David Moody's Blog, page 81

Kieran Cope’s AUTUMN: ECHO

So here we go. As promised yesterday, here’s Kieran’s AUTUMN short story. Once again, huge thanks to Kieran for his generosity and for being such a willing ‘victim’. Click here to visit www.lastoftheliving.net and read Kieran’s story.

The final part of the lot I put up for auction was to have the winning bidder’s short story illustrated. As you probably know, I’ve been working with the excellent Craig Paton a lot recently, and he seemed the ideal person to produce Kieran’s portrait. You can see Kieran just to the left of this text, and Craig’s beautiful illustration is reproduced below. I’ll be presenting Kieran with a signed print later this year.

Once again, thanks to Kieran for his support of the Genre for Japan initiative last year, and thanks also to Craig for producing another piece of top quality artwork. Visit Craig at www.craigpaton.com.

Come back here again tomorrow when AUTUMN: AFTERMATH is launched in the UK at long last.

Kieran Cope’s AUTUMN: ECHO is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

New AUTUMN: AFTERMATH short story

As you probably already know, AUTUMN: AFTERMATH is released in the UK this week. One of the characters in the story is a chap by the name of Kieran Cope, and today I wanted to give you a little bit of background about him.

Cast your minds back to 11th March 2011, and the tragic events which unfolded when a devastating earthquake struck Japan, triggering a tsunami which resulted in damage of almost apocalyptic proportions. In the days and weeks which followed, numerous appeals were launched to try and provide aid to the stricken Japanese people. Genre for Japan was launched – an auction of rare and/or exclusive donations from a number of writers, artists and other genre professionals. I donated a complete set of AUTUMN books, along with the chance to appear in the final novel, and to have a new short story written about the winning bidder.

I watched the online auction with amazement – not just my lot, but all the others too. The sheer amount of cash being pledged was remarkable, with over £11,000 raised in total by the time all the bids were in. And I was thrilled to learn that my donation had gone for £290. The winning bidder was a gentleman by the name of Kieran Cope. I’ll let him explain…

“I was first recommended to read David’s novels by a friend who knew about my love for horror fiction and the human psyche. The first of his novels I read was ‘Hater’ from the Hater Trilogy. I was immediately hooked by the detailed style of writing and the way David places each reader into the size 9′s of the main Characters. After further research I found that David had somewhat of a cult following on-line and soon became of follower of his facebook page and his projects in myself. 

Whilst posting a personal facebook message about my shock after witnessing the TV footage of the Japanese earthquake and resultant tsunami I started to wonder how I might be able to help or make a difference. A few weeks later my question was answered I noticed that David had an item up for auction, “Item 58″ as part of the Genre for Japan web page, all proceeds going to British Red Cross’s Japan Tsunami appeal.

I was overjoyed when my bid was successful, and after a few days of wondering if it had all been just a dream the reality started to sink in, I was going to have a character based on me in the final book of the Autumn series and an illustrated short story would also be written and published on David’s website www.lastoftheliving.net. Wow!!

Having received a pre-release copy of the final book I can honestly say that I enjoyed it immensely and feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity to be part of what I consider to be a modern cult classic series of novels.

There was one question David asked me during our email correspondence that I found so unbelievably difficult to answer. Did I want to be a survivor or a zombie? And to find out my answer you’re going to have to read the short story and of course the final book of the series Autumn: Aftermath. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

I guess by now many of you have read AFTERMATH, so you know all about Kieran. What you don’t know is what happened to him on the day the world died, and how he got to the place where we meet him at the beginning of the book. Come back here tomorrow and find out…

New AUTUMN: AFTERMATH short story is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

Free-form Jazz and Alien Invasions

I was away on Friday (more about that in a second), so didn’t update here when the latest chapter of TRUST went live. Another chapter has been added this morning, so please head over to www.trustdavidmoody.com to catch up. Something very sinister is happening in Thatcham, and it’s going to change everything…

A lot of folks have been waiting for alternative eBook versions of the novel – Nook, Kobo, iBooks etc. etc. They should all be live at the relevant stores this week. Alternatively, you can now pick up the book in all formats direct from Smashwords.

Now to explain the bizarre title of this post… On Friday Wayne Simmons and I were in Maidstone, Kent for a signing and appearance. We took part in an event called Writing Allowed – an extremely well attended evening of poetry, prose and, yes, a little free-form jazz. I don’t think either of us have ever been part of such an eclectic bill, but I’m glad we were. It was hugely enjoyable, both as a participant and an audience member. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Danny Rhodes, Georgie Grassom, and everyone involved in the evening for making us feel so welcome. With our curse-filled zombie and alien readings, we stuck out a mile, but that was no bad thing!

More events on the way – don’t forget we’ll be at the UK Festival of Zombie Culture this Saturday, and signing at Waterstones Hull the following weekend.

Free-form Jazz and Alien Invasions is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

Right, nearly there with my recaps of the AUTUMN series in readiness for the UK release of AFTERMATH next week. Today I’m going to look at the various short stories I’ve written to expand and compliment the overall story over the years.

As I’ve already explained, AUTUMN started small but grew rapidly in size, its cast of characters growing with each new novel. Apart from jumping back in time to the beginning of the outbreak at the beginning of THE CITY, and the parallel events of PURIFICATION and DISINTEGRATION, it’s told in a largely linear way. That’s all well and good, but as I introduced each new character, I found myself wanting to go back and tell their individual backstories. To have done that within the books would have made them unnecessarily complicated, and so I came up with AUTUMN: ECHOES.

Originally appearing online only, these (very) short stories explained what had happened to minor background characters from THE CITY to get them from the end of the world to the city centre university where the survivors had grouped at the beginning of the book. It seemed to work so well I continued and did the same with some of the new characters from PURIFICATION too, and it was while I was putting together the third book that these ECHOES seemed to take on a life of their own. Here’s a brief extract from a scene near to the end of the book:

“Eight weeks ago this had been an intelligent young clothing store department manager with a bright future ahead of her. Now it was a mud-splattered, half-naked, emaciated collection of brittle bone and rotting flesh. Unlike the majority of the seething crowd, however, this one was beginning to exhibit signs of real control and determination. Unlike those which simply stood there vacantly or those which ripped and tore at the other corpses immediately around them, this body was beginning to think.”

As well as talking about the living, I thought it would be interesting to look at the dead too. I gave this particular corpse a name and an identity, and explained how she/it had managed to get from the moment of her death on the shop floor, all the way to the front of the vast crowd surrounding Monkton Airfield. I hadn’t read much zombie fiction told from the POV of the dead at that stage, and so Amy Steadman was born. You can read Amy’s story here (and here, here, here, here and here).

And the more of these things I wrote, the more I realised I could go anywhere. I began to investigate what was happening to the rest of the world outside the main novels. I went back to the first book to tell the story of Philip Evans (the character played by David Carradine in the AUTUMN movie), then followed Kate James to explain what happened to the rest of the survivors in the community centre once Michael, Emma and Carl had left.

Once PURIFICATION had been released, I knew I still had more stories to tell. During the planning of the novels I’d come up with numerous situations I wanted to explore which didn’t necessarily fit the books: a survivor who coped with the apocalypse by denying everyone else was dead, a useless politician terrified he was going to have to take sole responsibility for what was left of the world, a seven year-old boy left alone, a teenager on a final booze, drugs and hormone-triggered bender, a person who refused to leave the home they were so proud of behind, a group of people who despise each other trapped by the dead and forced to work together to stay alive… Over a period of months I wrote all of these stories and more, and decided to publish them alongside the original ECHOES as AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION. The book was far more successful than I’d expected. I thought only a handful of people would have bought it out of curiosity, but boy, was I wrong!

I explained last week that I hadn’t originally intended to write more than three AUTUMN novels. As the series grew in size, so I kept writing more ECHOES and more shorts even after THE HUMAN CONDITION had been published. When the series was acquired by Thomas Dunne Books and Gollancz in 2008, both publishers told me they didn’t think a collection would be commercially viable, so THE HUMAN CONDITION disappeared in favour of AUTUMN: AFTERMATH. Once the re-releases began in 2010, though, I knew I wanted to make the additional fiction (about 120,000 words by that stage) freely available again. The idea for an illustrated website was born, and www.lastoftheliving.net was launched soon after. A number of great artists contributed to the site, and you can still view all their work there. I’ve also run features on several of them here.

So now here we are – it’s late 2012, and the UK release of AFTERMATH is just a week away. I’ve said throughout this AUTUMN retrospective that these articles have been my way of signing off from the series once and for all. I now feel like I’ve got one thing left to do, and that’s going to happen in 2013 when I re-release a definitive, expanded edition of AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION through Infected Books, complete with every AUTUMN short I’ve written and a few more besides which haven’t yet been finished.

In the meantime, please do visit www.lastoftheliving.net and read up on some of the free fiction you might have missed over the years. Want to know what happened to Michael and Emma between the end of AUTUMN and their reappearance in THE CITY? Click here! Want to know what happened to the soldiers left behind after the battle at the beginning of PURIFICATION? Click here!

And even if you’ve already read every word of free fiction over there, please come back next week for the launch of the final book when I’ll be debuting a brand new and very, very special AUTUMN short story which ties nicely into AFTERMATH.

AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

The Next Big Thing

If you visit many other authors’ blogs, chances are you’ll have come across The Next Big Thing blog chain. Here’s how it works – an author answers ten questions about their next piece of work, then they tag five other authors to answer the same questions one week later. Adam Nevill tagged me last week (here’s Adam’s post), and here are my answers.

What is the working title of your next book?

17 DAYS

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It’s a concept I’ve been toying with on and off since the mid-nineties. It occurred to me that if we knew the precise date of our own death, it would affect absolutely everything we do in the time which remains. But would that necessarily be a bad thing?

What genre does your book fall under?

It’s probably a little more mainstream than anything I’ve written before, but there are definite dystopian overtones.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Complete unknowns. That’s essential.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Mark Thane is going to die in seventeen days time. Probably. (Sorry, that’s two sentences).

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Represented (by Scott Miller at Trident Media, New York).

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Excluding the fifteen years I’d been messing with the idea on and off, about six weeks.

What other books/films would you compare this story to within your genre?

There are very definite shades of NETWORK, the 1976 Sidney Lumet movie. I guess there’s also a V FOR VENDETTA influence in there too.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The initial inspiration came so long ago now it’s hard to remember. I’m fascinated by our attitudes to death. I’ve always thought it fantastically liberating how animals live without fear because they don’t know they’re going to die. They assume they’ll just keep on going. We, on the other hand, seem to have either an unhealthy preoccupation with (or an equally unhealthy ignorance of) our own mortality. What happens if the rules change? How would you react if you knew exactly how long you had left?

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

I think it’s a really original book which takes the story in very unexpected directions. In seventeen days the main character goes on a remarkable journey. Oh, and there’s loads of sex. Move over ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, Moody’s gone all soft-porn.

More news about 17 DAYS coming soon. Here are the chaps I’ve tagged for next week:

ADAM BAKER

CRAIG DILOUIE

IAIN MCKINNON

ADAM MILLARD

SEAN T PAGE

The Next Big Thing is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

TRUST updates

Chapter 30 of the book is now online at www.trustdavidmoody.com.For those of you waiting for the Kobo, Nook and iBook versions of the book, they should all be online shortly. Apologies for taking a while to make it happen.

And on the subject of things which have been dragging on for a bit… I can now announce the winners of the TRUST giveaway. Congratulations to Matt Darst, Stella Frost, Adam Holyoake, Alaric von Hofe and Fiona.

More TRUST on Friday. If you’re not reading it yet, you really should be. Things are properly kicking off in Thatcham now, and it’s about to get much, much worse!

TRUST updates is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

Horror in the East

Bloody hell, I enjoyed that! This weekend saw the inaugural Horror in the East convention in Lowestoft, a place which, as you know, is very close to my heart (not least because I pretty much destroyed it in THEM OR US!).

I go to a lot of events, and I decide not to go to many more. I’m a fussy sod – much as I genuinely love talking to other authors and publishers etc., I have to say I prefer meeting readers. Many conventions seem to be one thing or the other, but Horror in the East was a straight down the middle collision of both. Relaxed, informal and well supported by both the local and the horror community, it was an absolute pleasure to be there. Congratulations to Emma Bunn and Jo Wilde for putting together such a superb event. I’ll be back for more Horror in the East on 1st – 2nd November 2013, and I hope to see many of you there.

Pictured: the excellent Horror in the East line-up. From left to right: (front) Richard Cosgrove, Andrew Hook, Joseph Freeman, Michael Wilson, Conrad Williams, (back) Sean Page, me, Adam Baker, Adam Millard, Joseph D’Lacey, Simon Coleby, Ivan Bunn, Iain McKinnon, Henry Baker, Paul Huggins. (Photo pinched from Adam Millard on Facebook - hope you don’t mind, Adam!).

Horror in the East is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

Chapter 29 of TRUST and an end of the week/month round-up

First things first, chapter 29 of TRUST is now available to read over at www.trustdavidmoody.com. I have a few other things to tell you about, so I thought I’d round them all up here.

AUTUMN: HORROR IN THE EAST

Takes place in Lowestoft tomorrow. I’ll be there from 10am onwards, and it promises to be an excellent day. So if you’re in the area, why not come along? The event is free, and you get the added bonus of seeing the sights of Lowestoft, the town where much of THEM OR US was set. There’s more information at www.horrorintheeast.com and a schedule for the day can be found here at This is Horror.

SCREAM MAGAZINE

Will hopefully be in attendance this weekend in Lowestoft. Issue 14 of the magazine is available now. Click the cover for more details. It’s another issue filled with much goodness for the discerning horror fan, including interviews with some of the original Cenobites from Hellraiser, Alex Chandon (the director of Inbred), and Oren Peli (the chap responsible for Paranormal Activity).

GUEST POSTS AND INTERVIEWS

Finally, I was asked to put together a number of guest posts for Halloween specials during October. In case you missed any of them, here’s a list:

Are there really too many zombies, Graeme?
An interview with Booklist Online (warning – some spoilers)
10 Weird things about David Moody
Villain or Victim?
Do you remember your first time?
Detachment
Interview with My Bookish Ways
It’s Z-Day – what are YOU going to do?

Chapter 29 of TRUST and an end of the week/month round-up is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION

Therapy time again… I’m writing these posts just to get them out of my system as I prepare to draw a line under the AUTUMN series. Today I’m looking at book four, DISINTEGRATION. I’ll have a couple of posts about short stories next week, then a piece about AFTERMATH to coincide with the UK release of the final book later this month. To learn more about the series, visit www.lastoftheliving.net.

When I finished writing AUTUMN: PURIFICATION, I thought that was it for the series. Then I realised I still had more to say and wrote THE HUMAN CONDITION (more about that book and AUTUMN: ECHOES next week). Once again, I thought I was through with zombies. But as I finished writing HATER back in early 2006, I changed my mind again and found a reason to return to AUTUMN.

The books were taking a critical hammering. They still do, to be fair, although these days people seem to be a little more accepting of zombie stories devoid of the usual flesh-eating clichés. For every positive comment I received, I seemed to get many more decrying the lack of blood, guts, guns and action in the novels. That frustrated me beyond belief. It would have been one thing criticising me if I’d done blood, guts, guns and action badly, but to have a pop because those things weren’t there seemed a little below the belt. I’m not one to respond confrontationally to a bad review (because we all know where that can lead) but I did need a way to work through my frustrations. AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION was it. I decided to see what would happen if I dumped a group of stereotypical zombie survivors into AUTUMN. I wanted to know how they’d cope.

But there had to be more to the new book than that. It had to be more than just following a group of folks battering their way through the living dead, because that would have made it just another bland, run of the mill zombie tale and I wanted to do something different. It occurred to me it would be infinitely more interesting to pit survivor against survivor: to imagine what might happen when those who’d managed to stay alive by fighting and killing were forced to try and survive alongside those who’d taken a more cautious approach. The potential for conflict was huge. You could argue they’d all chosen the right way because they were all still alive, but who would back down first? With all their lives on the line, would anyone accede?

I started a new job in August 2006. On the morning commute, driving along the motorway away from the centre of town, I passed by some very different looking buildings which sparked my interest. First was a series of particularly ugly blocks of flats: huge, three-winged monstrosities which dominated their surroundings and yet which managed also to look completely out of place against a backdrop of fields and rolling hills, as if the rest of the world was fighting to eject them. Further along the road was a large hotel which seemed more isolated than it actually was, but which looked like the ideal place in which to hole-up and sit out the zombie apocalypse. By the way, this year I moved house and I now live much nearer to both locations. Here’s a photograph of the flats in question, taken a couple of weeks back whilst walking the dog (who I’ll talk more about in a minute).

The pieces of the story seemed to just fall into place. Surrounded by new work colleagues in a new environment, inspiration for many of the characters came quickly (though I’m not going to say who inspired me or how!). I had an outline, some great scenes in mind, I’d made an announcement about the new book, and then… well then the real world got in the way. I was working full time whilst keeping Infected Books running in the evenings. Then life became beautifully chaotic when I sold the film rights to both AUTUMN and HATER in quick succession. In the midst of all of this, my father-in-law became seriously ill and we were visiting regularly – 400 mile round trips pretty much every weekend until he passed away. It was an incredibly strange time: euphoric highs and devastating lows with barely a pause for breath inbetween. And when people started getting shirty because I was late delivering DISINTEGRATION, I thought fuck ‘em.

It wasn’t until early 2008 when, thanks to Thomas Dunne Books acquiring rights to the HATER novels, I was finally able to quit work again and devote some time to writing. My first project was DISINTEGRATION, and the book was finished within a few months. And just as I was about to release it, Thomas Dunne in the US and Gollancz in the UK bought the rights to the AUTUMN series and publication was pulled. As you probably already know if you’re reading this, DISINTEGRATION didn’t see the light of day until November 2011.

It’s a book I’m really proud of. Running parallel with PURIFICATION, it extended the series logically and set up AUTUMN: AFTERMATH. It gave me a chance to write about a wider range of people than ever in a variety of locations from full-on urban decay to Survivors-like post-apocalyptic countryside opulence (of a sort). The bloodiest and most violent of the books, I hope it succeeded in showing why I reckon it won’t necessarily be the strongest or the fittest who survive the zombie apocalypse, it’ll probably be the people who think.

And finally, about that dog. I’ve written here before about my youngest daughter, and how she struggled with a condition called Selective Mutism. There’s a post about it here. One of the ways we tried to help her was to get a dog. SM is an anxiety problem which renders sufferers unable to speak, and the logic was that being out in public with a dog would give our little girl a ‘shield’ so she could deal more confidently with people she didn’t know. I won’t go into the ins and outs right now. Long story short, it worked, and now we can’t shut Zoe up! But I didn’t want a dog. When I left work and started writing full-time, I inherited the damn thing and feeding, walking and cleaning up after her became my responsibility. And looking back now, I can see my frustrations coming through in DISINTEGRATION.

            Harte looked around anxiously. He could hear something. It was a clack-clack-clacking sound, coming towards them along a corridor on their right. It didn’t sound human, but it was moving much too quickly to be one of the dead. He instinctively looked around for a weapon, but immediately relaxed when the source of the sound appeared: a scruffy black-and-white dog with short, wiry fur wearing a tatty red collar poked its head through the doorway and ran out, its claws tapping against the terracotta floor tiles as it moved. It stopped and cocked its head to one side, then looked back over its shoulder at the sound of more footsteps, heavier this time, and much slower.

A tall, stocky red-faced man who was hopelessly out of breath entered the room and grabbed hold of the dog’s collar. ‘Wow!’ he said, looking with disbelief at the size of the crowd gathered in reception.

            ‘This is Howard Reece,’ Martin said, and Howard grinned.

            ‘Good to see you all,’ he wheezed, relaxing and letting go of the dog.

It bounded over to Lorna and began to sniff at her dirty, bloodstained trousers and boots. She leant down and stroked its head. ‘What a beautiful dog,’ she said, ruffling its short fur. ‘What’s its name?’

            ‘I just call her Dog,’ Howard replied.

            ‘Original,’ Jas said sarcastically.

            ‘She doesn’t care,’ Howard said with a wry smile. ‘She  just attached herself to me when all this started, and now I can’t get rid of her.’

For the record, we’ve still got her. And as I type this, she’s doing all she can to stop me working. Bloody animal!

AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books

Autumn: Disintegration

Therapy time again… I’m writing these posts just to get them out of my system as I prepare to draw a line under the AUTUMN series. Today I’m looking at book four, DISINTEGRATION. I’ll have a couple of posts about short stories next week, then a piece about AFTERMATH to coincide with the UK release of the final book later this month. To learn more about the series, visit www.lastoftheliving.net.

When I finished writing AUTUMN: PURIFICATION, I thought that was it for the series. Then I realised I still had more to say and wrote THE HUMAN CONDITION (more about that book and AUTUMN: ECHOES next week). Once again, I thought I was through with zombies. But as I finished writing HATER back in early 2006, I changed my mind again and found a reason to return to AUTUMN.

The books were taking a critical hammering. They still do, to be fair, although these days people seem to be a little more accepting of zombie stories devoid of the usual flesh-eating clichés. For every positive comment I received, I seemed to get many more decrying the lack of blood, guts, guns and action in the novels. That frustrated me beyond belief. It would have been one thing criticising me if I’d done blood, guts, guns and action badly, but to have a pop because those things weren’t there seemed a little below the belt. I’m not one to respond confrontationally to a bad review (because we all know where that can lead) but I did need a way to work through my frustrations. AUTUMN: DISINTEGRATION was it. I decided to see what would happen if I dumped a group of stereotypical zombie survivors into AUTUMN. I wanted to know how they’d cope.

But there had to be more to the new book than that. It had to be more than just following a group of folks battering their way through the living dead, because that would have made it just another bland, run of the mill zombie tale and I wanted to do something different. It occurred to me it would be infinitely more interesting to pit survivor against survivor: to imagine what might happen when those who’d managed to stay alive by fighting and killing were forced to try and survive alongside those who’d taken a more cautious approach. The potential for conflict was huge. You could argue they’d all chosen the right way because they were all still alive, but who would back down first? With all their lives on the line, would anyone accede?

I started a new job in August 2006. On the morning commute, driving along the motorway away from the centre of town, I passed by some very different looking buildings which sparked my interest. First was a series of particularly ugly blocks of flats: huge, three-winged monstrosities which dominated their surroundings and yet which managed also to look completely out of place against a backdrop of fields and rolling hills, as if the rest of the world was fighting to eject them. Further along the road was a large hotel which seemed more isolated than it actually was, but which looked like the ideal place in which to hole-up and sit out the zombie apocalypse. By the way, this year I moved house and I now live much nearer to both locations. Here’s a photograph of the flats in question, taken a couple of weeks back whilst walking the dog (who I’ll talk more about in a minute).

The pieces of the story seemed to just fall into place. Surrounded by new work colleagues in a new environment, inspiration for many of the characters came quickly (though I’m not going to say who inspired me or how!). I had an outline, some great scenes in mind, I’d made an announcement about the new book, and then… well then the real world got in the way. I was working full time whilst keeping Infected Books running in the evenings. Then life became beautifully chaotic when I sold the film rights to both AUTUMN and HATER in quick succession. In the midst of all of this, my father-in-law became seriously ill and we were visiting regularly – 400 mile round trips pretty much every weekend until he passed away. It was an incredibly strange time: euphoric highs and devastating lows with barely a pause for breath inbetween. And when people started getting shirty because I was late delivering DISINTEGRATION, I thought fuck ‘em.

It wasn’t until early 2008 when, thanks to Thomas Dunne Books acquiring rights to the HATER novels, I was finally able to quit work again and devote some time to writing. My first project was DISINTEGRATION, and the book was finished within a few months. And just as I was about to release it, Thomas Dunne in the US and Gollancz in the UK bought the rights to the AUTUMN series and publication was pulled. As you probably already know if you’re reading this, DISINTEGRATION didn’t see the light of day until November 2011.

It’s a book I’m really proud of. Running parallel with PURIFICATION, it extended the series logically and set up AUTUMN: AFTERMATH. It gave me a chance to write about a wider range of people than ever in a variety of locations from full-on urban decay to Survivors-like post-apocalyptic countryside opulence (of a sort). The bloodiest and most violent of the books, I hope it succeeded in showing why I reckon it won’t necessarily be the strongest or the fittest who survive the zombie apocalypse, it’ll probably be the people who think.

And finally, about that dog. I’ve written here before about my youngest daughter, and how she struggled with a condition called Selective Mutism. There’s a post about it here. One of the ways we tried to help her was to get a dog. SM is an anxiety problem which renders sufferers unable to speak, and the logic was that being out in public with a dog would give our little girl a ‘shield’ so she could deal more confidently with people she didn’t know. I won’t go into the ins and outs right now. Long story short, it worked, and now we can’t shut Zoe up! But I didn’t want a dog. When I left work and started writing full-time, I inherited the damn thing and feeding, walking and cleaning up after her became my responsibility. And looking back now, I can see my frustrations coming through in DISINTEGRATION.

            Harte looked around anxiously. He could hear something. It was a clack-clack-clacking sound, coming towards them along a corridor on their right. It didn’t sound human, but it was moving much too quickly to be one of the dead. He instinctively looked around for a weapon, but immediately relaxed when the source of the sound appeared: a scruffy black-and-white dog with short, wiry fur wearing a tatty red collar poked its head through the doorway and ran out, its claws tapping against the terracotta floor tiles as it moved. It stopped and cocked its head to one side, then looked back over its shoulder at the sound of more footsteps, heavier this time, and much slower.

A tall, stocky red-faced man who was hopelessly out of breath entered the room and grabbed hold of the dog’s collar. ‘Wow!’ he said, looking with disbelief at the size of the crowd gathered in reception.

            ‘This is Howard Reece,’ Martin said, and Howard grinned.

            ‘Good to see you all,’ he wheezed, relaxing and letting go of the dog.

It bounded over to Lorna and began to sniff at her dirty, bloodstained trousers and boots. She leant down and stroked its head. ‘What a beautiful dog,’ she said, ruffling its short fur. ‘What’s its name?’

            ‘I just call her Dog,’ Howard replied.

            ‘Original,’ Jas said sarcastically.

            ‘She doesn’t care,’ Howard said with a wry smile. ‘She  just attached herself to me when all this started, and now I can’t get rid of her.’

For the record, we’ve still got her. And as I type this, she’s doing all she can to stop me working. Bloody animal!

Autumn: Disintegration is a post from: David Moody - author of TRUST and the HATER and AUTUMN books