A Goodreads user asked Ilsa J. Bick:

What inspired the 'zombies' in Ashes?

Ilsa J. Bick Glad you asked! I don't have any particular fascination for zombies, and the Changed aren't really zombies anyway. They are teenagers whose brains have been fundamentally altered in ways that we don't understand, and all of a sudden, teens becomes these dangerous but contradictory beings--kind of like what parents think about teenagers already! ;-).

The reason I did this was because I'd already set up that the EMPs affect various age groups in different ways on the basis of brain development. (And, yeah, I still wanted to be as close to science as I could. Kincaid kind of says it: in contrast to the adult brain, kids' brains are quite plastic and malleable. Kids can survive traumatic brain injuries that would kill or make an adult into a head of cabbage. Teenagers' brains are already a bit bizarre. These are brains in active flux, flooded with chemicals and new potential (for real). They're highly creative; they're also very narcissistic. Their sleep-wake cycles change. All sorts of stuff is going on in there. Parents joke all the time that their kids have turned into aliens.

So that's why I did it. I took real biology, real science and tried to turn it on its head.

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