First Jane Austen, now - President Lincoln???

Back in February I wrote about a new book named 'Pride And Prejudice And Zombies'. It's a rewrite of Jane Austen's famous novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who said at the time:

“It quickly became obvious that Jane [Austen] had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel . . . Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet’s doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon? It was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously.”

From then on it was easy to imagine Bennet and her four sisters as zombie slayers, trained since childhood in the deadly arts of Chinese kung fu, and Fitzwilliam Darcy as a promoter of the socially superior ninja skills of Japan. Together they stand bonnet to epaulette against a plague of cannibalistic interlopers from the accursed city of London.

The book hit the New York Times bestseller list. On the strength of its popularity, publisher Grand Central has signed Grahame-Smith to a two-book deal reportedly worth over half a million dollars.

"I wouldn't say anyone ever singlehandedly created anything (unless maybe they were in complete isolation for their entire lives and then suddenly invented Velcro or something) but I do think that Seth has tapped a vein here," said acquiring editor Ben Greenberg. "I had been aware of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies when the online buzz started a while back, and so when this idea was pitched, it just immediately made sense to me and I thought it was a great direction for him."

The first book, said Greenberg, will be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, "a presidential biography in the vein of a Doris Kearns Goodwin or David McCullough, but repositioning the president as the greatest vampire hunter to walk the earth". Unlike Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there is no source material, so the novel will be all original writing. "But rather than just toss vampires in wherever he feels, Seth is doing a lot of research to see where they could fit in properly to the actual events of Lincoln's life – from childhood on," said Greenberg. Grahame-Smith's next book is as yet undetermined, but will also be fiction.

Greenberg said Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has been so popular because it appealed "to Austen fans as well as people who can't stand her writing and would enjoy seeing Mr Darcy have his brain eaten", along with comic readers, humour fans, horror fans, romance fans, and fans of over-the-top grindhouse-style pulp. "The market for something like that is much larger than it might originally seem," he said.

There's more at the link.

I rather suspect that when he hears about this project, Honest Abe might start spinning in his marble seat at the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington DC! He might even arrange for John Wilkes Booth to be reincarnated as a zombie, and point him in Grahame-Smith's general direction!



Peter