Alabama Zack

cliffagreen(67)

Published in

Scholar and Scribe

Words

464

Reading

3 min

Listen

Play

4M

Introduction

"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, which is published in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.

The story of "Zack"

"Zack" began life as a newspaper serial. It ran one chapter a week in The Rochester (Ind.) Sentinel from fall 2009 to summer 2010.

The originally published story was a raw first draft. Between 2008 and 2010 I worked as a proofreader for the Sentinel, and the editor agreed to publish Zack more because he appreciated the work I did in the newsroom than for the merits of the story.

I wrote one chapter a week on an old typewriter. Each chapter was one page long: when I neared the end of the page I knew it was time to spin a cliffhanger and wrap it up. The story held together fairly well, considering, but it definitely needed some revision and thoughtful plotting to become a completed work.

I have worked on revising and plotting the story off and on for the past 16 years, most intensively from 2013 to 2015. The version I'm sharing here is complete and it tells the story I want to tell with this character, and at the same time it preserves the style, tone, and much of the text of that original draft.

The sequel

Those of you who have followed my blog for awhile might recognize the name Alabama Zack. In May of 2020 I took a stab at writing a sequel to my original for the #maynia novel writing month. I wrote 12 chapters before fizzling out.

I'll include the first chapter of the #maynia sequel at the end of this collection. The sequel greatly enhances the complexity of the Alabama Zack world (which is part of why I set it aside for later).

Guide to reading

I originally intended "Alabama Zack" to be a lark, an entertaining diversion that could be picked up and enjoyed chapter to chapter without requiring an inordinate of work from the reader to follow the story. To that end, I'm including a summary before the start of each new chapter to refresh the memory; hopefully with the summary you’ll be able to hop into the story at any point and enjoy the chapter for that week.

Or you can wait and read the whole series at once, beginning from this collection page. Each chapter includes a jump link at the end to move to the next one.

And now our story

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