This is my first romance novel. I've written several fantasy and science fiction novels before — on used bookstore shelves near you — but this story took me in a different direction.

Oh, sure, one of the leading characters is a zombie. And, yes, there's a Navy SEALs vs. zombie gunfight at the end. But the core of it is a love story, a story of sacrifice.

I'm going to use this blog to lay out how the idea came to me, the various sources that inspired it, and I'll throw in random zombie stuff now and then. My zombie character, by the way, is not the shambling, rotting zombies you see on TV and the movies; he's more of a classic throwback. It takes a brainy young college student — my heroine — to see him for what he is.