Red Devils

Afterword

I was honoured to be asked to be a part of this project by Craig and Tim, who’d come up with the idea for the series in May 2015 while they’d been discussing the zombie genre at Crypticon Seattle. When the invitation came I said yes without hesitation.

Those of you who know my work will also know that this book is very different to the usual kind of story I write. My books are usually contemporary in their setting, and almost always feature a cast of ordinary people who find themselves thrust, usually through no fault of their own, into extraordinary situations. Wrong place, wrong time.

When I started researching and writing this book, it struck me how many millions of people found themselves in that exact situation during World War II: ordinary people, extraordinary situations. Sitting here now, enjoying a life of relative comfort and security, it’s easy to forget that, not too long ago, untold numbers of men and women were forced to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms. As time goes on and we increasingly focus on the many issues of today, we can lose sight of the efforts and achievements of those just a few generations older than ourselves.

Writing this book brought a lot of things into focus for me. It left me with a new found appreciation and respect for those who lived and served through World War II.

I’m no history scholar or military buff, so I have taken numerous massive liberties with the facts (we’re writing about zombies after all!). Though the events of the Battle of the Bulge form a backdrop to this novel and to the entire series, the further we get from Tim’s excellent first novel, the more fantastic our story will inevitably become. This book is an adventure story at heart, one which might have been torn from the pages of a tattered copy of Boy’s Own back in the day, and I very much hope that you’ve enjoyed it.

I can’t wait to see what Craig has in store for us in BERLIN OR BUST!