Over the past week and a half I read through two zombie novels: Monster Island and Monster Nation, both by David Wellington. Now I’m the first to admit that I’m not a true aficionado of the zombie genre; aside from Stephen King’s Cell, I can’t think of any other books I’ve read, and I’ve only seen a handful of movies. That being said, I really enjoyed both books. They’re well-written and entertaining, real page turners. If you don’t mind the squick factor involved with the cannibalistic undead, of course.

But then, you know, zombies. If you pick up a book subtitled “A Zombie Novel”, I’m guessing you don’t mind that so much.

But the more interesting aspect to the novels were what drew me to them in the first place: the author first published them online on a blog, in serial format. In fact, he’s publishing all of his (recent) novels online first, in the same way; it was based on the success of these blog novels that he landed a brick-and-mortar publisher to put his words to paper. That’s cool. That’s really cool.

More and more, that seems to me to be the future of publishing.

Oh, and Wellington just had the third novel in his zombie trilogy published: Monster Planet. I’m debating whether to read it online first, or wait for the library to get the hardcopy in.