Goodreads asked Bryan Way:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Bryan Way Life After: The Arising was born in 2003. I was on winter break after my first semester at Temple University when my friend mentioned he had nowhere to go during his winter furlough from basic training. I invited him to stay with my family, and for some reason, he ended up reading all the zombie fiction I had submitted to HomepageOfTheDead.com up to that point. He suggested that he and I should work on a story together.

I admit that I was puzzled by the suggestion; would we trade drafts? Compose sentences in tandem? I cogitated. I was in college with the support of my parents, and he was in the military having been unceremoniously kicked out of his home after high school, so wouldn't it be interesting to see the same story through these two character's eyes, provided they have some time apart for their own diverging stories?

Early on, I perceived an opportunity to challenge myself by doing what most zombie fiction refuses: acknowledge the history of zombie fiction, have the story open at ground zero, have the events unfold in a linear fashion rather than use ellipses, and make most of the characters teenagers. This was the first step toward creating a firmament for a series.

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