January 11, 2021
Broken World Post One
It’s Broken World Week!
Just to quickly recap what’s going on, I’m taking this year to revisit the books I’ve written in the order they were published, complete with insider info on what inspired me, any interesting tidbits about the characters or settings, and lots of other cool details about me and my work. Each week I’ll not only feature a new book, but I’ll also drop the price for that week, giving readers a chance to take advantage of a really great deal. Plus, I’m doing a giveaway for a signed paperback!
Week 2, Day 1 – Broken World
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Release Date: July 2, 2014
Cover Design: Jimmy Gibbs
Formats: ebook, audiobook, and paperback
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Universal
Audible
Goodreads
As a deadly virus sweeps the country, Vivian Thomas teams with brothers, Angus and Axl, in hopes of making it across the country to find the daughter she gave up for adoption. By the time they make it to California, most of the population has been wiped out, but when the dead start coming back, they quickly realize that no electricity or running water are the least of their concerns.
When did you write Broken World?
I talked about this a little bit last week, but in case you didn’t read about Collision, I’ll give a brief recap before I go into more detail. I started writing in 2012 and wrote a little over three books before Broken World. The earliest draft I can find of this book was in my YahooMail folder (I used to send myself drafts of all my books because saving stuff in the cloud was still new at the time and I didn’t trust it) from December 23, 2012, which means I probably started writing it in fall of that year. The Walking Dead was on season 3 when I started writing it – which is something I will address later – and was, as everyone knows, a huge inspiration for the Broken World series.
As I said last week, I was living in California in 2012. We were in Fairfield, CA, stationed at Travis AFB, and I had four little kids and a husband who was overseas a lot, giving me tons of free time. Zombies were so popular and I had always loved them, so I thought: What the hell? I’ll write a zombie series. I honestly can’t tell you when I started writing this or how long it took to finish the first draft, I just know it was fast – maybe a month – and I started it right after I finished writing Broken World. I’ll say this a lot: I’m not a plotter. But in this case, I had a general idea of what I wanted to happen in books 2 and 3 of the series, so I just kept going. That’s part of the reason Emily had to die in the first book. I didn’t start with the intention of killing her, but since I wanted to send my characters to an underground bunker that wasn’t quiet as stocked as they’d thought, I knew my characters would have to leave the bunker. If Vivian had a four year old, it wouldn’t make sense for her to go running off to Vegas, but for my plot to work, I needed her to. Which was why I chose to kill Emily off.
