I was born into a military family in the United States. At a very early age I was able to travel the world. One of the first places my father was stationed was Germany. Europe was a magnificent land dotted with castles and history. This invoked within me first a curiosity about history, and later a passion. I became captivated with tales of both heroes and heroines of times past. After my experience abroad, history was filed in the back of my mind. We returned to the United States and went about our lives. School, a trip to Italy with my Grandparents to become acquainted with my Italian cousins, and finally my own tour in the military took me to more wondrous places full of history, such as the Middle East and Iceland. These new experiences helped bring the love of history to the forefront of my thoughts once again. As life always does, living it got in the way of my passion. More school, and several jobs later history came crashing back to the forefront of my thoughts. This time was different. This time not only did I love reading, but tales of my own began to form in my mind. I read extensively of several historical fiction and alternative history authors. Some of my favorites being Gordon Doherty, Simon Scarrow, and Griff Hosker. My real inspiration was Harry Turtledove, a master of alternate history. I picked up a copy of his Guns of the South in 1993. I immediately fell in love with the genre. Though I have read many other alternate history authors Harry Turtledove remains my favorite. For my first book, Scourge of Byzantium, I combined my love of history with a more recent passion the walking undead. My mind imagined a world in which the infection did not take place in the modern world, but during the later Roman Empire or Byzantium as that nation is known in modern times. Imagine how much better equipped a Roman Army is to deal with this problem. Now imagine how much harder it is to kill a zombie wearing armor! While I was working on the sequel to Scourge of Byzantium it dawned on me that the Byzantium Infected Universe could tell stories of the infection from many more different view points. Wanting to try my hand at short stories. Thanks to some great feedback from a reader I wrote Jibreel's Curse. Jibreel's Curse is the tale of how a historical nobody Jibreel set the gears in motion to first catch and then spread the infection. It's a perfect instance of if Jibreel had gone left instead of right, the world would have continued and become the one that we know. In this case Jibreel made the fateful decision to change the course of history and his actions resulted in the zombie infection. I enjoyed writing a short story, so it wasn't long before additional ideas started percolating in my head. Thus, the Nasir and Maarika chronicles was born. I hope you enjoy the episodes here on Smashwords and check out my full length novel Scourge of Byzantium available as both an ebook and in print. Thanks for Reading! James Mullins