Pocket Books has announced its purchase of Alan Goldsher's Paul is Undead: The British Zombie, which asks "What if John Lennon became a zombie before forming the Beatles?" Pocket Books has kindly released a full synopsis of Goldsher's pitch:

"Our story begins on 9 October 1840, in Liverpool, England. An African nzambi hides in the town's newly-built sewer system, only to reemerge exactly one century later at the Liverpool Maternity Hospital, in the room of Julia Lennon. The hungry nzambi takes a chomp from Julia's newborn's neck, and John Lennon is undead, a zombie with otherworldly powers, who will roam the Earth for eternity.

"In 1957, John, now a burgeoning singer and guitarist, meets Paul McCartney, a Liverpudlian with musical dreams of his own. Sensing a kindred spirit, John bites off Paul's ear and sucks out his mate's grey matter, after which he spits a healthy amount of his own brain into Paul's carotid artery-and thus is born the greatest songwriting team in rock history. John and Paul zombify local guitarist George Harrison, then welcome seventh level Ninja Lord Ringo Starr into the fold.

"Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Beatles.

"The lovable moptops murder then reanimate thousands of fans at the Cavern Club, simultaneously enslaving hundreds of lusty teenage girls. They invade the United States, mind-melding millions during an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. They engage in an epic battle with rival band and notorious zombie hunters the Rolling Stones. They release album after album with hidden messages: Please please me by biting your young… Dear sir or madam, won't you eat your neighbor… All you need is eternal life…

"And before you know it, zombies are fookin' everywhere.

"Come 1968, the Beatles world begins to crumble. Experiments with illegal drugs melt the boys' brains. John begins dating an eighth-level Ninja Lord named Yoko Ono, who imagines all the people dying for today. And worst of all, a band called the Zombies-whose members are not actually zombies-seeks revenge on the Fab Four. All of which begs the question, can the three undead lads and the one Ninja stay unified and conquer the world?

"Nah. They break up, make a bunch of crappy solo albums, and fade into oblivion. But come 2010, with John, Paul, George, and Ringo all impoverished and bored silly, we hear whispers of a reunion. Sure, George's fingers keep falling off, but that won't stop the Beatles from following their dreams of death and destruction."

Goldsher is actually a music journalist, having written books about indie rockers Modest Mouse and jazz band Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. But with zombie literature spreading like...well...zombies, it's no surprise that more people are trying to cash in on the monster mash-up craze. And now that Quirk Classics has announced Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, and Seth Grahame-Smith will be following up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (not to mention Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter and I am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas, both due out this fall), publishers are hoping we'll accept what initially seemed a novelty as a legitimate subgenre. But will any of these mash-ups produce truly innovative stories, or are monsters just the spoonful of sugar to make us swallow historical dramas and Victorian literature?

Image from the Zombeatles.

[SFScope via Guardian]

Caine's novel Dead Sexy, about "a just-out-of-school mortician who gets introduced into the world of reviving the dead for profit ... and the ultimate corporate loyalty program," got a five-figure deal with Roc, with two more books already contracted for. The thing about the "corporate loyalty program" sounded like razor-sharp satire, and we liked the for-profit zombification as well. The word "sexy" in the title was just the kicker. So we contacted Caine and asked her to tell us more about her novel. Here's what she said:

DEAD SEXY is one of those insane notions I've had bouncing around in my head for a while now, probably because I genuinely do work in the corporate world. And yeah, sometimes it's just that weird.

Without spilling too many beans ('cause those little suckers are slippery), I can tell you that my main character Bryn Davis's new job in the death care industry doesn't quite turn out to be as boring as she'd always expected, especially when she discovers her new employer is revivifying corpses in the basement for fun and profit (luckily, mostly for profit). But that's just a little off-the-books freelancing; when Bryn discovers the massive corporate plan behind it, let's just say that this company is really serious about their termination policy.

Oh, and being in the zombie business really puts a crimp in an interoffice romance, too. I'm just saying. But still, Bryn may just manage to pull it off, if she can survive. Or revive. Whichever.

We can't wait to see the finished product. Sexy zombie image by Robyn Von Swank on Flickr.

McGuire, who also draws a webcomic and has recorded three albums of music, is publishing the Feed trilogy under the pen name Mira Grant. She already has her first novel, Rosemary And Rue, coming out this fall. When we heard that McGuire had sold a trilogy about zombies, blogging and politics (at auction, which usually means the publishers were fighting over it) we had to know more. So we asked her to tell us more about her novel's storyline, and here's what she said:

The zombies rose in the summer of 2006, following the accidental combination of two genetically-engineered viruses: Marburg Amberlee, designed by a team working in Denver, Colorado as a cure for cancer, and the "Kellis flu," a rhinovirus intended to serve as a sort of block against the common cold. When these viruses met up, they formed Kellis-Amberlee, a hybrid airborne filovirus that spread around the globe in a matter of weeks. Shortly after that, people who were believed dead started getting back up and attacking.

The mainstream media was, of course, not entirely willing to go "hey, look, zombies." They came up with lots of stories, but none of them were really capable of taking that final step into George Romero territory. The Internet media had no such qualms. Almost immediately, the world blogging community was documenting attacks, sharing information, and delving into the horror community's full supply of zombie lore, looking for the answer to survival. They got a lot of things wrong. They got a lot of things right. The fact that we survived the Rising — the three-month period from July through September, 2006, where over thirty percent of the world's population died — is largely credited to the blogging community. And George Romero, whose accidental education in the ways of the living dead is viewed as a key part of saving the world.

The final entries made by every blogger who died during the Rising, and in the years that followed, were preserved in an online archive called "The Wall," a permanent virtual memorial to what the Internet did for mankind.

FEED takes place more than twenty years after the Rising. Most of humanity stays inside whenever possible, avoiding large groups, open spaces, and anything that might put them at risk. Blood tests have taken the place of handshakes. The most popular name in the country is "George." Almost all technical funding goes into medical research, looking for a cure to Kellis-Amberlee, and almost no one has any faith in the "traditional" news media; people are still too aware of how they failed us during the summer of 2006. The blogging community has split into three major branches: the Newsies, who do factual reporting and register their biases openly with neutral reporting sites; the Irwins, who play daredevil in a world that most people would rather avoid; and the Fictionals, who provide escapism, humor, and all the free porn you could want. The sub-divisions are infinite, but almost all bloggers identify as one major branch or another.

The first volume of the trilogy deals with the presidential campaign of Senator Peter Ryman, who has invited a set of bloggers from the San Francisco Bay Area to accompany and document the race. Georgia Mason, her brother Shaun, and their friend Georgette "Buffy" Meissonier were lucky enough to land the position, and hence, potentially, the scoop of their lives. Assuming they can get out still breathing.

FEED is a book about politics, corruption, presidential campaigns, journalism, integrity, escapism, the traditional news media, and how Livejournal saved the world from the living dead. It's about reporters, writers, idiots who like to poke dangerous things with sticks, the things that keep them together, and the things that tear them apart.

It's also about, well, zombies. Lots of zombies. What happens to a society when it has to live with the constant threat of zombies. What that does to the entertainment industry. To social patterns. To clothing styles. To the way that people interact. To funeral rites. Basically, it's an unholy cross between TRANSMETROPOLITAN and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, with a little FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS on the side.

"Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can." — from Images May Disturb You, the blog of Georgia Mason.

Zombie and computer image by Erik J. Gustavson on Flickr.