Russian HellwayZ follows a group of people on their way back to Moscow and face a post-apocalyptic country ravaged by zombies. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

I’ve never been interested in zombies before but then I watched TV series “The Walking Dead”. It was a game changer for me. I was struck by the fact that the dramatic destinies of people were so harmoniously inscribed into the zombie apocalypse and intricately intertwined with each other in a destroyed world. So I decided to tell my story.

Your characters were intriguing and well developed. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

The images of the characters are collective, but every one of them has a prototype that I have met at some point in my life. Biographies, criminal cases, events that happened to the heroes before the Apocalypse, were all taken from the real life stories. And, of course, the social environment that once surrounded those characters, descriptions of cities, villages, people’s lives in different layers of society, their behavior – this is all for real.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Any end of civilization is a rapid fall of humanity into the Dark Ages. For some this is a collapse of everything: the loss of status, money, the opportunity to live in comfort. Some are simply ready for an extreme change, and for others “the social elevator” would turn on which would never had the chance to do so in the ordinary world. And the most interesting thing is that all these people were brought together to one point in space and time. The question is: what will win at the end? Will it be their primitive animal nature, or their ability to conceive a new civilization for humanity?

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

You know, literary translation is very expensive, as is editing. I hope that “Russian HellwayZ” will start selling well and we can see the continuation as soon as next year 🙂

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