As a big fan of horror films (I'm particularly fond of the living dead), I watch every movie I can get my hands on. Of course, there are good and bad works in this genre too. In mid-2020, I once again witnessed a terrible film, the title of which quickly slipped my mind. Two irretrievable hours of my life fell victim to a work of art that nevertheless made me think. Who wrote the script and what drugs did he take beforehand? Who waved the project through? Where the hell do they get the funding for such intellectual nonsense?
I went to the toilet and thought. Really. Or rather, I asked myself questions. Why is it not explained (in most movies) how this Z-apocalypse came about? The plot consists only of the protagonists' struggle for survival and the ending is left open. Nothing against well-made masks and great effects, but such movies leave me very unsatisfied. So I came up with the idea of a creature whose bite turns people into the undead, who in turn infect others. But where would this creature come from and who would stop it? The man-versus-man principle at the end of many films seemed perfect for a showdown. But how should the main character be constructed?
I didn't worry about punctuation, punctuation and formatting, others did that for me. I was only concerned with the content of my story, that it was logical and coherent. What began as a simple idea developed into a complex story whose characters developed further than I had imagined. For example, the radio operator Dimitrij, who was originally intended as a minor character, became one of my favorites. The same applied to Bartosz, who was actually only meant to shed light on the story. It was important to me to keep my story as close to reality as possible (yes, I know, there are undead walking around!), to stick to the laws of nature and not let more bullets fly than the gun has in the magazine or drum. Research work took up a lot of the time, which I underestimated at the beginning. In addition, there were elements that some people consider to be conspiracies.
What began as a single novel became a trilogy for one reason only. I gave the unfinished script to a friend who read it and asked me the crucial question. “Does Hardy get bitten at the end?” I was taken aback and had to admit I'd never asked myself that question. My approach was: creature is there and bites humans - hero survives and encounters creature - hero kills creature - all is well - end. At that moment, I realized that my story had to go deeper. The explanation of how the apocalypse came about and where the creature came from were okay. There were also enough creepy and slightly splattery elements. My mind was racing and I started a round of discussions that gave me new ideas.
There was no end to the ideas and I soon realized that even a second novel wouldn't be enough to tell the story the way I wanted to. The concept was expanded to a trilogy. - Incidentally, I always came up with the subtitles for the book series after I had finished the novels so that they would fit the content to some extent.
After the first part had been rewritten and adapted, the second part was relatively easy for me, as the story and the characters were already there. The third part took longer than planned. Despite making a lot of notes to clarify all the open questions, I didn't have enough material to reach an acceptable number of pages. As these books are written like action and horror films, I added some action and suspense without further ado, even though the end was already written.
I would be lying if I said it was just fun. As I can't yet make a living as an author, I still have to work, of course. Many setbacks and financial aspects have slowed down this project, which is why I sometimes haven't been able to write for weeks. The idea of having my works translated into English and read as audio books (so far only in English!) has only distorted money. I've learned to stop putting myself under pressure to get a book finished and finally published. There is only one thing I will never do again - write a trilogy.
