Genesis of "Tuskers."

I had a friend move down to Arizona, and he started complaining about javelinas knocking over his lawn furniture, digging up his garden, chasing his dog.

I had a vision of him, Conan the Barbarian mode, standing on top of a pile of pigs, swinging a baseball bat as he's besieged from all sides.

A silly thought. But I wrote the first chapter...and then the second. "The Wild Pig Aporkacalpse."

In the second book, "Day of the Long Pig,"  I didn't hold back, I let the ideas flow, even if they did include "zombie" pigs.

Book three, "The Omnivore War" was more or less the beginning of "Planet of the Pigs."

And now, this fourth book, "Rise of the Cloven" is about the synthesis of human and porcine culture.

All along it was written perfectly seriously, though most people thought it was camp. But really, pigs are very intelligent--I didn't see it as that much of a stretch. I mean, as long as we're talking fantastical fiction, right?

It turned into a little world of its own, that to me is perfectly viable and fun.