First Post, AZU-1:Lifehack

Hey folks. I've been convinced to start blogging about my writing adventures, though I intend to hit on other topics form time to time, such as my new little daughter Caitlin, and the experience of hosting international students.

I'm not going to dump everything out in the first post, so this time I'll just focus on my current writing project, the revision of my first book, AZU-1: Lifehack


Pretty cover? It's going to be entirely different when the revision is done. I'll have to post a peek at the first draft of that later. For one thing, I'm taking the "AZU-1" out of the title. It's confuses things needlessly. Here's the official tease blurb for the book:

She lost her brother.
She learnt to fight a legion of the dead.
She spent two years alone, scavenging to survive.
Then to make things difficult, she fell in love with a straight girl.

For those of you unfamiliar with the book, yeah yeah, 'ZOMG, lesbian!' Alright, are ya done? Yes, it's a major part of the story, as the last line implies.

Why did I write about a lesbian crush in a book about zombies? Ooh, maybe you should ask why I wrote about zombies in a book about a lesbian's crush? Deep, zen.

It's really as much about Regan (our heroine) and her crush on Alisia as it is about the zombie problem. I generally refer to the Regan/Alisia thing as the sub-plot, but it's really half the book. Hey, let's have a peek at our heroines for a sec-


This is a bit of an older pic. Click it for fullsize if ya want.

The brunette is Regan Grier, and the redhead is Alisa Terone. Now I have to explain the anime connection, don't I?

2002. I was fresh out of GF Strong physio rehab after my injury that put my in a wheelchair (more on that in future posts, and future books..) and I was finding that my anime-flavored are was getting pretty predictable, so I made a stab at pumping up a detail level a bit.
The first thing I drew was Alisia who at the time, didn't have a name. I didn't have any intention of drawing her again, why does she need a name? She had a snazzy looking sci-fi-ish rifle, and was dressed in blue camo. Head over to my gallery if you want to see more, by the way.
Then I drew a gal with the notion in my head of making a slightly 80's themed 'rocker girl'. Black leather 80s, not neon 80's with huge hair. For some reason, someone told me shw looked like a lesbian, and it just stuck.
I was so enamored with these two designs that they just kept coming. Image descriptions got longer and longer, and.... well, to make a long story short, about four years later, I ended up with a book.

But it needed me to step back get some frank feedback, and revise. A lot of errors were made partly because it wasn't planned as a book to begin with, so now I'm fixing stuff. Making is stronger, faster, better than it was before. They say you always want to tweak this or that, and that a project is never truly ''done ''done, but to be really happy with it, to be proud of it, and let it rest, I have to do this revision.

Meanwhile I have four other book projects waiting to be handled. Next post: 'Watching Yute' and the house of the rising sun!