Kickstarter project: Rise of the Dead: A Zombie Novel

A zombie novel with a lot of guts to it, Rise of the Dead aims for the brain, blending literary fiction with post-apocalyptic thrills.

For fifteen years I've been saying "I'll write a novel someday." Well I finally did what I always wanted to do. Now I need your help to bring this novel to life on the printed page.

A little about the book:

In the spirit of George's Romero's screenwriting, blended with a narrative voice that has aspirations of echoing Salinger's prose, Rise of the Dead became the book I always knew I had to write. It blends two of the biggest influences in my writing into a single story that strives to be something original and meaningful.

While it might seem like just another zombie novel in a world that is full of them, I tried to aim higher than your average Hollywood storyline without going over the cliff into literary pretension. It's a story to entertain you, maybe scare you, and hopefully make you think a little about life along the way.

It's the story of several survivors, as narrated by Blake, a statistician who takes comfort in living in a world where everything can be predicted if you know the formula to do it. The book takes place over the first week of the zombie apocalypse and a focuses on a group of characters, thrown together only by proximity.  The characters are in a continuing struggle to understand what it is that makes human spirit important in a world where it slowly dying. They have to battle an overwhelming enemy, a grotesque mirror image of their own existence, in the form of an ever-growing number of undead.

If you want to read more please view the sample chapter up at my website: http://www.jeremydyson.com/rise-of-the-dead/

Why not just see about finding a publisher for it? Well, I certainly considered that. It could take a year or two for the book to come into existence. And frankly, I know how to do all the necessary work a publisher would do in terms of design, layout, printing, promotion. That's like telling a musician to write a song and just wait for someone to listen to it. Putting a first novel out there and gaining an audience is the best way to draw the attention of publishers, so I decided to release my first novel on my own and see what doors might open for my follow up novel.

Most of the necessary work toward production of the book is being completed by myself to keep the costs at a minimum. Cover, manuscript formatting, website are all being done by me. I have the luxury of being married to my editor. What your contributions will do will help cover the printing costs from the first edition of paperback copies. While I set the goal as the minimum for what I plan to run initially, I am only looking to run about 100-200 copies initially to give to our backers, to use for a couple of appearances to promote the book, as well as some copies to send out to reviewers. If we can exceed the goal, any additional funds will go to printing a larger initial run of books. You never know, if the book does well and I become the next big thing, think about how cool it will be to have one of the very limited first editions of a debut novel and signed by the author at that.

Risks and challenges

The novel is 80% complete, over 50,000 edited words, with an expected total of around 60-65000 after final edits. The first draft will be completed before the end of this kickstarter campaign. Allowing for a month for final editing, and another month for printing and release means we are scheduled to aim for releasing the novel in June on e-book and July in paperback.

There is a risk I may never finish the book, like in the event a zombie apocalypse wipes out civilization in the next few weeks. Then this story will probably seem kind of unoriginal anyway. The end of the novel is already clear, so I don't have any concerns of having to push the date back. If anything, I am hoping I will be able to move the timeline up. Other issues could be delay in getting the paperback copies from the printer, which may mean it could be a little longer for those backers to receive their copy through snail mail.

I hope you will enjoy having the chance to help this project get off the ground. Your support will certainly be remembered. Thank you so much!

For more info or to make a pledge, click here!