No, this book is not about zombies……

I confess, I never got into the thrill of the whole dragon phase that fantasy lovers went through about thirty years ago, although I do have to say that it appealed to me more than the vampire thing (that is, the previous round of vampire interest) which got going a few years after that.  Nothing wrong with either, mind you, but …

Fast forward a couple of decades. I’m still not so fond of the the vampire thing, part two, although I do confess to a certain lingering fascination with werewolves and other such creatures.  But vampires — just dead guys.  Ick.  So enter the whole zombie fascination. Okay, to each their own.  But double ick for me.

Which does make the fact that I’ve just called my third novel z2 a little problematic.  Zombies are everywhere. Brad Pitt stars in a movie called World War Z coming out in June.  Every search I do that starts with a z turns up zombie books,  zombie movies, and just plain more zombies. We really do have a zombie problem.

The title of my third book was supposed to be x2, where the 2 is a superscript.  You know, x squared.  But as I explained on my other blog in a post called “Hugs and Kisses“, when I named my first novel x0 I discovered that you can’t make superscripts appear on this blog or anywhere else that matters. And, as I pointed out in “Why why one?”  my love of X-men and respect for Patrick Stewart made me change the name of my second book from x1 to y1.  I just didn’t want to intrude.

When fellow indie author and blogger Hock Tjoa interviewed me on his blog last August, he joked about my third novel being called z2. Ha. I was still playing around with x2. Or with 2x because that fit my theme better mathematically. Or maybe even 2z just to blend the three titles together better. And then I realized that Hock, who I’ve never met, was absolutely right. The logical next name was z2 and I simply had to go with it.

So ….. the book’s hero Alex Zeitman now forms his own club, z2, for time warpers like himself and other interested parties.  He calls his club “zee squared”. I call the book “zee squared”. Others call it “zee two” because you can’t tell it’s a superscript and many of them suspect it has something to do with a second coming of zombies. Arrgghhh.

Have I learned my lesson yet? No. Of course not. The last three books will have superscript titles also. I’m not sure why.  Maybe I like consistency. Maybe I like doing things the hard way. Maybe it just fits to have superscripts for super heroes. Yeah. Superscripts for super heroes. I like that.