Colin M. Drysdale's Blog, page 27

What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse: No. 4 – The Sinking Ship Dilemma

Your boat’s sinking and it’s sinking fast. You have two choices and only moments to decide: You can stay in the water and hope that someone rescues you before the sharks start to circle or you can make for the shore and take your chances with the zombies that now rule the land. What do you do?

Take Our Poll

As always, this dilemma is just here to make you think, so there’s no right or wrong answer. Vote in the poll to let others what you do if you were in this situation, and if you want to give a more detailed answer, leave a comment on this posting.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle eBook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here or visit https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/for-those-in-peril-on-the-sea/

For Those In Peril On The Sea – Now Available In Print In The US And As A Kindle eBook

Primarily set in the northern Bahamas, For Those In Peril On the Sea weaves its tale of post-apocalyptic survival into the local sub-tropical seascape and the sailing culture that can be found there. With its evocative use of real locations haunted by zombie-like infected and atmospheric depictions of the trials of life at sea drawn from the author’s own experiences, this debut novel from Colin M. Drysdale provides a new and unusual take on the traditional post-apocalyptic and zombie genres.

For Those In Peril On The Sea.

Originally released by Pictish Beast Publications in the UK on the 3rd January 2013, For Those In Peril On The Sea is now available for the first time as a paperback in the US/Internationally and as a Kindle ebook. To purchase in the US, click here. To purchase in the UK, click here. For all other countries, either visit your national Amazon site or click here to purchase from Amazon.com.

What The Official Reviewers Say:

‘… For Those in Peril on the Sea is not a mere imitator of currently popular zombie books and films. Drysdale’s novel proves different and superior in concept as well as content. The infected are unusual in ways that make them seem terrifyingly real, and the idea of the survivors being trapped offshore is an imaginative and effective twist. While some scenes in the book can be graphic and brutal, Drysdale never allows them to become gratuitous, and each disturbing moment serves a purpose in the plot. The tone of barely suppressed terror is emphasized by the author’s willingness to write as ruthlessly as his story demands: readers will quickly learn that even those who seem most deserving of survival can quite easily fall victim to the infected. …’ ‘Five Stars (out of five).’ – Foreword Clarion Reviews (click here to read the whole review).

What Readers Say:

(the book has been available in the UK since January and unofficially as an ebook and in the US/Internationally since 9th of March 2013)

‘As a long term fan of post apocalyptic fiction (The Stand, The Passage, World War Z etc.) I’m always keen to try out a new author. However, I must confess to a growing weariness with zombie fiction as it so often involves the same old stereotypes and locations – it’s been done to death – no pun intended. So I was pleasantly surprised that “For Those in Peril” served up some genuinely fresh ideas. So often tales of the zombie apocalypse centre around a group of survivors trapped in some urban location trying to escape to some safe haven, quite often the ocean, and when they finally get their hands on a boat they either suffer some cruel last minute attack or sail off into the sunset. But what happens next? Well that’s where this book comes in, exploring the consequences of life after the apocalypse. …’ Four Stars out of Five. Click here to read the whole review.

‘This is a quick read and fun for those into the zombie genre … I found I couldn’t put the book down and whizzed through it, while sitting on a sunny deck with a drink in my other hand. The author has obviously thought a lot about the practicalities of being stuck on a boat during a zombie infestation. …’ Five Stars out of Five. Click here to read the whole review.

Preview The Book:

Extracts from the first three chapters can be downloaded as a PDF from the book’s website (www.forthoseinperil.net) by clicking here.

From the back of the book:

After a six week voyage across the Atlantic, they couldn’t wait to get to shore. When they got there, they found the land would never be safe again…

There was nothing to suggest it would be anything other than a routine delivery. Four people thrown together by chance, sailing a newly-built catamaran from South Africa to Miami. But while they were away, something happened, something none of them could ever have imagined. When they get back to civilisation, they find it no longer exists. The land is no longer safe. Their only option is to stay on the boat and try to survive.

Join Bill, Rob, Jon and CJ as they travel around their frightening new world. One where they must struggle against the infected that now rule the land, the elements and each other.

 About The Author:

As a marine biologist, Colin M. Drysdale has spent plenty of time at sea with no land in sight but he is always glad when he finally gets back to shore. This novel is inspired by a thought that often plagues him during his voyages. What would he do if something happened while he was away and he could never go back?

For more information contact: Publicity@PictishBeastPublications.com.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

The Bookshop – A Flash Fiction Zombie Story

I don’t feel hungry anymore; I haven’t since yesterday morning. I guess after a while your body just gives up expecting food. It must be different with water though because my thirst keeps getting worse. I need to do something about it or it’ll drive me mad but that would mean going outside; Mark did that the day before yesterday and he hadn’t made it more than a few feet. I’d rather die in here than go outside and face them – but god I need something: beer, wine, Coke, anything. Hell, I’d probably even take a Pepsi. This thought makes me laugh. The old world’s gone and yet the advertisers still have their hooks in me.

There’s a half-hearted bang on the security shutter: they know I’m in here but they also seem to sense I’m close to death because they’re losing interest. At first, when I was still strong, they hammered on it almost continuously and I was sure they were going to break through. Mark was still here then so maybe that had something to do with it. We’d worked together in our tiny bookshop for six years and while we’d never had many customers, enough came through the door to keep us afloat; just. At first we thought we’d got lucky, getting the shutter down in time to stop any of them getting in but after a few hours we realised we should have run the moment they first appeared. Instead we’d locked ourselves in and we were now trapped in a room filled with nothing but books and they wouldn’t help us survive; I know because I tried eating a couple of pages from The Raven on the third day to see if it would ease my hunger – It didn’t; it just made my stomach hurt. That’s when Mark got the idea of making a break for it into his head. I did my best to talk him out of it but his mind was set, so as quietly as possible we’d inched the shutter up just enough for him to slide underneath before I slammed it down again, and that was the end of Mark.

***

I’ve been sitting with my back against the counter for almost a day now; too weak to move. I wonder how many others there are like me: trapped and dying while they roam the streets outside. How many, like Mark, had tried to run? How many had been killed? I’m guessing all of them. Yesterday, when I could still stand, I’d peeked through the little gap in the shutter. I found if I moved my head around I could see most of the street. I could see where the pieces of Mark’s body were strewn across the pavement. Much of his flesh was gone, either torn off as he was killed or chewed off when they fed on him afterwards. I saw two of them too: crouched down, picking away at his skull. One poked at it with a bony finger causing Mark’s left eye to pop from its socket. It dangled there for a moment, swinging back and forth, before it was bitten off and swallowed.

A thought occurs to me: it mightn’t have been painless but at least Mark’s death was quick. If I was braver I’d pull up the shutter and take my chances with them rather than just sitting here, doing nothing other than dying; but I’m not – I never have been. All I can do is wait for death to come and wonder how long it will be before I’m finally free.

***

Flash (or micro) fiction aims to tell a whole story within a specific short word limit. For this one, the target was 600 words and I think it comes in at 598 so I was pretty close. A PDF of this story can be downloaded from here.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review (where it scored five stars out of five) of For Those In Peril On The Sea click here or visit https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/for-those-in-peril-on-the-sea/

For Those In Peril On The Sea – The First Official Review Is Out And It’s Five Stars Out Of Five!

For Those In Peril On The Sea.

Two days in advance of the official release of For Those In Peril On the Sea as a paperback in the US/Internationally and as a Kindle ebook, the first major review is out … And it’s five stars out of five! It’s a Foreword Clarion Review and you can read it on their website by clicking here, or you can download it as a PDF by clicking here.

To give you a taster of what the reviewer said, here’s an excerpt:

‘… For Those in Peril on the Sea is not a mere imitator of currently popular zombie books and films. Drysdale’s novel proves different and superior in concept as well as content. The infected are unusual in ways that make them seem terrifyingly real, and the idea of the survivors being trapped offshore is an imaginative and effective twist. While some scenes in the book can be graphic and brutal, Drysdale never allows them to become gratuitous, and each disturbing moment serves a purpose in the plot. The tone of barely suppressed terror is emphasized by the author’s willingness to write as ruthlessly as his story demands: readers will quickly learn that even those who seem most deserving of survival can quite easily fall victim to the infected. …’

To purchase For Those In Peril On The Sea in the US, click here. To purchase in the UK, click here. For all other countries, either visit your national Amazon site or click here to purchase from Amazon.com.

Extracts from the first three chapters can be downloaded as a PDF from the book’s website (www.forthoseinperil.net) by clicking here.

*****************************************************************************

From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.


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Flaming Zombies: Using Fire For Defence Against The Undead.

When dealing with zombies, most people assume the only way to dispatch them is decapitation or destroying the brain by smashing their heads in, yet there is another way: fire. Fire has the potential to turn even the most voracious zombie into nothing more than a pile of ashes that’s incapable of doing anyone any harm. However, zombies are unlikely to stand still while you light your trusty Zippo and set their clothes ablaze so if you want to use fire against them you’ll need an effective way of doing it.

If you’re lucky, you may be able to get hold of a flame-thrower giving you the capability of toasting the undead to a crisp before they get close enough to sink their teeth into your soft pink flesh. If you can’t, there’s always the good old Molotov cocktail or petrol bomb. As rioters and guerrilla fighters have proven over and over again since the 1930s, these remarkably simple devices can be effective weapons but getting hold of the fuel to make them may be a bit of a problem. If you have the time you can also cook up some home-made napalm in your bath tub and that could prove useful if you can find a way of deploying it without setting fire to yourself too. Finally, there’s the fire ditch. This is an ancient defensive strategy that could help defend compounds and safe areas. The basic idea here is that you dig a deep, wide trench around your encampment and fill it with highly combustible materials. This can then be set alight whenever zombies attack, reducing them to cinders as they try to get through it. Used properly, this is probably one of the most effective ways of stopping a zombie horde over-running your defences.

However, using fire to kill zombies can be as dangerous for you as it is to them. By its very nature, fire is capricious and difficult to control. Once started, a fire can quickly get out of hand and you may find that instead of protecting you from the undead, it turns and forces you into their outstretched arms (and gaping mouths!). There’s also the issue that zombies won’t feel pain so they won’t stop just because they happen to be going up in smoke. This means that you can end up with flaming zombies stumbling around setting fire to anything they come into contact wtih, including you and your safe house. As a result, fire is a weapon you should use sparingly and with great care. It’s also something you should only use under carefully planned circumstances meaning it’s not a weapon you should unthinkingly reach for in the heat of a zombie attack. If you do, there’s a very good chance you’ll find yourself facing the stark choice of staying where you are and being burnt alive or fleeing the burning building and being eaten by the zombies that surround it – that’s a situation no one would want to find themselves in!

When planning to use fire, there’s a few things you need to think about. Firstly, you need to make sure that there’s as little stuff nearby that either you or a burning zombie could accidentally set fire to. This means it’s a good weapon to use on a city street but bad one to use in the middle of a forest (I know this is obvious but it still needs saying!). Secondly, you need to make sure you have some way of putting out the fire in case it gets out of hand. This can be water, fire-extinguishers or the types of beaters used to combat wild fires but whatever it is you need to have it close at hand before you start lighting up your zombies. Thirdly, you need to have a very clear idea of how you’re going to deploy it and who’s going to be using it. What you don’t want to be doing is using fire in a panicked situation where no one knows what they, or anyone else, is doing. Used in this way, fire can be your friend and defender, used any other way it’s likely to cause you as many problems as the zombies themselves.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

Five Great Words For Grizzly Ways To End Up Dead In A Zombie Apocalypse

You know how it is, you come across a great word, one that just rolls off the tongue, and you immediately want to find an excuse to use it. Since I’ve been writing a lot of zombie/infected short stories and flash fiction in the last couple of months, I’ve been building up a small collection of such words that are related to grizzly ways for a life to come to an end. Despite their gruesome connotations, there’s just something about the sound of them that really appeals. They aren’t necessarily the easiest words to weave seamlessly into a story so I thought I’d post them here just for an excuse to use them in a zombie-related context.

Decapitation: As the newscaster says in Shaun Of The Dead, ‘… the assailants can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain. I will repeat that: by removing the head or destroying the brain.’ And removing the head is just another way of saying, you guessed it, decapitation. In a zombie apocalypse, whether it’s with a machete, a katana or a chainsaw, decapitation is widely recognised as one of the best ways to kill the walking dead.

Evisceration: This involves the removal of the internal organs, usually with a large blade of some kind or other and to the extreme (and often fatal) detriment of the person involved. It’s pretty much synonymous with disembowelment (a good word in it’s own right). Come the zombie apocalypse, this is the most likely way you’ll go if the undead get hold of you as they tear into the tender flesh of your belly. Of course, you can also eviscerate a zombie too. It probably won’t stop it but it might slow it down a bit as it drags it’s guts behind it through the dirt.

Exsanguination: Exsanguination is just fancy way of saying blood loss but it sounds so much better (the word – not the blood loss!). The average human has about eight pints of blood sloshing around in their veins and if you lose any more about three of them, there’s a good chance you’ll die. It doesn’t matter whether you lose it fast and all at once (if you severe the artery at the top of your leg the blood will spurt a good six feet in the air as it gushes from your body and you’ll last only a matter of minutes if you don’t stop it) or slowly but steadily over a longer period of time (such as when you have a cut that won’t stop bleeding), either way you’ll end up dead. If you’re looking to kill zombies, don’t think about exsanguination – being dead, the blood doesn’t flow through a zombies veins so they won’t bleed out no matter how deep you cut them. You, however, can so don’t let those flesh-munchers get too close.

Immolation: Coming from the Latin immolare, meaning ‘to sacrifice’, immolation is now most commonly used to refer to setting someone on fire. It’s something which first came into western consciousness when a Buddhist monk killed himself by setting himself on fire (known as self-immolation) in 1963 as a protest against the Vietnam war. Regardless of it’s gruesome meaning, immolation has a great ring to it. In the zombie apocalypse, immolation is probably the only way to kill a zombie that doesn’t involve inflicting brain damage or (to go back to the first word on this list) decapitation.

Defenestration: This is one of my favourite words, mostly because you wouldn’t think there’d be a specific word in the English language for being forcibly ejected from a window but there it and it’s defenestration. The word is most frequently associated with the ‘Defenestration of Prague’ in 1618 but it can refer to anything being thrown from a window (I defenestrated an old computer printer once because it kept jamming every time I tried to print something – in my defence it had been a long day and the machine had been asking for it for weeks). Technically defenestration doesn’t necessarily have to result in death but it frequently does due to lacerations from the glass (if the window hasn’t been opened first) or the fall from a great height. In the zombie apocalypse, defenestration is one of the fastest ways to get a pesky zombie out of your safe house but let’s face it you shouldn’t have let it get in in the first place, should you?. Oh and if you’ve boarded up the windows properly, defenestrating a zombie ain’t going to be easy!




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse: No. 3 – The Brother Dilemma

Your only gun slips from your waistband as you scramble into the dingy after your brother and push away from the dock. You lie back thinking you’re finally safe; then you realise he’s been bitten. At first you try to stop the bleeding but slowly the severity of your situation dawns on you. You’re brother’s going to turn and if both of you are still in the small boat when that happens he’ll attack; with so little space and no weapons to hand, there will be little you can do to defend yourself. You wrack your brains but you can only come up with two options: you could swim back to shore where you’d have to constantly fight for your survival or you could throw your brother into the water before he turns – he’d drown but you’d be able to stay in the safety of the boat. What do you do?

Take Our Poll

As always, this dilemma is just here to make you think, so there’s no right or wrong answer. Vote in the poll to let others what you do if you were in this situation, and if you want to give a more detailed answer, leave a comment on this posting.

*****************************************************************************

From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

The Emergency Room – A Flash Fiction Zombie Story

I regain consciousness to find I’m strapped to a bed and cannot move. I hear someone shuffling towards me and see a flash of white coat. There’s an odd odour in the air; almost like decaying flesh. A shadow looms over me then teeth tear into my neck and I know I’m going to die.

***

Flash (or micro) fiction aims to tell a whole story within a specific short word limit. For this one, I borrowed the 55 word target from the Zombie Authors blog, a site I’d highly recommend visiting. A PDF of this story can be downloaded from here.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

Seven Unusual Weapons That Might Prove Useful When Fighting Zombies

If you do an internet search for weapon can be used to killing zombies you will find a wealth of information but almost everyone recommends pretty much the same things: Guns, machetes, the occasional katana and baseball bats galore. Yes, these weapons will be useful (although I’m not necessarily a fan of using guns for fighting zombies – the noise will only attract more of the pesky flesh-munchers and, sooner or later, you’ll run out of bullets) but there’s a much wider range of possible weapons out there.

Just to give you some food for thought here’s a few of the more unusual weapons that might prove useful when fighting zombies. Most of these can either be made out of things you might find lying around after dead start walking the earth or can be ‘liberated’ from any nearby historical museum (I already have my eye on the armoury section of my local one for a few of these!)

1. Ballista: The ballista was developed by the ancient Romans and it was their equivalent of a heavy calibre machine gun. It’s main advantage over similar modern weapons is that you don’t need things like gun powder or bullets to make it work, and come the zombie apocalypse such things are going to be in short supply. It’s also relatively silent meaning that using it won’t attract the attention of other zombies whenever you use it. It’s not really a portable weapon so primarily this is a weapon you could use to take out zombies approaching a compound or safe area while they’re some distance away, and possibly before they’re even aware you are there. It’s main limitations are that it has a relatively slow reload rate and it’s not something you’ll find lying around. With a bit of thought and some time, however, you can make one yourself.

2. Boomerang: We might think of boomerangs as novelty souvenirs people bring back for their friends from Australia but they were originally developed as hunting weapons and are perfect for smashing in the skulls of zombies from a distance while making little or no sound. The main disadvantages of boomerangs are that it can take a bit of practice before you can throw one properly and that once you’ve taken out a zombie, you’ll either have to go get it or abandon it. This means it will be most useful for taking out lone wanderers rather than large hordes.

3. Maces, morning stars and Flails: Maces and morning stars are clubs tipped with a flanged or spiky metal head. They were designed in the middle ages to smash through armour so they’re the perfect melee weapon for taking out zombies at close quarters. Related to these are flails where the metal head it attached to the club by a short chain. Similar weapons have been invented in other parts of the world, including nunchuks and the three-section staff from the far east. Flail-type weapons are more difficult to use than maces (I almost caved my own skull in with a three-section staff the first time I ever tried to use it!) but in the right hands they can be extremely effective. Their main disadvantage is that you have to be up close with a zombie to use them and you’d be better avoiding being that close in the first place.

4. Halbards and Pikes: Halbards consist of a pole around six feet long with a metal blade, hook and point on the end of it. They’re the original Swiss multi-tool and were around centuries ubiquitous Swiss army knife ever even thought of. Against zombies, they’d be effective both at keeping zombies at a distance while dispatching them through decapitation or piercing their brains. However, they’re best used when there’s a group of you all using them in consort and that might be a limitation. Related to halbards are pikes. They’re thrusting weapons with a sharp metal tip mounted on a pole that’s between ten and twenty-five feet in length. Used on their own, they are unwieldy but used by a well-trained group they can prove remarkably effective for holding off attacks from large crowds. Their use in the hedgehog formation has a lot of potential as a defensive, or even offensive, tactic against zombies. Here a group of people armed with pikes form a circle each with their pike pointing forward, preventing anyone, or anything, approaching without getting impaled. In this respect you can think of the hedgehog formation as being like a mobile palisade. Traditionally, this formation was use to hold off cavalry and when combined with bowmen who can take pot-shots at the enemy from the safely in the centre of the ‘hedgehog’ is an extremely effective defensive structure when trapped in the open. This makes it a potentially useful option for defending yourself against zombie hordes when you have no where else to go.

5. The Claymore: This isn’t the modern weapon of the same name but rather the large, double-handed broadsword traditionally used by Scottish warriors. Those who have seen the film Highlander will have a fairly good idea of what this weapon looks like as it’s the one used by the character Conor MacLeod (played by Christopher Lambert) at the start the movie. They are amongst the most powerful of swords and would be extremely useful at dispatching zombies. The main limitation of a claymore is that you need a fair amount of strength to be able to wield one effectively.

6. The sling: This is not the kind of thing you might have played around with as a kid (that’s a slingshot or a catapult) but rather the weapon David used to slay Goliath. They’re simple to make, silent to use, easy to carry and you’ll never run our of ammunition since there will always be plenty of stones on the ground. They may take a bit of practice to use but since they can be folded up very small, you can always carry one tucked away just in case. Make one, practice using it and always keep it with you just in case the zombie apocalypse catches you by surprise.

7. Bolas: The bolas is a throwing weapon originally designed to capture and bring down large prey. They consist of three pieces of rope tied together in the middle with a weight at the other end of each of them and their simplicity means that they’re easy to make. They wouldn’t be much good for killing zombies but they’d be really quite good at immobilising them by tangling their legs together. In a tight situation, a bolas might be just buy you the precious seconds you need to escape.

Anyway, these are just a few of the many possible weapons other than your usual guns and baseball bats that might prove useful when you find yourself fighting off hordes of zombies and I’m sure there are many others too. When the dead start to rise it will be too late to start looking around to see what else is out there, so why not take the time now to look around and see what other options might be available. Good places to start are your local museum (if you happen to have one nearby) or through an internet search, and while you’re doing this, you never know what else you might learn about the past or about other cultures.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

Enhancing Your Readers’ Experience With An Interactive Map Layer For Google Earth

As a writer, I tend to set my stories in real locations. Often these will be locations that I’m very familiar with but since a lot of them are far from the beaten track, I realise that those reading the stories may have no idea know where they are. This can make it hard for them to visualise how the story fits into the local landscape. However, I’ve found a solution to this. This is to make an interactive map layer that your readers can view in Google Earth.

If you’re not familiar with it, Google Earth is an extremely powerful mapping tool that allows you to explore almost anywhere on Earth in exquisite detail using satellite and aerial photographs, and I’m sure many writers already use it during the research for their work. However, what many are not aware of is that you can also use Google Earth to provide your readers with more information about where your story is set. This is done by creating what’s called a map layer that can be displayed in Google Earth. These map layers can contain all sorts of useful information, such as the locations of specific places, and the routes that people take through the local landscape as the story progresses. You can also add bits of information to these locations that interested readers can access by clicking on individual symbols in your map layer. While it might seem a bit complicated at first, these map layers are actually very easy to create and once you post them online (for example on the server for your blog or webpage), anyone you provide the link to will be able to access them.

At this stage, you might be having trouble visualising what I’m talking about here, so the best thing I can do is to show you some examples. Recently I wrote a short story set on a remote group of Scottish Islands (the Flannan Isles). I doubt many people, even in Scotland, would be able to point to them on a map but since it’s remoteness was an important element of the story, I figured it would be useful for the readers to know where they were. This is why I created a map layer to accompany the story. Before you can view it, you’ll need to have either Google Earth (if you’re using a PC running windows) or one of the Google Earth mobile apps (if you’re using something that runs on some other operating system) installed on your device. Once you have you can click here to have a look at the map layer I’ve put together to accompany this story. This should open Google Earth and you’ll see that as well as the usual Google Earth information, there’s a red dot off the northwest coast of Scotland, like this:

Google Earth map Layer Marking The Location Of Flannan Isle Lighthouse

This marks the location of the Flannan Isles, and specifically the Flannan Isles lighthouse. If you click on this red dot, it will open a window where you can read a bit of background information about lighthouse there where the story was set, like this:

Information Window For Flannan Isle Symbol

If you’re interested in reading the story itself (it’s a zombie story called When Death Came To Flannan Isle), you can click here to download a PDF of it.

In the Flannan Isle example, there’s only a single symbol but you can have more than one and you can have lines and shapes as well as dots. You can see this in another example I’ve put together. This is to accompany another short story that’s set in the modern day around the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall, an ancient Roman fortification that separates Scotland and England (I posted it here last week). Again, this is a location that not everyone may be familiar with. Here’s what it looks like:

The location of Hadrian’s Wall between Scotland and England

This time the map layers contains not just a dot indicating where the story is set, but also a line that shows the route of Hadrian’s Wall itself. While you can look at it at the national level, you can also zoom in and look at it at the local level too, like this:

Close up of the location where the story is set

As before, clicking on these symbols opens up a small window that contains more information about each feature, like this:

Information window for location where the story is set

You’ll see that within this information box, there’s also a link that allows anyone looking at the map layer to click on to download the story itself. If you want to examine this in more detail, you can download this map layer here and the story itself (called The Wall) here.

While these examples of ways in which the use of map layers to enhance the tale you’re telling your reader are both short stories, there’s no reason you can’t do the same for longer stories and even whole novels. I’ve done this to accompany my novel For Those In Peril On The Sea, which is set in the northern Bahamas. Since this is not a part of the world many people are familiar, the interactive map layer I’ve put together helps the reader put the story within the local landscape. In this case the map layers are more complicated with different coloured symbols for different groups of characters and a separate file for each chapter. I’ll be putting out a specific posting about this just after the book’s released in the US on the 21st of March 2013 but if you want to take a sneaky peek at how this works now, you can click here to visit the webpage where you can access them.

Not all stories and books will be as equally well-suited to having accompanying maps created for them but for those that are, it provide another way to interact with the reader and enhance their enjoyment of the tale you are telling and hopefully this posting will encourage you to give it a go.

If you’d like to find out exactly how to make map layers like this to accompany your stories, let me know and I can provide some helpful tips to get you started. Just drop me a comment on this post and I’ll provide the information in my reply.

If you’d be interested in having such layers created to accompany any of your own work, please email me at info[at]forthoseinperil.net and we can discuss it further.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.