Cath Luria is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She is a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, suspense and romance fiction, and has a vast collection of beautiful edged weapons. She has written a number of books for Aconyte, including Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest, and Terror World, A Zombicide: Invader Novel. I got a chance to ask her some questions about her latest work.
Terror World mixes together sci-fi and horror really well, with some fun sci-fi concepts and some interesting aliens and characters and a situation that just keeps building the tension. Are you a fan of stories where the two genres combine, and if so what films, books, or games are your favourites?
Sci-fi and horror are like milk and cookies to me. They’re good alone, but they also work so well together! I think there’s a lot of horror, or at least extreme anxiety, inherent in science fiction—no one knows what’s coming next. It could be amazing, but it’s so much easier sometimes to imagine how things could go terribly. Science fiction horror is a genre in its own right—the Alien franchise is amazing and terrifying and one of my favorite things ever.
How did you end up writing Terror World, was this a project that you pursued, or were you approached to write it?
I pitched the IP for it! It’s outside of my Marvel wheelhouse, but that was the point for me. I wanted to try something new, and I LOVE zombie media. Make them space zombies, and it’s a total win for me. It wasn’t smooth sailing getting from pitch to finished novel, but I’m really glad I did it.
Were you a fan of Zombicide before writing the book, and if not did you have to emerse yourself in the game universe much before writing your story?
I didn’t know anything about Zombicide before writing this book, but I did a LOT of research heading into pitching it. I read all the media I could get my hands on, I read Tim’s book, I delved into the game and the playstyle—and thankfully, I was able to be pretty comprehensive with it all, since there really isn’t that much Zombicide media out there yet.
The Zombicide games are pretty new, and don’t have a huge amount of lore to draw upon, though their website features galleries of lots of different characters and creatures. How much of Terror World was constrained to things already established, and how much freedom did you have to create new things?
Exactly, it’s new! I actually appreciate that, because it makes it easier for me to get fully acquainted with the IP. Lucky for me, they were very encouraging when it came to new ideas and concepts. In fact, I ended up being warned away from what they’d done before. They wanted something really difference from me, which ended up being a blessing.
You introduce a whole new group of characters for the book that don’t appear in the game, how did you go about choosing what type of characters would become the heroes of the book, and were there any that were favourites of yours?
I read through a bunch of Zombicide character descriptions and the graphic novel to get some ideas, but once I knew the general direction I wanted to go with this book, I knew I was going to need a different kind of crew than Zombicide had seen before. My book begins as a journey of scientific discovery, so you’re going to have to center scientists for that. It helps that I’m married to one—I’m very familiar with that archetype 😊 Dizzie Drexler was definitely one of my favorites to write, but the Bane brothers were awesome too. I loved writing Mason’s multi-mind perspective.
Your book features a few different types of monsters beyond what we’d seen in the previous Zombicide: Invasion novel, Planet Havoc, and you did some new and interesting things with the way some of the characters were infected. Was it daunting to try and put a new spin on things like that?
I thought it would be daunting, but then I was basically given carte blanche to do whatever I wanted and all of a sudden things kind of fell into place. The IP owners still had to approve the synopsis, of course, so they were fine with it, but I got to do the heavy lifting with how infection spread and things like that, and that was hugely fun. My editor Gwen Nix was so, so helpful there.
Terror World feels a lot different to Planet Havoc, where that one was filled with action and shooting and had quite a few characters to lose along the way your book was smaller in scope, focused on only a handful of people, and dealt more with building tension slowly than having monsters constantly rushing at the heroes. Do you prefer horror stories that are like that over the ones with the bigger body counts and lots of action?
I personally like a nice, intimate horror story. Don’t get me wrong! I love action novels and big casts! I loved Planet Havoc, and originally I pitched a book that was very similar to it. I thought that was what the IP wanted, and was subsequently smacked down. They had the big action story full of monsters, and they wanted to go in a different direction with my book. That went from being a disappointment to being hugely fun in short order.
The book has a pretty big mystery in it, and whilst we don’t really get any concrete answers by the end there are a few possible scenarios raised. If you were asked to continue the story would you want to tell the sequel/prequel story to Terror World?
I would LOVE to continue this in a sequel/prequel sort of way. I thought the twist at the end was particularly interesting, and I’d love to delve into the repercussions of it all if given the opportunity. Plus I’d just like to revisit the survivors.
If you were stuck in a zombie scenario like this what skills do you think you’d be able to bring to the table in order to survive to the end?
I’ve survived in some fairly minimalist situations, so I think I could offer quite a bit 😉 I’ve killed and cooked a turkey, I have decades worth of adrenal stress conditioning to help in fight or flight situations, I own lots of bludgeoning and cutting weapons, and my husband owns a huge number of tools. We’ve got a zombie-killing armory in our very own home, so convenient!
Can you give us any hints for future projects that you’re working on that fans of the book can look forward to?
I’m pitching a few different projects right now! As soon as I’m allowed to talk about them, I will happily share 😊 My next Aconyte book, however, is Silver Sable: Payback, coming out March 24, 2023, and I’m so excited for it!
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