Being a Christian Who Writes Zombie Fiction

It almost sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? How can a Christian woman write zombie fiction? This is something I struggled with since I became a devoted Christian a little over a year ago (which is also why I have not written or published anything since). I prayed a lot about my calling in life. I knew it was writing, but now that I had a new set of beliefs and values, how was that to be integrated into my fiction? Because I was a Christian, could I only write Christian Fiction now? Zombie fiction had been a huge part of my writing since I started back in 2012. How was I supposed to write about such horrors now? I questioned whether I should abandon my work, even though many of my series were only half-finished or just started. Could I really never finish these stories I had created and held so dear to my heart for so long?

In my prayers about what I should do next as a writer I felt in my heart that I needed to finish what I had started. I asked God how I could do that now and my answer was to use my writing to glorify him. But how could I glorify him with zombie fiction? It didn’t seem possible. Either way, I knew what I heard and I knew it was what I had to do, so I set fingers to keyboard and dove in without really knowing what the outcome would be. And I have to say, I am so glad that I did! When I didn’t have the right words, I trust Him and He provided me with them.

“Dead Road”, the second book in my bestselling zombie series “Dead Soil”, is the first fiction book I’ve written as a Christian woman and author. Though yes, there are still zombies and gore and horrors to be had in the story, they felt more like symbols for the terrible things we all face in life today. Though zombies do not roam the earth, we still lose loved ones to horrible circumstances, we still have hurts and pains that need healing, we are still scared, anxious, and sometimes isolated because of the world around us. These are the themes I focused on in this novel.

Christine Moore, the main character of the series, started out as a confident, outspoken, young lawyer in my first book “Dead Soil”, but the world and losses she faced stripped her of everything she knew about herself. When we meet her again at the beginning of “Dead Road” she is a broken woman, unsure of herself except in her ability to kill zombies. She may even be a little mentally unstable. She has seen some truly horrifying things and they have stuck with her, burying themselves deep in her heart and hardening it. She isolates herself because of her pain. What Christine feels may sound all too familiar to any of us who have experienced loss and pain in our lives. In “Dead Road” my goal was to start Christine down the road to recovery and victory over these feelings, which I do believe is a great way to glorify God and His awesome healing powers. My own experiences with healing through Celebrate Recovery’s “STEPS” program was a huge inspiration for this. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who has painful hurts, bad habits, and things they just can’t let go of.

Another character I used to glorify God’s healing power was Zack Kran, Christine’s only friend left in the world really. He faces the weight of responsibility over the lives of the people in his group. He carries the heavy burden when one of them does not make it and feels it is his own fault. He struggles with forgiving himself and others for the things that have happened in a world that is falling apart. He tries so hard to control everything around him, to keep everyone safe, but slowly realizes that he is not in control, as none of us really are. Through his journey we see him teeter on the brink of losing hope and faith in restoration. What Zack goes through is dear to my heart and he is one of my favorite characters in the book for it, because I believe what he feels is so similar to what so many of us feel when we are faced with trials. We all feel the burden of responsibility, we all struggle with forgiveness, we all struggle with our faith sometimes, and it can be all too easy to lose hope. I hope that through Zack’s journey in “Dead Road” I have created a character many of you can relate to. I also hope that he helps many of you see how to never lose hope and to always extend forgiveness.

So, you see, though “Dead Road” is a zombie fiction book, it is so much more than that. The themes I’ve placed throughout really do glorify God and all his goodness. I wanted to create a story that doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes. I didn’t want to write about all the rainbows and unicorns and good times of being a Christian, because that’s not reality. Being a Christian is hard. We face trials. We lose our loved ones. We are at fault a lot of the time. We are not perfect even though the world expects us to be. We struggle. We lose hope. We make mistakes. We have our own monsters within us that we deal with daily. I’ve brought those monsters to life with zombies and I hope you enjoy reading about how my characters defeat them and find victory in life again.

Dead Road (book 2 of the Dead Soil series) available in Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks, paperback, hardcover, and more this July 31st!

If you would like to catch up on the series before the new release, you can find “Dead Soil” on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Audiobook.

Just a warning, it was written before I became a Christian so there is some bad language in it, but through God’s good work there are a lot of Christian values and beliefs woven into the fabric of the story as well without me even realizing it at the time when I wrote it. He really does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?