Zombies. Zombies have become so engrained into our culture that a few years back the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even capitalized on their popularity to teach emergency preparedness. The word itself is a relatively modern addition to the English language, having been borrowed from Haitian folklore sometime in the nineteenth century, and would have been as foreign to the medieval man as the word zipper. For that reason, the undead are called many things by the characters in the story, but the z-word is never used. ...
For Colleville Manor, I drew inspiration from Ightham Mote, a moated and fortified manor house in Kent that was built in the fourteenth century and considerably expanded in the fifteenth. It remains relatively unchanged today. Unlike a majority of other surviving manors, the owners of Ightham never demolished a section of ranges in order to allow the main house to look outward. Ightham has more than 70 rooms inwardly facing and arranged around the central courtyard. The house is fully encompassed by a square moat ...
If you were to ask a modern reader “the hour,” they would likely glance down at their ubiquitous wrist watch and tell you the time down to the minute. We have become accustomed to the fact that the day begins and ends at midnight. In North America and Europe, we even use daylight savings in an attempt to maximize the amount of sunlight during our waking hours. It is a notion that would have been wholly incomprehensible to the average fifteenth-century man. If you were to ask a modern reader “the hour,” they would ...
I never imagined myself becoming an author let alone a writer of fantasy horror. My first love has always been historical fiction and no period captivates me more than fifteenth-century England. The story, in a sense, was over a decade in the making. In 2002, frustrated with the lack of attention given to the Wars of the Roses, I set out to write my own novel. As fate would have it, I left my research notebook on a plane and soon shelved the project indefinitely. Years later I was encouraged to take another look at it by a young friend who was publishing ...
My first full-length novel, THE SECOND GREAT MORTALITY, is set to be released on May 2, 2016. It is an intriguing blend of historical fiction, adventure and horror that should appeal to fans of Bernard Cornwell’s Winter King and AMC’s The Walking Dead. Synopsis: The year is 1436. Sir Richard de Colleville is out hunting with his son when their hounds come upon a pale stranger savagely gnawing the neck of a fawn. Thinking the stranger deranged or simply starving, Richard’s men intervene only to be viciously attacked. ...
As a long-time fan of the science-fiction/horror genre, I always loved a good zombie movie. In recent years, the threat of a Zombie Apocalypse has become something of a running joke around the water cooler at work. Most good southern boys agree the hardest thing will be pretending not to be too excited. Of course, the modern storyline always revolves around having enough guns and ammunition to survive. As a major Medieval enthusiast every time I see a character flailing away at one of the recently un-deceased only to be bitten ...