When I was 19 I wrote a story in the summer. Grandpa was an English teacher and so he took a look over the first chapter. He spent the night showing me exactly where I went wrong and what I was doing right. I was thrilled to have somebody take an interest so we did that all through summer, and before long I had almost 300 pages of a story.
That was 20 years ago, and things moved on. I always wondered what happened to it and assumed it was lost after we moved a couple times. Cut to last month and clearing out the old guy's cabin. We found an old security box with his personal papers in there, and right at the bottom of the box a thick brown envelope marked "Mort's bestseller." It was all there. slightly damp but still perfectly safe. Disk and paper copies of "The Zombie."
At the time, with my youthful optimism, I thought it was a sure fire hit, given that the story was from the perspective of the Zombie for once. Having read it again, and not hating it, I thought I'd let the internet decide. I posted a few pages online and everyone said I should publish it. My wife knows someone who had used Amazon's self publishing so after some tidying up and a tiny bit of modernising some of the technology mentioned in it, I did exactly that.
It's surreal seeing it on my kindle, and available as an actual paperback after so long. But what's even stranger is seeing it climbing the charts past my writing heroes such as Stephen King. I dedicated it to the man who believed my story was good enough to do so.
More info: mortoncarver.com
My two best friends helping out with the clear out
The unexpected storage outbuilding
The treasure find! Labelled "Mort's bestseller"
A simple yet effective book cover
Dedicated to the man himself
A taster of The Zombie by Morton Carver
In good company
