I originally heard about the Kindle Scout program in early November and at that time decided to submit my book, The Dream Map, to see if it would get a shot. Unfortunately I'd already set it to sell through the standard Kindle system and so it was ineligible. Of course rejection wasn't a new phenomenon in the world of writing. Though I'd found success in academia and doing short stints for Blizzard Entertainment, a fully published novel still eluded me. As far as my experience with Kindle Scout, I assumed at the time that my relationship with it was over. Brief, experimental and completely nondescript, it was much like an unmemorable movie or inoffensive book. Simply state, it was not something that would stay in my mind either way.
I flirted in the halls of NaNoWriMo groups that November month, engaging with others in discussions of technique and style. I had more experience than some others, including time negotiating with agents, dealing with editors and the like. At its worst I was bored by repetetive questions and authors unwilling to understand the rules before attempting to break them. At its best I was intrigued by story concepts and found myself in lengthy discussions of 'why' we write.
However, it's important to remember that I never actually started writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. I had no reason to. After all, I'd never had any difficulties motivating myself to write and I already had books I'd completed, though they lingered unpublished. I had no reason that simply write another novel just for the purpose of saying I 'won' NaNoWriMo. No, Floor 21 started for completely different reasons.
It was a late Sunday and I was catching up on episodes of The Walking Dead when I saw a young woman rappelling down an elevator shaft. At its bottom awaited hordes of zombies but if she could only make it through, she'd find her way to freedom. The girl had been imprisoned by hospital authorities for weeks and this was her moment to flee. As I saw her working her way down into a pile of broken and zombified bodies, I wondered to myself: What if she had always lived in that building? What if this wasn't her returning to her group? Instead, what if she'd always lived at the top and had no idea what awaited on ground floor?
That was the initial inspiration of an idea, and I quickly typed out a 1,200 word 'recording' of Jackie. This writing exercise was experimental for me since I'd never attempted to write in first person, never attempted to write a female protagonist and was attempting to write it as if she was leaving recordings behind. That idea, of leaving recordings behind, was taken from a staple of horror conventions used in horror video games from Bioshock to Dead Space. But somehow it just worked and the premise was intriguing. I posted the sample to several writing groups, including my NaNoWriMo group. And you know what?
It exploded.
Just about everyone who read it had an overwhelmingly positive response to the material and the character. Inspired by the response, I worked furiously that week. It was Thanksgiving week and my workload was light since students were not holding classes (I run a small tutoring agency). Within the week I was done; I'd written 50,000 words in a week, finished the first draft of Floor 21 and inadvertently won NaNoWriMo.
Now all I had to do was get it published. Enter Kindle Scout.
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