Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t finished Ghost Dog, you might want to skip this post.
One of my goals has been to write more short stories this year. There are just so many Zombie Dog short stories floating around my head! If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ve already read some of them: Winter Dog, Cemetery Dog, Voodoo Dog, and now Oblivion Dog. If you are one of my patrons, those came out to you EVEN EARLIER, plus you received other perks.
Life isn’t always about goals, but I sometimes think that without goals, I wouldn’t have been able to write so many Zombie Dog stories. They would have been like spirits wandering around my head with no form and no substance. Just ideas and emotions. So I do think there is some good to come of setting goals. But you shouldn’t feel guilty for not meeting all of them. I think by this time in my life I was supposed to already be finished with the Zombie Dog series, but life keeps happening, and sometimes I just need a day off. I try not to beat myself up too much about this so long as I get back on it the next day.
The latest story is Chupacabra Dog, set where else? Beautiful Puerto Rico! I had the opportunity to spend a week or two in this island paradise back in 2019 (you know, BEFORE the pandemic), and almost instantly I wanted to set a Zombie Dog story there. Once I visited the only National Forest that’s a rainforest, El Yunque, I was sold. I think the final nail in the coffin (which is the wrong metaphor, but at the same time fits so appropriately for a Zombie Dog writer) happened months later back on the mainland. I learned that Puerto Rico is the origin of the chupacabra urban legend. Did you know that? I always assumed it came from Mexico. I guess that’s what happens when you make an assumption! Chupacabras have already appeared in Zombie Dog and Ghost Dog, but I want to focus one of Angie’s adventures solely on literal zombie dogs. Give me zombie dogs!!!
Note I said “Angie’s adventures.” Spoiler alert again if you haven’t finished Ghost Dog.
If you have, you know that Ghost Dog ends with Murder being absconded, a.k.a., “dogknapped.” The stories Voodoo Dog and Chupacabra Dog give a glance of Angie’s life without Murder. In Voodoo Dog, she tried training a new dog. Chupacabra is dog-less, except for the already mentioned zombie dogs. Years ago when I first conceived this series I imagined a book after Angie was separated from Murder. She was in a South American country helping a village stave off a zombie horde. Well, instead of a book, I decided on Chupacabra Dog.
This is a big short story, though. Most of my “Little Dogs” run over 8,000 words. This one I anticipate to be 10,000+ words (definitely in the novelette/novella range), so I’ve broken it down into two parts. Part One is rough drafted. Tonight/this weekend I will begin Part Two.
On the Murder Dog front, I am busy editing, and about a third of the way through the book. Then it will be off to the editors to review.
That’s it for now. Keep to your goals, but don’t beat yourself up for not flying so high. And if you’re a patron, prepare for the horde and expect Chupacabra Dog by the end of April!
Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.
Doug Goodman 
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