In the weeks leading up to the release of AUTUMN: DAWN on 31 May, I’ll be sharing more details about the new books. Today I wanted to whet your appetite by talking about two of the major differences between THE LONDON TRILOGY and the original series. The new books are still unequivocally AUTUMN, but I don’t want you to think this is just a ‘money for old rope’ rehash of the same things I was writing a decade ago, or a trendy new reboot/reimagining. Sure, there are plenty of similarities, but there are some major shifts too.
Before I go on, I need to plug the limited-edition hardcover again because it’s selling fast. Three-quarters of the print run have sold already, so if you’re thinking about ordering, please get in quick. As a reminder, if you pre-order the hardcover you also get:
- Access to the eBook version of AUTUMN: DAWN TODAY!
- A bonus essay about AUTUMN – 25 YEARS SINCE THE END OF THE WORLD
- Priority access to pre-orders for the limited editions which will accompany AUTUMN: INFERNO (later this year), and AUTUMN: EXODUS (early 2022).
So, what’s changed since the original novels?
Well, we have. That might sound like an empty comment, but in the decades since I began writing the AUTUMN books, society has changed dramatically. Don’t worry – the new novels aren’t a heavy-going sociological deconstruction of the last twenty-or-so years, they’re a dystopian adventure with a cast of typical Moody characters: ordinary folks like us, who just happen to find themselves in godawful situations. But there are a couple of differences the books touch on.
First, in the original novels, I could get away with the premise that nobody knew what a zombie was. These days, with the non-stop avalanche of living/walking dead related books, films and TV series, I know that writing characters who hadn’t ever encountered zombies would be less believable than the walking corpses themselves.
On another level, we’re more connected now, and despite the immeasurable benefits of the internet and other technological advances, I think that connection has also come at a cost. How many kids these days have been taught to read a map? How many of us could survive without our phones? I’ve been rethinking how people would cope (or not cope) in a world where everything has been reset back to basics.
By the way, you’ll be pleased to hear that these books have absolutely nothing to do with the current pandemic. The novels were planned before 2020, and I’ve no intention of crowbarring in coronazombies or anything like that. The events of the last year or so are mentioned by characters – how could they not be when the pandemic has indelibly altered all our lives in one way or another? – but that’s all. Again, my intention is that THE LONDON TRILOGY is an entertaining zombie story that you’ll enjoy if you’ve liked my other books, nothing more and nothing less. If anything, my worry has been that people won’t want to read the series because of the pandemic. After what we’ve all been through, I could understand that!
But by far the biggest difference between the new books and the original series is the sheer scale. AUTUMN was deliberately small and low-fi with fictitious locations, but there’s none of that this time around. I deliberately picked London because it’s such a densely populated city full of iconic landmarks and buildings – an incredible sandbox to play in. More than that, though, larger numbers of people means there will inevitably be more survivors and many, many, many, many more zombies. I promise, you’ve never seen undead hordes like this before!
I cannot wait for you to read AUTUMN: DAWN. The book is released on 31 May. If you’ve ordered the hardcover and have already downloaded and read it, please let me know what you thought.
