by Jay Wilburn
I get to read a lot of zombie work each year as I go through work submitted in applications for the Summer and Winter of Zombie tours. I also seek out work from writers new to me who I think might have something to offer. The work ranges widely in style and quality. I see everything from the surprisingly great to the “problematic.” One thing I have found in the “great story” category of work is how authors’ background, experiences, and perspectives play a huge role in developing interesting stories, strong characters, and a use of zombies which is worth reading one more time. In that richness of diversity leading to great, worthwhile stories, I have found some of my favorite work in the genre coming from female authors.
For a variety of reasons, it is easier to stumble across work from male authors in many different genre including horror broadly and zombies specifically. We can delve into that with some depth from a variety of angles, but for this post, we’ll just say sometimes it takes a little more searching to find the female writers in the vast amount of work out there in the publishing world. I have found that effort to be quite worth it with many of the great authors and the great work I have discovered as a reader and as a tour host. There are too many to list all in a single post no matter how long I might work on it, but we can name a few now worth checking out.
Jessica Gomez is the author of the ongoing Flash series. She delivers hard-hitting story with plenty of action and she is not afraid to put her characters through chaos and pain in order to deliver great story with a powerful zombie premise.
Samie Sands is an author more readers should know. Her zombie stories in the AM 13 Outbreak series each deliver a great story with interesting characters and unusual takes on the zombie apocalypse.
Baileigh Higgins is a new author to me, but I’m glad I found her rich catalog of work. She sets a new bar for zombie adventures with both the Dangerous Days and The Black Tide series. Every one of her stories in and out of the zombie genre are worth picking up.
Alathia Paris Morgan caught my attention with Infect Waters, a novel about zombies and the Titanic. With her MAZ series of zombie novels including Mothers Against Zombies and Military Against Zombies, she showed a range of work which surprised me and drew me in.
M V Clark came from a background in journalism. She has brought this knowledge and experience to the page with a very promising first novel in The Splits: Personal Histories of Scott-Lapidot Disease from the Splits Archive. This book pops and I’m excited to be a part of bringing this new author to experienced zombie readers’ attention.
Rebecca Besser is an all around great horror writer with a wide range of stories worth reading. In her zombie series, the ZPOC Exception series, she is crafting amazing characters in each book, great world-building, and an incredible ensemble cast drawing closer together with each novel.
Jaime Johnesee adds great humor and heart into her outrageous zombie character and series. She has done some great collaborative work with some talented authors as well.
This is an incomplete list, but I’m confident in each of the zombie authors mentioned. They all bring something unique to the genre. Many of them write in multiple genres which I think helps to expand any author’s tool box. Some of them collaborate with other authors from time to time which helps bring in different perspectives. Their creativity comes through on the page and they deliver realistic and relatable characters even when they are writing about characters very different from themselves. In a genre where it is easy to find stories which can be all the same and might not bring anything new to the page for the reader, it is nice to find some exceptions to that with authors publishing great stories with interesting characters.
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