The Ebola War

Ebola struck Sierra Leone for the first time in 2014, thirteen years after the war and my time there ended. I had started writing short stories about my tour in that war in 2012, from the view of two child rebels, Angel and Mercy. By 2014, their stories were already forming the chapters of what would become my first novel, The Ceasefire War. When the Ebola struck Sierra Leone, I wondered how those girls, who were now young women, would fare. I wanted to continue their stories and also tell the story of how Sierra Leoneans dealt with this viral threat, as most of what was written about it focused on the international response and support given to Sierra Leone. So, as the Ebola Crisis ended and The Ceasefire War was published in 2016, I began working on the sequel, The Ebola War. Since this story was not based on my experience, I asked the Sierra Leonean writer, Bakar Mansaray, to ensure my characters, Krio dialogue, and cultural details were authentic. We began writing the story together in May 2017. Since Bakar was working out west, we wrote in parallel, using Track Changes in the texts we sent each other, and discussed the development of the drafts in weekly Skypes. The finished story was sent to the editor last month, April, and The Ebola War should be published later this month, a year after we began writing it. And that is the story of this story, and why I have not posted anything here until now.