One Chapter at a Time

To everyone who encouraged me to keep going—thank you.

There was a time when I honestly never thought I would be able to do something like this. Z.E.R.O. started as ideas and stories in my head, and little by little, those ideas have started becoming something real.

In the beginning, writing it felt hard. I looked at everything I wanted Z.E.R.O. to become and wondered how in the world I was ever going to put all of it together. Then I stopped looking at the whole thing at once and started writing it one chapter at a time.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had made it in my head. At its heart, Z.E.R.O. is about ordinary people living ordinary lives in a world where something extraordinary occasionally happens. They work. They laugh. They have friendships and families. They make mistakes. They get tired. They care about each other. And every once in a while, something happens that shouldn’t be possible—and they have to figure out what the hell they’re dealing with.

Not every mystery has to be a monster. Not every strange event has to have a supernatural explanation. Sometimes there is an answer. Sometimes there isn’t. That’s part of what makes writing this world so much fun for me. I never have to force every story into the same box.

It may be a slow beginning because right now I am the whole team. I’m writing the stories, building the world, creating the characters, working on the website, developing the visuals and music, and learning things I never imagined I’d be learning along the way. Some days everything falls into place. Other days I can spend hours trying to convince one woman in a red dress to stop walking.

But it’s coming together.

To everyone who has encouraged me, listened to my ideas, read what I’ve written, looked at what I’ve created, or simply told me to keep going: thank you. You helped me keep building something I once wasn’t sure I could build at all.

Z.E.R.O. is still growing, one chapter at a time. There are a lot more stories I want to tell and a lot more mysteries waiting out there.

And for the first time, I don’t look at all of that and wonder whether I can do it.

I’m already doing it.

— Ginger Yarbrough
Creator of Z.E.R.O. — Zero Event Response Organization