Why spend so much of my creative energy wandering worlds teetering on the edge of collapse?
(Like in my After The World Ends series and Zombies Are Human series)
It goes way back to childhood me—the kid clutching a library card like a passport, leaping into stories where zombies skulked in shadows, portals spilled open like ink, and ancient mysteries lurked in dusty corners.
Even now, when life’s too much…
(missing deadlines, anyone?)
…the lure of forging new worlds—dangerous, yes, but also resilient and strange—never gets old.
Writing apocalypse fiction is a chance to give myself the challenge of peeling back the layers—challenge what it means to survive, to hope, to love fiercely even when everything else unravels.
In After The World Ends, Dessa’s devotion to her brother Ivan anchors the entire story. Every risky choice, every wild gambit, is driven by that bone-deep urge to protect the people we love—even when the path is all brambles and heartbreak.
Let’s be honest—Dessa doesn’t have an easy time of it, but she discovers a strength she never knew she had. Writing some of those scenes felt like holding a mirror up to my own messiest emotions.
(while trying not to spill tea on the keyboard—again).
There’s something comforting in the process, like untangling a seemingly hopeless snarl in your favorite scarf and realizing, thread by thread, it can be made whole.
The infected in After The World Ends aren’t just monsters lurking for a cheap scare—they’re (slippery?) metaphors for what we’re all a little afraid to lose: our sense of self. Dessa’s fight to preserve her humanity, even as the world falls apart, is the fight we all have on bad days.
(And, hey, especially on deadline weeks).
If you ever laughed at someone cracking a joke in the middle of disaster, you’ll understand—humor is our last-ditch defense against despair. When the world feels bleak, sometimes all you can do is snark at the darkness and hope it snarks back.
Personally, I survive manuscript meltdown days (I’m finishing up a book draft) with a steady diet of memes and the occasional talking-to-my-cat therapy session.
But what I love most, and what keeps me coming back to these kind of stories, is the way ordinary places transform under extraordinary pressure: a familiar neighborhood reimagined as a battleground, a city street morphing into a crossroads between hope and ruin. I swear, every time I walk the greenbelt or pass the library, my brain’s rewriting reality into post-apocalyptic possibilities.
It’s a privilege to write stories that connect us across whatever end-of-the-world scenario life throws at us next.
I can’t wait to share what’s ahead.
