British author David Moody is known for his post-apocalyptic novels. Indeed, a strong end of the world premise is what links all of his novels together. And as such, in a way Moody has become the new John Christopher. The modern day master of the post-apocalyptic subgenre. And to be fair, he’s damn good at it.
That said, outside of this recurring ‘end of the world’ theme, Moody also has another common factor that links pretty much all of his work to date. This is the human element. Moody doesn’t write about extraordinary heroes pitted against unbelievable odds. Instead he writes about believable, everyday Joe’s who are faced with extraordinary circumstances. And through this, Moody narrows in on the characters’ emotional response to these traumatic events. It’s not all guns, explosions and violence. Nor is it just rotting flesh, scares and devastation. Moody’s books focus on the way these everyday individuals cope with the massive stress of the situations they are faced with, how they interact with each other during these ordeals, and ultimately how some of them hopefully pull through.
David Moody is probably best known for his signature ‘Autumn’ series. Starting out as a free-to-download online novel, Moody’s first ‘Autumn’ novel soon became an online phenomena within the growing post-apocalyptic / zombie fanbase. Indeed, after racking up over half-a-million downloads, Moody’s novel ‘Autumn’ (2002) quickly developed into a tightly-interwoven series, with the initial novels being printed through his own self-publishing label – Infected Books.
During the rising success of the ‘Autumn’ books, David wrote and released his second hugely-popular series of novels – the ‘Hater’ trilogy. Between the ‘Autumn’ novels and his uber-violent ‘Hater’ books, David Moody had formed a strong and loyal fanbase. By now Moody had given up his reasonably secure and stable job as a bank manager, and had become a fulltime author.
David Moody is one of the best examples of what can be achieved with hard work, dedication and a passion for what you’re doing. His novels show a clear passion for what he is writing about. His novels are entirely believable within an utterly unbelievable premise. The messages that they offer are strong, emotive and very poignant. And for these aspects alone, he is in my eyes one of the greatest post-apocalyptic authors.
