The Hell Gate saga is a post-apocalyptic young adult series by Josh Matthews released by Burning Willow Press in October 2016.
It's going to be a busy weekend for me. 
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| The giant worms that attack the Hell Gaters during the sandstorm are based on the legend of the Mongolian death worms. I included two additional sets of fangs to make mine more deadly and frightening. |
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| Another version of the Mongolian death worm. |
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| When I was developing the demons that would guard the portals, I came up with the concept of using Golem, the animated anthropomorphic protectors of Jewish ghettos. However, I wanted mine to be much more intimidating and powerful than the man-sized guardians from Hebrew folklore. To give the Golem a more gruesome appearance, I changed them from being created from inanimate material, such as stone, to being a compilation of human body parts. I stumbled across the above artwork while researching other demons and decided to adopt the basic body design for my own Golem. |
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| Are the Nachzehrer zombies? Not in the traditional sense. I liked the concept of hordes of shambling dead roaming through the countryside and attacking the Hell Gaters en masse, but did not want to turn my book into a zombie apocalypse novel. So I created the Nachzehrer as the desiccated bodies of those condemned to Hell who come back to wander Earth because this is the realm they know. Yes, they eat human flesh, which is what makes them dangerous, but they do not have the other attributes of a zombie -- they are not rotting away, and being bitten by a Nachzehrer does not mean you will die and come back as one. |
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| Rise of the Sataners takes place in northeast China, a region also referred to as Manchuria, between the cities of Harbin and Shenyang. |
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| Aerial view of Harbin's railway station. |
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| The platform of Harbin's railway station. |
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| The interior of Harbin's railway station. |
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| The illegal steel factory that the Xiongnu used was based on real factories that popped up all over China. I originally read about them in an article in Wired titled "Step Inside China's Hellish, Illicit Steel Factories" (see https://www.wired.com/2016/12/step-inside-chinas-hellish-illicit-steel-factories-kevin-frayer/). I thought the imagery was so stunning I decided to use one in my book. |
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| More photos of the factory. |
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| More photos of the factory. |
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| More photos of the factory. |
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| Unit 731, the Japanese biological warfare unit in Pingfang that experimented on local citizens and Allied POWs, did exist -- sadly, it was not something I made up. Only a few of the buildings used by Unit 731 remain. This is the smokestacks of the former crematorium where the Hell Gaters set up camp on their first night in Manchuria. |
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| Yours truly at the crematorium in 1999. |
