You may be familiar with this post where I gave you just a little taste of what I’ve been working on -The Long Undead, book three in the Noctisbellum Inc. series. And I honestly thought that’s where it was going to start, the problem was finding the right way to tell the story. Eventually (after five 30k word drafts), I figured out that I was writing a vampires story, I couldn’t start it now and write it like a regular story, a snippet of a person’s life. Because they weren’t regular people, a snippet was more like a blip and there is so much more to this story than a few months. So I went back, way back, and changed my main character (to the one I originally intended to use) and started at the real beginning. So, to my readers, this is the real beginning of Long Undead and it feels completely different to Stars, Moon, and how I originally began this chapter of Noctisbellum. I hope you enjoy this tiny little snippet of what is going to be bigger than Moon and Stars combined, and lead us into the next chapter. It’s far from done, but it’s coming along nicely.
Long Undead Teaser
We came to this world in a rush from the sea. As men from across the world channelled into the mountains of the west coast hoping to strike it rich. We bought land and loaned it back, we purchased and laid claim to so much that we could go anywhere, do anything. But what we were looking was a new life. With new names and new purpose, we would build an empire to keep those like us, safe. And, on one of those hills, we built our castle.
It was necessary to be discrete, even then. Many were vigilant even as others spent their hard-won gold on women and drink. And it would have been easy for any one of those vigilant men to see us for what we were. To take a stake to our hearts as other’s before had tried.
Though many had little to no knowledge of our existence, there were some who were aware that living amongst the mortals were monsters.
Word Count (as of December 12th): 45877
Even now, as Christmas approaches, I am finding time to write
It’s not as often as I would like, so many other things to do but on the days when I am able (and sometimes even when there’s only a few hours spare) I tuck myself away in the office and write as much as I can. Sometimes it’s a lot of staring at the screen or reading back through what I’ve already written so as not to lose the tone, and I’ve set myself a bizarre number of challenges in this work. And I want to tell you what those challenges are but I think that would spoil it for when you read it.
But there is one artist I routinely go back to when writing Long Undead, Meg Myers, in particular the album Sorry.
Horror and Fantasy Author – Also writing as K.T. McQueen. Love Western Horror, cowboy boots, my cactus Collin, & my Demon Cat.
Moths – I hate moths, the way they flutter at your face!
