Morgan Talty’s near to us, and he’s written Esquire’s “Best Book of 2022 So Far.”

Interview By Gwen Thompson

You’ve nailed the catchy title! How did you come up with Night of the Living Rez?  

That’s actually the title of the first story I wrote for the whole collection back in 2015. In an early draft the character Paige wasn’t a zombie, but she was comatose because of her addictions. I did wonder about publicity and marketing, because I didn’t want people to pick it up and think it was a Stephen King type book. Some people have put it on Goodreads in lists of horror fiction, and people leave a comment like, “This isn’t horror!”

Did you have much input into the cover art? It catches eyes everywhere I’ve been reading it.

I woke up one morning from a dream of what the cover looked like, and I got up and drew this really bad picture of it and sent it to my publishers. I don’t know if they were like, “Oh my god, look at this piece of crap!” but the night sky and the stars that ended up on the cover were part of that original image.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.