Night Shade Books is publishing Amelia Beamer‘s first novel, The Loving Dead, in July. But rather than wait until then for people to read it, they and she have decided to serialize it, for free, on her web site.
Night Shade tells us “Zombies are seemingly everywhere these days, but with all the permutations of the zombie we’ve seen in recent years, no one has dared to make zombies sexy, until now.
“The Loving Dead, by debut novelist Amelia Beamer, is a zombie-comedy-romance that reads like the zombie love-child of Chuck Palahniuk and Christopher Moore. It tells the story of Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, who are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers after an incubation period where they become increasingly promiscuous. Thrust into extremes by the unfolding tragedy, Kate and Michael are forced to confront the decisions they’ve made, and their fears of commitment, while trying to stay alive. Kate tries to escape on a Zeppelin ride with her secret sugar daddy—but people keep turning into zombies, forcing her to fight for her life, never mind the avalanche of trouble that develops from a few too many innocent lies. Michael convinces Kate to meet him in the one place in the Bay Area that’s likely to be safe and secure from the zombie hordes: Alcatraz. But can they stay human long enough?”
The free online serial went live today, with the first four chapters available on this page. Each following week will see the release of a new chapter, up through publication in July.
Beamer is an editor, reviewer, and photographer at Locus. She’s a 2004 graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Interfictions 2, and Red Cedar Review, and she’s published non-fiction in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.