Romero to publish his debut novel, THE LIVING DEAD

George Romero, the man who pretty much invented the modern zombie genre with his 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, is currently working on his debut novel, which will be set in his Living Dead universe.

According to Romero's UK publisher Headline, The Living Dead will tell "the full story behind the living dead: how they came to be [and] what they can and cannot do". The book begins in San Diego, where a corpse suddenly awakens in the middle of an autopsy.

Romero has had a rocky but always fascinating career. The original Night of the Living Dead was a low-budget hit that would go on to have a massive influence on later horror pictures, but due to a copyright mishap the film quickly lapsed into the public domain and Romero saw only a fraction of the profits he would've enjoyed otherwise. In the '70s and '80s Romero had a very successful run of horror films and TV projects - although, as he told us in a Darkworlds.com interview, he sometimes longed to move beyond the horror genre that made him famous. His film career cooled in the '90s, but then early in the new millennium zombies made a big comeback, and so did Romero. He directed 2005's Land of the Dead, 2008's Diary of the Dead, and is currently in production on an as-yet-untitled zombie indie, his sixth film in the Dead franchise.

The Living Dead is slated to publish next July.

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