Writers often have a random assortment of things rattling around in their heads. Unused story titles, characters who haven’t yet found their literary home, broken fragments of plot points. Way, way back in junior high school, long before I ever considered writing fiction (I wanted to be a crusading newspaper reporter), I had a character name (Imura) and a vague idea of a tale about a Samurai dealing with the zombie apocalypse. I am a lifelong practitioner of traditional Japanese jujutsu (a mostly unarmed science of combat) and kenjutsu (swordplay). In 2009 I used that name for a pair of brothers living in post-apocalyptic Central California (Rot & Ruin and its sequels). However, this story hews closer to my original idea.