When I first sat down to write The Wolves, I didn’t set out to write a multi-generational story. My original plan was far more humble. The three connected short stories titled The Hunt, The Hunted, and The Wolves were meant to be shared right here on this Substack. But sometimes characters have a way of ignoring an author’s outlines. What began as a series of brief tales about a hunter in the woods quietly transformed into something much larger, shaping itself with a will of its own.
At its heart, this book isn’t just about werewolves. It’s about what happens when fear is written into law.
In the world of The Wolves, the government doesn’t use words like “genocide” or “execution.” They use the term “population management." It sounds clinical, bureaucratic, and justified. Through a piece of legislation called Bill C-127, they turned regular citizens into bounty hunters, offering $2,000 per confirmed kill of anyone labelled an “infected entity” diagnosed with the lycanthropy virus.
I wanted to explore this through David Keller, a man who isn’t a villain but is deeply lost. The story really begins to breathe when David is forced to look into the eyes of his “prey” and sees a mother protecting her unborn child. That’s the moment the hunt ends and the human story begins.
We often talk about monsters in fiction as things that go bump in the night. But in this story, I wanted to suggest that the real monsters are not who you’d expect.
I hope as you read The Wolves, you’ll see the parallels to our own world: the way we label others to make them easier to dislike and the extraordinary lengths a parent will go to to protect a child, especially when the system doesn’t.
Thank you for being here for this part of my journey. There is much more to come, including the origin of the lycanthropy virus in the upcoming prequel, The Turning.
Until next time, stay scared!
Keith
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