I’m almost at the end of writing my werewolf horror, and honestly, it’s been an absolute beast of a project — pun very much intended.

This book started with one of those simple horror questions that immediately gets out of hand: what happens when a British Army patrol, already cold, tired, wet, and fed up, discovers that the thing stalking them in the mountains isn’t just an enemy combatant, a smuggler, or something they can neatly write up in a contact report?

What happens when the thing in the treeline has teeth?

I’ve always loved military horror because it takes trained, capable people and puts them in situations where training only gets them so far. There’s something terrifying about watching soldiers — people who are used to danger, discipline, weapons, routine, and command structure — slowly realise that none of the usual rules apply anymore. The map doesn’t help. The radio doesn’t help. The brief definitely didn’t mention this. And the ammunition they were issued suddenly feels very, very inadequate.

A huge inspiration for this story has been the legendary Dog Soldiers. It’s one of those films that absolutely nails the tone I love: brutal horror, proper tension, dark humour, and a group of soldiers who respond to the impossible with a mixture of fear, sarcasm, aggression, and stubborn refusal to die quietly. It understands that British squaddies facing monsters wouldn’t suddenly become poetic heroes. They’d swear, take the piss, argue about the plan, make a brew if they could, and then fight like absolute bastards.

That spirit has definitely influenced the way I’ve approached this book. I didn’t want glamorous monster hunters or polished action heroes. I wanted tired infantry lads. I wanted bad weather, aching shoulders, mud, cheap jokes, old rivalries, and the kind of gallows humour that only appears when everyone knows the situation is completely sideways but nobody wants to be the first to admit it.

At the centre of the story is Sergeant Mark Davies — Rhino to his lads — a hard, battered, deeply controlled infantry NCO who is used to being the immovable object in every room. He’s the sort of man who can deal with bullets, bad officers, exhausted privates, and a deployment that was miserable before it even began. But then the patrol pushes into the Accursed Mountains, and the enemy stops behaving like anything human.

The werewolves in this book aren’t romantic. They aren’t elegant. They aren’t brooding creatures of moonlight and tragedy. They are huge, fast, grotesque, intelligent predators — all muscle, claws, wet fur, amber eyes, and too many teeth. Worse still, there’s a military horror twist at the heart of them: this isn’t just a monster attack. It’s infection. It’s transformation. It’s the awful realisation that the thing trying to tear through the wall might have been a man only hours before.

That idea has been one of the most enjoyable and horrifying parts to write. Because once the soldiers realise what they’re fighting, the fear changes. It’s no longer just, “Can we survive the night?” It becomes, “What happens if one of us is bitten?” And in a trapped, freezing, isolated patrol with no reliable backup, that question is poison.

Writing the final stretch has been intense. There’s a strange feeling when a book starts closing in on its ending. You know the characters so well by then that every decision feels heavier. Every injury matters. Every death has weight. Every joke lands differently because the reader knows the lads are using humour to hold themselves together.

And that’s what I’ve loved most about writing this: the contrast. The horror is vicious, but the humour is very human. The soldiers are terrified, but they’re still soldiers. They still bicker. They still insult each other. They still cling to routine, rank, bad language, and muscle memory because that’s what keeps them from falling apart.

I’m not quite done yet, but I can see the finish line now. The final chapters are coming together, the body count is where it needs to be, and the monsters are very much not done with them.

This book has mud, blood, bad weather, worse decisions, British Army banter, and werewolves that definitely were not mentioned in the patrol brief.

Almost there.

And honestly?

I think the lads are going to need more than silver.