Colin M. Drysdale

Colin M. Drysdale is a marine biologist and author. Under his real name, he has published numerous academic papers and articles, as well as writing a number of technical books. However, when writing non-academic books, he has chosen to write under the pseudonym Colin M. Drysdale to distinguish between these two very different areas of his written work.

He writes books ranging from post-apocalyptic survival novels for adults (the 'For Those In Peril' series) to factual books for children (the 'Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia' series).

His first novel, 'For Those In Peril On The Sea', was published by Pictish Beast Publications at the start of 2013. In the book, Colin M. Drysdale draws on many of his experiences working on and around the sea to tell the story of four strangers thrown together by chance on a yacht when civilisation is brought to a sudden and unexpected end. Face with a new world where it is no longer safe to go ashore, they must work together to find a way to survive everything it has to throw at them.

Originally written as a stand-alone book, 'For Those In Peril On The Sea' was sufficiently well received by both critics (it won the gold medal in the First Novel (>80,000 Words) category of the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and was a finalist in the Horror category of the 2013 Book Of The Year Awards) and, more importantly, readers, that the author decided to develop it into a series of three books, with each one focussing on a different aspect of surviving in the post-apocalyptic world created for the original book.

The second book in the 'For Those In Peril' series, called 'The Outbreak' was published in 2014. It starts in Glasgow (in Scotland) and focuses on another group of survivors who find themselves trapped in the city between an ever-increasing number of infected and the soldiers seeking to contain them. They know their only hope of surviving is to escape the city, and with the roads blocked, the river which leads from the heart of the city to the safety of the sea is their only way out. So they set out on a sailboat, with little idea of where they are going or how they are going to survive.

This was followed by a third book in the series, 'The Island At The End Of The World', which was released in 2015 and unites the characters from the first two books as try to work out not jut how to survive but how to start rebuilding their lives.

In addition to these full-length novels, Colin M. Drysdale has also published an anthology of short zombie stories in print and as a Kindle ebook titled 'Zombie Can't Swim And Other Tales Of The Undead'. It features 23 stories ranging from flash fiction to full length short stories based around various zombie and post-apocalyptic related themes. This includes a short story called 'The Girl At Little Harbour' which provides the back story to one of the most talked about scenes in 'For Those In Peril On The Sea' (if you've read the book, you will remember the scene and you will know what the title of the short story refers to).

He has also written the quirky 'The Little Book Of Zombie Mathematics' which uses zombies to explore mathematics in a fun and interesting way, the children's picture book 'Zombies Love Brains', a series of books (starting with 'Draw Your Own Monsters In My House') which are designed to help children develop their reading and word interpretation skills through drawing and having fun, and the 'Learning By Drawing' series, which helps children develop an understanding of different word types.

He is also the creator of the 'Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia' series. This is an ambitious series of factual books (each representing a chapter in the overall encyclopaedia) for children aged six to twelve which will introduce them to a wide range of different subjects using high quality factual information presented in child-friendly language. Uniquely, these books provide space and prompts to allow the children to illustrate the facts that they learn by reading through the book, so encouraging them to engage with the learning process. To date, he has published six of these books (covering Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish and Invertebrates), with more currently being developed.