UPDATE: This story is now a part of the collected book, The Dying of the Light: The Walker Chronicles, and is no longer available separately.

Many of the people who’ve read The Dying of the Light: End have asked me this question. I deliberately left Tom’s fate somewhat uncertain in the book, because he had a longer and more detailed story to tell than I felt could reasonably be included in the novel.

This led me to the idea of writing several short stories expanding on certain parts of this novel, as well as telling stories in this world that bridge the gaps in the novels. Another comment I hear often is that reading my book is like watching a zombie movie; it’s a very visual (and visceral) sort of experience. Which is great to hear, because that’s exactly the effect I hoped to engender.

To take the metaphor a step further, I see these short stories as the ‘deleted scenes’ from a DVD. They’re good stories, in and of themselves, and they relate important bits of character knowledge and background history of the novel storylines. That said, they’re somewhat superfluous, and could reasonably be cut from the ‘movie’ that is the book.

But why wouldn’t I write them anyway, and give my readers all that background information that would otherwise be sitting useless in my head? So I’m going to write them, and release them as single short stories on Kindle and the Nook, for $1 each. That way, you can read the ones you want, without having to buy another book that collects them all.

Although there’ll be one of those, too.

That’s right; I’m going to collect the 15 – 20 short stories into a fourth companion volume to the Dying of the Light trilogy, called The Dying of the Light: The Walker Chronicles. It’s not something you’ll need to have to enjoy the main story, but it will enhance that story if you choose to read it.

I hope you enjoy reading about Tom, Masters and the rest of 8th Team, and learning their fate. The second short story, Outbreak One: Washington Territory, is available in the collection as well.