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Darkzoo

NOTES ON THE SECOND EDITION Almost two years ago, I wrote Darkzoo, a novel of an armed takeover of a zoo by animal rights activists. The novel had seven main characters, and the reader could click to switch between the Point of View characters. Further, each of the POV tracks had a unique sub-plot. Most of the tracks were 'mainstream adventure' but two of them (werewolf stories) were 'fantasy'. I encountered problems during the writing. Cumulatively, The novel required 239 interlocking chapters. I spent more energy on assembling the chapters into the jigsaw-like framework, than I spent on writing it well. It was an experiment though, and I thought I could get away with less than stellar prose. But even if I'd concentrated on the writing, I have to admit that two years ago, I wrote rather poorly. Since then however, I've attended the six-week Odyssey writing workshop, and have spent a year and a half as an active member of the Critters on-line writing group. I've even had some success in getting a few short stories into print. Although by no means God's gift to literature, I am a better writer now Recently, I decided to re-read Darkzoo. I was perplexed (appalled, actually) at the poor quality of the prose (POV violations, passive constructions, awkward constructions: the usual suspects). I could either take Darkzoo off-line or, despite the difficulty of the task, do a re-write. Darkzoo had achieved a pretty good readership, gotten a favorable review in The Guardian, and I was loathe to end the experiment just yet. I decided therefore, to do the rewrite. At present the status of each of the eight tracks is as follows: Brian - Not yet revised Derek -Revised Rom - Revised Kit - Revised Jack - Currently being revised Joshua - Not yet revised Novel - Not yet revised Snapshot (Jeff) - Revised Actually, this rewrite will probably take two passes: one to fix the obvious bad writing, and another to turn the work into something approaching literature. The status above, refers to pass one. It will take a few months to rewrit

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