Over the weekend we watched the fantastic Shaun of the Dead for the first time in what turns out to have been a long while. It is a timely reminder of the inevitable zombie apocalypse, and how one needs to hone their skills in preparation for when the dead once again walk the Earth.

Many skills will be required in the post-apocalyptic world. Certainly, we may be able to train the zombies to perform menial tasks, but this will take time and many will lose their lives in this endeavour. In the meantime, we will have to make do with manpower, not zombiepower.

So how can I make myself useful in order to continue my own pathetic existence as the undead roam free? One has to start somewhere, and learning the skill of growing and harvesting food seems like an appropriate place to begin. I already know how to eat and digest food, so there’s part of the chain ready to be linked.

With this in mind, over the weekend we turned what was previously an overgrown garden bed into a vegetable patch. Or rather, nice-looking dirt with green protrusions. There are no vegetables to be seen at this early stage. Nor has the “vegetable” (read: dirt) patch been zombie-proofed. Those skills will have to wait until I have honed the creation of food.

If the people who live in a large White House in the US, and a larger Buckingham Palace in the UK can do it, with their legion of professionally-trained food growing people, I’m sure I can do it all on my own. Right? I know there will be a large learning curve but one needs to be prepared for Z-Day. Which music should I play to enhance photosynthesis, for example? Do I speak in English, French or Esperanto to encourage water to pass through the Vascular Rays?

Recently, I have been tinkering with the format of my blog in order to make things just so, but have also noticed that the gaps between content are also quite large, which is something I want to rectify.

After I wrote my 1600-word Tiger Moth post, I figured it may be interesting if I tried to somehow increase the amount of content I post to the site. But how? I’ve already tried a one-a-day post, and mostly succeeded. Still, I want to write and not just spam the site, which is all the Twitters achieved.

Though it’s been years since I’ve written fiction (and even then, the fiction was spotty at best), I figured it may be enjoyable to write some fiction and post it to the site. Instead of just writing and posting massive chunks of text, I decided to seek a partner in crime with whom I could post small chunks of a larger story alternately. I found a willing partner in Trav who also seemed to be looking for a similar project in which teeth could be sunk.

After some discussion, the project will work thusly (for at least the first story; subject to change as always):

• We will write and post 250-500 words within two days of the other’s last post.
• Besides the overall plot and a few major items, continuation and direction of the story is up to the individual writing that section.
• To keep things fresh for us and the readers, each story will be around 5000 words.

As the story may be difficult to follow if you begin part way through (especially with other content possibly being posted inbetween), I have made a page on which the story can be read and this will be posted on each site (here, it is at http://bludger.org/blog/collabowrite/). We will endeavour to link to the other’s section as soon on our own blog as we notice it published.

Constructive comments and valid story suggestions are welcomed from our readers, but please remember neither of us (and particularly myself) are not professional fiction writers, that our writing will largely be unedited and we obviously have two different writing styles. Another warning that it may contain content unsuitable for children; or it may not, we haven’t even started!

That’s really it. I hope you enjoy the content as much as we hope to enjoy writing it! As I won the online game of Rock Paper Scissors, I will endeavour to post the opening section by Friday some time.