The End Of The World Is Nigh

I have decided to finally follow through on the recommendations of readers of my short story "Whimper" and develop it into a novel.

But I'm going to need your help.

My concept is, for a nominal donation, to include real-life people in the post-apocalyptic world of the novel.

The problem I have is that whenever I read a poorly written horror novel, the characters are usually one-dimensional stereotypes.
Caricatures of characters.

I figure as much as people enjoy entering contests to have themselves written into a comic book for a panel or two or would be thrilled to be invited to participate in The Walking Dead as a walk (or stagger) on character, it would be just as exciting or gratifying to see themselves written in as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world with other survivors.

Don't get me wrong.
I can write believable characters based on the characteristics of people I have known all day long.
But I figure why write in my friends when they probably wouldn't read or appreciate their inclusion in a novel-length work of post-apocalyptic fiction.
Instead I think it would be nice to offer the opportunity to people that don't have the time, patience or skill to write their own novels to be able to donate their way into immortality in what I hope will be the best piece of post-apocalyptic zombie fiction ever written.

The reason that I'm doing this is because I've read almost every widely-distributed work of zombie fiction and, in my opinion, none of them have ever gotten it right.
No one has ever really been able to capture the reality and nostalgia for the old world and sadness and beauty of a world where most of the world is dead, or not quite dead.
Even taking the zombie out of the equation, most post-apocalyptic literature and films haven't ever nailed it.
I'm a huge fan of zombie media, and post-apocalyptic media, and I know I am capable of producing a novel-length project integrating these themes, if not several novel-length stories.
Maybe I can even develop it into a series of books.

The reason I'm going the crowd-funding / crowd-sourcing route is because the last thing I want to do is follow through on writing the entire thing, on my own time, using my own resources, and then have to try to go door-to-door metaphorically speaking trying to find a publisher in a dying industry to give the finished book a read, much less a shot at being published.
There are whole imprints that have died off in recent years due to publishing horror novels based on quantity, instead of quality, and I'm not willing to strive for page-count over content.

Additionally, everyone involved will be able to see the novel as it develops.
I will post pages, and chapters, for review and consideration on this blog as it develops.
So as the novel is built like a bridge into the abyss, it will work as a serial, where new chapters will be available as they're completed, and if I'm doing it wrong, which I'm fairly certain I won't, the audience will be able to comment.
That being said, this isn't going to be a democratic process and people will not be able to vote on who lives and who dies and what happens to whom and when and where.
You will have to trust in my omniscience and omnipotence as the principal director to know where the story is going and what my plan is for the characters as they arrive and depart, and live and die, and love and kill.

As I said in a comment from my Facebook: "I'm working on a plan to crowd-fund a novel-length expansion of a short story I wrote about the end of the world in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. If you want to read more, like and comment, and I'll PM you the details as it shapes up. I can't promise you much except that if I can raise the cash the book will get written and to the best of my ability, and I will break your heart and make you laugh and make you cry and hopefully scare you more than you've ever been scared with a book in your hands."

I'm working on the crowd-funding / crowd-sourcing plan and planning a media campaign to promote the project and when I have more information I will post it here, but for the time being, you even get to watch over my shoulder as I try to get this kite in the air.

For those of you interested in a taste of what is to come, I'll post a few paragraphs I was playing with in my next post.
But for now, here's a link to an audio-book-video I made of the original short-story.
Whimper