20190823_143838-COLLAGEMy novella, Zombie Reflux, was published in 2014. It’s a satire of contemporary UK society set in a rural Norwich town where the residents are turned into zombies because of pesticide in the surrounding fields. There’s a video of me reading chapter 1 on YouTube, if anyone’s interested.

Next year there is a TV show coming out with a similar storyline to mine: it’s a satire, set in a rural English town and the residents are turned into zombies because of a toxic substance.

But what’s the difference? My story has had modest success and even lost me a few readers/subscribers because it offended some people, whereas this story is having commercial success; it’s being made into a TV show, after all.

So what’s the takeaway? Maybe commercial success has as much to do with timing as having an established readership: maybe a genre or topic has to be right for the market at the right moment to reach its widest possible audience. As for my story? Zombies never die, so the right time will come along. And hey, at least I came up with the idea first!

Posted by on August 23, 2019 in Novella, Writing and tagged , , , .

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About Leilanie Stewart

Leilanie Stewart is an award-winning author and poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She writes ghost and psychological horror, as well as experimental poetry. Her writing confronts the nature of self; her novels feature main characters on a dark psychological journey who have a crisis and create a new sense of identity. She began writing for publication while working as an English teacher in Japan, a career pathway that has influenced themes in her writing. Her former career as an Archaeologist has also inspired her writing and she has incorporated elements of archaeology and mythology into both her fiction and poetry. In addition to promoting her own work, Leilanie runs Bindweed Anthologies, a creative writing publication with her writer husband, Joseph Robert. Aside from publishing pursuits, Leilanie enjoys spending time with her husband and their lively literary lad, a voracious reader of sea monster books.

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