HIM (with Audio-book)

Part 001

You could read the ebook on Amazon, the first chapter is open to the public. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C3Y36W1

Please listen to the youtube Audiobook! 

Below I'm just going to talk about chapter and a little of the background story, please enjoy!

The beauty of this chapter was how I introduce all the characters. Well, the most important characters to the story HIM, Elizabeth and Javanese. I also like how I was able to jump the reader into the story, sort of telling the reader that this story is more than a typical zombie mayhem.

Originally, I wanted the opening to start off with a bang with less information on the background. I felt that background's can be cumbersome and dragging. Especially when I need to explain the existence of zombies. Heck, zombies happen so why do I need to explain it. Well that was my first thought. Then a reader from my script "Missing Person's" never understood the reasoning for the zombies, so she called the story a gore porn and assumed my reasoning was to make the story gory. The zombies did have a reason, the story was not your typical zombie horror... so the thought never crossed my mind. It seemed her mind was stuck on figuring why it had zombies at the first place. But there was more to her complaint. She didn't like my characters and never understood Elizabeth. Her advice was for me to rewrite the story, but she said it in a tone that seemed it would be a huge effort on my end (as if I was never going to rewrite"Missing Person's"). The truth was "Missing Person's was a script and it was my second script. It was also a script that was rewritten 3 times. She read the 3rd version.

Deep down I knew she was right! My problem was that the story was bigger than a screenplay. I just liked the idea of writing scripts because they seemed the easiest to write. And what I had leaned after my first script that a script should never be over 120 pages. So my main focus point was for me was to keep the script less than 120 pages. And this was a mistake – because I spent too much time not hitting past the page limit.

See, the biggest error I've done in my first script "The Next Mission" I was writing the story with the attempt to go epic and I've pictured a 3 to 4 hour movie. The script was almost 250 pages. But when I formatted my script (another mistake I'd leaned afterwards) the script was closer to 300 pages. I've then learned later that Hollywood wouldn't looked at your script if it's over 120 pages and most of the time they are more than happy to see a script that's 80 to 95 pages long.

OMG! 80 to 95 freaking pages! It took me almost 2 years to cut a 300 page movie script to an acceptable 120 pages.

At the time it was 2000 to 2001 and I've mailed out letters and I'd received 10 replies to review my script "The Next Mission." It was exciting and costly. Each script had to be printed in paper and mailed. I had Lion's Gate and Ron Howard's film company looked at my script! Sadly I never got any feedback. Although, I did spend 30 min's on the phone talking to an indy film director whom was looking for a ghostwriter; which I turned down his offer because I was told by others on the internet that Hollywood would black list me... I think it was one of the worst mistakes I've done. Thinking positively about it, well I would never meet my wife and we would never have our awesome daughter. So I guess it was a good thing.

Going back to "Missing Person's" the 120 pages was looming over my head and I've tried to compress parts of the story. I've believed the reader asked me about the zombies in the story. She seemed confused that I never got into details about the zombies.

I told her that the zombies existed years ago and this story happens to take place after the start of the zombie apocalypse. I also wanted to link my zombie horror story to all those zombie stories that were made in the 1970's and 1980's. So I didn't think I needed to explain much.

From "Missing Person's" to "Lifeline" to "Him"

Interesting though I've been playing around with this zombie story idea since the 1980's when I was a teenager. I'd picture human's hunting down zombies with ninja swords. Another picture I had was a crazy human that was collecting tattoos from destroyed zombies. After banging my head against the wall in fixing my first script "The Next Mission" I sort of told myself I'll never write another script again. Well, in 2005-ish I found a person in the internet that was looking for a zombie idea. He had a limited budget (almost zero dollars) and some friends. So I spent a few days and drafted a short script called "Zombie Run." I thought the only costly prop would be a jacket that was stitched with tattoos. Well the short script was never made but it sort of get me back into writing my script "Missing Person's."

The title "Missing Person's" sort of worked for me because it had a mystery/thriller feel. I was shooting for a Italian Giallo type of a story, more focused on a slasher and Euro-trash. The title "Lifelines" was suggested by the reader of "Missing Person's." She seemed to think it would make more sense. And since I've decided to convert my story into a novel it seemed better for me to change the name.

HIM was suggested in Wattpad years later. Yes, part of the suggestion for HIM was based on the bold/caps HIM in the story. My fear was confusing the reader as who was the killer HIM and who was a generalize him. But most of my fans thought HIM would be a better title because the story does center on the serial killer HIM. I've liked the title HIM because it brings back the mystery/thriller feel. I didn't like "Lifelines" because it sounded too science fiction. So it was a name change I was happy to make.

So how did I get to the train? That was tricky. In the original story I wanted the police to answer a disturbance call and they found the girl zombie bumping her body at the door. I thought it would be a creepy start. And in a way the very last lines in the 1st chapter was the very first entry in the script.

The serial killer HIM was a mystery.

This changed when I started to write in more details on Elizabeth and her mother. I've attempted to rewrite the script a 4th time but after a few day's I trashed that idea.

The train was always part of the serial killer's method... but I'd wanted to use the train station because I pictured the scene where Javanese and Willard chases the killer HIM and Javanese was attacked by a beautiful lady (Now I'm spoiling chapters). Yeah, just like the netted zombie cages... (everything had a special purpose in the story).

Script writing was a comfort level; because it seemed easier. That's because I didn't have to spend a large amount of time writing details. I'm sort of afraid of getting too dull with the details. Before I wrote my first script "The Next Mission" I tried a few other times in writing novels and failed. So I just couldn't see myself writing a novel. But my wife told me that I could try to write a novelette. Which didn't cross my mind. She said they are short novels and it would be a good start.

So when I started writing the book my chapters were short. Chapter 1 was monstrous because it was originally 3 chapters!

ill.isSel