I’m kind of a big chicken when it comes to horror, but I love zombie apocalypse tales, so I knew I would write one one day. When the first scene that eventually became Wyrmrot popped into my head, I had no idea there would be dragons in the book or what form they would take. I only knew I wanted to put my own unique spin on the apocalypse, but also include all of my favorite things.
At the time, I had been working on my fantasy series, which also includes dragons. There were only two, they talked, and they were in the book for maybe three scenes total—but my Wattpad readers loved them. It gave me the idea to try including dragons in all of my books, even if they weren’t fantasy books, because why not? My readers love them. I love them (my love of dragons predates my love of the zombie apocalypse. I have Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern and Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles to thank for that).
Originally, I had thought of having a character in Wyrmrot who really loved dragon shirts, and they’d always be looking for ways to find new dragon shirts to collect even in the middle of the apocalypse. Then it came time to figure out the origin of the apocalypse. How did people start turning into zombies? I could go the usual way and have a virus escape a lab, but what if I put a twist on it instead?
Enter the dragon zoos.
This was peak Game of Thrones time, and everyone was obsessed with the mother of dragons. Now what if someone tried to capitalize on everyone’s love of dragons and made theme parks, and what if those dragons in the theme parks were the carriers of a parasite that ate people’s brains and eventually controlled their bodies to spread itself to others? Real-life reptiles are carriers of Salmonella. It doesn’t hurt them, but it can be passed to humans and make us very sick. What if this zombie parasite worked the same way? Dragons act as hosts and are unaffected, but can transmit it to humans who then become zombies.
And thus, Wyrmrot was born.
In case you missed it, Wyrmrot is now live on Amazon and available in Kindle Unlimited if you’d like to check it out.
Self-Publishing Update
This month not only did Wyrmrot officially release on August 13th, but the sequel, Symbiosis, went off to my editor. I also have the finished cover for it, so stay tuned for that very soon (like next month’s newsletter soon!).
Serial Fiction Update
I’m still working away on the rewrite of When Kingdoms Fall, and I’ve finally entered Act 3, so we are closing in on The End. If you’d like to check out the series, it’s free to read on all of these platforms:
After this rewrite is done, I get to start back at the beginning again and experiment with revising the series into Adult. I may hold off on that until after I get Symbiosis published because it’s going to require all my focus. Stay tuned for polls about new titles and character names.
What I’m Reading
This month I read my very first LitRPG . . . and I loved it. You can probably guess what one it was because it is very popular right now.
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Did you guess Dungeon Crawler Carl? Congrats! You win!
I can’t wait to dive into the rest of the series, and I will be on the lookout for more LitRPG series to try, so if anyone has recommendation, please send them my way.
And that’s all I have for you this month.
I love the idea of dragons being placed into every book! 🐉