have escaped one, you will find that in fact, you have run into an entire nest… and then you must fight your way out or you are gone. It has happened to Florence and I before. It was one of the single most terrifying experiences I have ever gone through.
A painting of Archangel Raphael by an artist who did a series of abstract painings of archangels.
(and oh god I have seen so much religious art in the last week during the course of my research on the characters of Michael and Raphael... Some of it good, a lot of it bad. But I really love the subtety of the above painting - because angels aren't just men with wings - they are impressions, actions, and light.)
-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
As some of you may have noticed, I have been participating in NaNoWriMo the last few days! Things have been hectic, as I have been trying to get ahead in my wordcount so that I can slack of (out of necessity) later on, so I can write some of my scholarly papers... Here is a wordcount widget indicating my progress!
At the time of writing, my wordcount is 25,563 words. Yes, I have just hit the midway point, 25k. On the fifth day. Yes, I have surprised even myself. And it's actually good-quality stuff! .... well, in my subjective opinion, I have improved my writing style over the last two Novembers. :)
I have been inspired by several prime sources: "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks (an excellent source for anybody wishing to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse, and also an excellent source of information and inspiration for my characters and what they're facing) and "Good Omens", by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (an excellent source of awesomeness on the subject of the upcoming religious apocalypse). And okay, maybe I was kind of sort of inspired by those Thriller dancers, last week. Or maybe they just set me on the right mental path.
I've been sort of planning my novel for the last two weeks of October, but I began to run out of time and I was dissatisfied with the plot... until I suddenly thought, well, HEY why don't I make these rebels (without a clear idea of what they're rebelling against) people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse instead? And instead of making my main character a nameless... thing... that can possess people, why don't I make him/her/it an angel? (And yes, I suddenly developed a bit of a religious tone in some places, but it's all for the greater good! ... I also surprised myself by making a bible reference, too. Crazy).
Here is the summary of my novel (as seen on my nanowrimo profile page):
Zombies have overrun much of continental Europe... and Heaven sends down Raphael, archangel of Healing (among other things) to deal with this "virus" when He really should have sent Michael (archangel of, well, pwning AKA devine retribution). Raphael copes. (i.e., gets his metaphorical and literal hands dirty)
The current person that Raphael is possessing (as angels can't walk around without some sort of flesh) is that of Toby, a seven-year-old (maybe nine-year-old?) British boy... which gets all the more awesome when Michael is, eventually, sent down to help Raphael out... and although Michael has all of these perceptions of Raphael as being a pacifist who couldn't hold his own in a battle against a lamb... discovers, to his horror, that Raphael (in the body of this child) actually knows how to dispatch with zombies better that Michael does himself. (Raphael has spent fifteen years in Europe prior to possessing the boy, in another body, and so knows how to deal with zombies so that he can survive and continue to do God's work). Awesomeness ensues. :3
Also, stuff with Raphael's previous (female) body come up as well, as Raphael wants to help the previous doctor he'd been working with, Emmanuel... and Emmanuel is still heartbroken that the woman he loved (Raphael's previous body, a doctor ironically named Florence) was killed before he could tell her he loved her. (Raphael did not and does not understand these feelings, although he loves all of god's creations (except zombies) because he is an angel.) ...And there is a lot more to that plotline than that, but I will say no further here. Yet.
Here's a free preview for you guys! This is from approximately page 37 as of my manuscript at the moment.
"Once a zombie senses you, it lets out a long, mournful groan, which is probably intended on making the prey freeze in fear and thus be more easy to catch (zombies are quite slow, if you will recall), but has the added effect of attracting any zombie in the area to the source of the groan. One zombie can easily attract an entire hoard of a dozen or even more in mere minutes – just when you think that you have escaped one, you will find that in fact, you have run into an entire nest… and then you must fight your way out or you are gone. It has happened to Florence and I before. It was one of the single most terrifying experiences I have ever gone through.
(Except witnessing the Fall: nothing can compare to the despair of that moment, of realizing that the concept of Change exists, that even the most shining and bright of us can err so much that they can lose God’s trust and God’s love and be cast aside to a place of Darkness… but even then, in the darkest hour of Heaven’s history, I, personally, had been assured of God’s love and my own continued existence. Staring into the gaping and filthy maw of an incoming zombie (or several of them), one has no such assurances)."
A painting of Archangel Raphael by an artist who did a series of abstract painings of archangels.
(and oh god I have seen so much religious art in the last week during the course of my research on the characters of Michael and Raphael... Some of it good, a lot of it bad. But I really love the subtety of the above painting - because angels aren't just men with wings - they are impressions, actions, and light.)