by Jay Wilburn
Alathia Paris Morgan is building up a catalog of must-read zombie books for any discerning reader of the genre. Her MAZ series is growing rapidly with Military Against Zombies and Moms Against Zombies with more coming within the year. Her work Infected Waters: A Titanic Disaster is an excellent alternate history zombie story any zombie fan has to enjoy.
She went very quickly from that first zombie story to multiple zombie books and an ongoing series. She tells me that zombies are part of her world now. Now when she’s driving around or doing normal things, she thinks how would this work in the ZPoc? What would be the best escape route? She’s always looking for new things that will work in her growing zombie world. She finds herself critiquing other zombie works and how she would do this or that differently as a zombie writer. Her transition to the “Undead Side” appears to be complete.
We have unique writers on the Summer and Winter of Zombie tours every tour. Writers from different perspectives and backgrounds bring different voices and flavors to the genre. There is something really great about Morgan’s unique approach to zombies that I’ve had trouble putting my finger on. When I first read Infected Waters, I assumed it had to be coming to the genre fresh and new from other work. As she has established herself as an experienced author with the zombie trope, her voice has remained set apart from everything else in the field.
Both Military Against Zombies and Moms Against Zombies use that voice to full effect, but the books are set apart from one another with the great portrayals of different characters coming to the apocalypse from different places. I think part of it is that her characters are grounded in reality. The moms have little to no training, so they approach guns almost as cautiously as they do the zombies. Whereas her military characters are trained to deal with crazy situations; this is just a new reality for them and they have to deal with the learning curve and adjust. These and other differences make the characters in her series work.
She explained to me that she’s been a reader for a long time and now that she’s a writer, Morgan wants to bring the reader into a world they can escape into, but that is realistic enough that the audience isn’t shaking their heads that it isn’t believable. For example, babies cry, so why would we think they suddenly wouldn’t in the ZPoc? This issue has to be dealt with in the story and impacts the survival of the characters. She tries to see the story from several different perspectives, so that the reader feels they have just stepped into her universe and are immersed in it.
I asked her what was coming next for readers from her. Morgan says, the next few months will see two more installments in the MAZ series: Co-Eds Against Zombies in July, and then Church Against Zombies in September or October. The series is following two groups and so far they haven’t met, but there will be a few times where they cross paths or people they met cross paths as we get further into the series. I’m excited to continue with this series and I believe you will be too once you pick it up. Her journey so far has been very interesting and I see a lot more fun in the next few months.
I hope I have made the case for Alathia Paris Morgan. Check out Moms against Zombies and Military Against Zombies now. If you want to know more about her and her work, check out this “case for” post from a previous tour.
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