“So you’ve got 30 people left.”
But not all of them are going to survive, Lyn surmises, as they’re not all young, fit or healthy.
She explores the idea further, explaining that there might be a baby left behind, and because the parents are dead, the baby would eventually die of starvation.
Or elderly people who can’t drive anywhere, and can’t take care of themselves, or those with medical conditions.
Lyn has friends in Cornwall and she used them as characters in the story, as well as one friend in Canada, whom Lyn moved for the book.
“She read the book and loved it.
“It’s nice to be able to use friends in some of these things if you can because you know the people and you know how they think and how they work,” Lyn says.
She wrote her first post-apocalyptic novel, set in New Zealand, in 2012 and it went on to be published in 2013.
That also revolved around a plague wiping out most of mankind.
Lyn says it’s similar to a lot of science fiction tales where aliens land and “the world goes to pot”.
“This is basically something completely internal.”
These particular stories have been around for a long time, since the 1950s and Lyn has quite a few in her collection.
“A lot of good authors did them. They can be absolutely fascinating.”
In her books, they are about ordinary people having to cope.
“It’s just ordinary people. Nobody rich and famous.”
The post-apocalyptic theme is not the only idea Lyn has had and she has published a few stories around the “weird wild west”.
She describes it as a western, but with something else in it, such as a ghost, or a plague - “something really weird going on”.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Lyn says, adding that it’s not quite what people are expecting.
She says they’re a lot of fun to write and a lot of fun to read.
“You can’t get bored with this kind of thing.”
Lyn has been quite a prolific writer since she took it up around 40 years ago.
In 1977, Lyn had an accident and was told she would never be able to work full-time again.
“But I didn’t want to sit around and do nothing. So I started writing. It just kept going from then on.
“It’s worked out quite well.”
Lyn has written hundreds of short stories which have been published in anthologies and eventually, she publishes them in her own anthology, all around a similar idea.
Where she gets her inspiration from is something not even she knows.
“Sooner or later I’ll get an idea and often that idea will burgeon. Then I’ll wind up with another one and another one.”
With 52 books to her name, and another four in the works, Lyn doesn’t think she’ll be “putting down her pen” (metaphorically speaking) any time soon.
“I don’t think I’ll ever come to the point where I’ll have to stop because I can’t think of new ideas.”
