Ilsa J. Bick sold a YA zombie novel to Greg Ferguson at Egmont, via agent Jennifer Laughran of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Ashes “begins when an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky, killing the vast majority of the world population and zapping every electronic device. Everyone still alive has changed considerably—some for the better (those who acquired a superhuman sense) while others for the worse (those who acquired a taste for human flesh).”
Bick, primarily known for her Star Trek, BattleTech, and MechWarrior novels, won second prize in the Writers of the Future contest in 2002.
Bick also won Grand Prize in the Strange New Worlds contest in 1999 and took second prize in the same contest the year after she won for Writers of the Future.