Mira Grant AKA Seanan McGuire: Complete Newsflesh series + Interviews
“I wanted to see what would happen if I started explaining zombies.”
Author Seanan McGuire outlines the differences between “Seanan McGuire” and “Mira Grant,” reveals what she wanted to bring to the zombie genre, and explains why diverse readers can see themselves in her books. Oh—and she teaches us how to survive the zombie apocalypse.
The Newsflesh series are political/science fiction/horror novels written by Seanan McGuire under the pen name Mira Grant. Set during the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, the series is primarily written from the perspective of blog journalists. The series was originally a trilogy, but later expanded to include a fourth novel and a final collection of short pieces and bonus materials. When talking about the original trilogy, the author described the books like this: “Feed is a political thriller with zombies, Deadline is a medical thriller with zombies, and Blackout is a conspiracy thriller with zombies.”
McGuire gives an outline of the Newsflesh series:
Photo: Beckett Gladney
The basic concept behind the Newsflesh trilogy is that in 2014 the Zombie Apocalypse happened, and…we actually managed to win. A lot of people died, a lot of land was permanently ceded, but we came out on top. So 20 years pass, and you have an entire generation of people that’s grown up in a world where zombies just are. They’re not something special. They’re not something exciting. They just are. People go on. People do what they do.
The Newsflesh trilogy follows a pair of bloggers—primarily—Shaun and Georgia Mason. Their biological families all died when the zombies rose, and they were adopted together and became professional bloggers, because it’s the blog community that, when the dead actually started walking, was willing to stand up and say, “The dead are walking. We have a problem here.” Rather than just going, “Oh, it’s the flu. Oh, it’s something. We don’t know what it is, but we’ll deal with it.”
The Newsflesh series was driven by McGuire’s interests and a lot of “what if” questions:
I love zombies and I love epidemiology, and my big problem with a lot of zombie fiction is that “well, it was a disease” seems like an easy answer, but really isn’t. So I started thinking about what sort of a disease you’d need to actually have a zombie apocalypse—and the thing about diseases is that they don’t actually want to be slatewipers (diseases that wipe out the entire susceptible population), because doing that also destroys the disease itself. I started tinkering with my post-zombie world, trying to figure out what it would take to rebuild society, what kinds of social structure would arise…
I’m also fascinated by the difference between terror and fear. Fear says “do not actually put your hand in the alligator,” while terror says “avoid Florida entirely, because alligators exist.” I figured terror would be a huge component of the post-zombie world. Everything arose from there.
McGuire wanted a zombie virus that was society-changing but survivable, and spent two years developing the concepts of the virus and its consequences.
I read enough books on viruses to qualify for some kind of horrible extra-credit program, audited a bunch of courses at UC Berkeley and at the California Academy of Sciences, and then started phoning the CDC persistently and asking them horrible questions.
Below, find a list of the Newsflesh books, plus interviews and links to interviews. Seanan McGuire explains why she used a pen name for the series, shares what she thought she could bring to the zombie genre, talks about her research to make her zombie apocalypse plausible, and explains why diverse readers can see themselves in her books. You can also watch a panel discussion where McGuire teaches us how to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Complete Newsflesh books by Mira Grant
Monster Complex uses Amazon affiliate links
Feed (Newsflesh #1)
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them. FEED is the electrifying and critically acclaimed novel of a world a half-step from our own—a novel of geeks, zombies, politics and social media.
Buy the book from Amazon (affiliate link)
“Feed immediately hooked me. This makes at least the third time I’ve read it now, and I still adore it.”—Sci-Fi And Scary
Deadline (Newsflesh #2)
Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as fun when you've lost as much as he has. But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead. Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.
Buy the book from Amazon (affiliate link)
“There are several action sequences in Deadline that scream for Hollywood to take notice.”—Seacoast Reads
Blackout (Newsflesh #3)
The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising.
The year was 2039. The world didn’t end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made.
Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this: Things can always get worse.
Buy the book from Amazon (affiliate link)
“The series is best described as David Baldacci meets Dawn of the Dead. The appeal in these books is in the thriller, conspiracy, and the average Joe taking down the corrupt government story lines. The zombie angle adds frame (and some fun zombie attack scenes).”—RA For All: Horror
Feedback (Newsflesh #4)
There are two sides to every story...
We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we unleashed something horrifying and unstoppable. The infection spread leaving those afflicted with a single uncontrollable impulse: FEED.
Now, twenty years after the Rising, a team of scrappy underdog reporters relentlessly pursue the facts while competing against the brother-and-sister blog superstars, the Masons.
Surrounded by the infected, and facing more insidious forces working in the shadows, they must hit the presidential campaign trail and uncover dangerous truths. Or die trying.
Feedback is a full-length Newsflesh novel that overlaps the events of the acclaimed first novel in the series, Feed, and offers a new entry point to this thrilling and treacherous world.
Buy the book from Amazon (affiliate link)
“The greatest strength of this novel, over and above delivering the thrilling action promised, is its commentary on our political now and the near future. The world is wallowing in fear and insecurity, and Grant highlights salient issues like the corruption of government, reality internet, and politicians who just buy their media coverage.”—Speculative Herald
Rise: The Complete Newsflesh Collection (Anthology)
Collected here for the first time is every piece of short fiction from New York Times Bestseller Mira Grant's acclaimed Newsflesh series, with two new never-before-published novellas and all eight short works available for the first time in print.
We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one, unstoppable command...FEED.
Mira Grant creates a chilling portrait of an America paralyzed with fear. No one leaves their houses and entire swaths of the country have been abandoned. And only the brave, the determined, or the very stupid, venture out into the wild.
“Grant expands her clever and disturbing viral zombie apocalypse Newsflesh universe (Feed, etc.) with this satisfying collection of eight novellas (six previously published in digital or limited print edition form) accompanied by brief authorial introductions.”—Publishers Weekly
“I’m sad to say goodbye to this series, but I’m so thankful that it ended on such a high. This is one of my favorite books of the year so far!”—The Grim Dragon
Mira Grant interviews
Here are excerpts and links to interviews with Seanan McGuire
ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “SEANAN MCGUIRE” AND “MIRA GRANT”
“There’s never been any illusion that Mira wasn’t me. When I was first writing Feed—which was the first book I published as Mira—I talked about it very openly on my blog, on Twitter, that I was writing this book, and it wasn’t until after it was sold that I said ‘Mira Grant’ wrote this book. And the reason there was really purely marketing based. It was so that my urban fantasy fans would see okay, this is a Mira Grant book. Clearly there is a difference. And it works in reverse too. People who would never have considered a zombie political thriller by an urban fantasy writer were willing to pick up Feed and take a look at it.” (SOURCE: Lightspeed Magazine)
SEANAN MCGUIRE ON BRINGING SOMETHING NEW TO THE ZOMBIE GENRE
“Everyone has something new to say, about everything. No two people have the same perspective on anything; sometimes the same person won’t even have the same perspective from hour to hour. I wanted to see what would happen if I started explaining zombies. As for the science…I love me some horrifying, disgusting, man-was-not-meant-to-know science. Every meal with me is like high school biology as taught by Herbert West. If I was going to do zombies, I was going to do science zombies.” (SOURCE: Orbit Books)
SEANAN MCGUIRE ON THE RESEARCH SHE DID FOR FEED
“Feed was a fantastic excuse for me to watch every zombie movie made in the last thirty years and call it serious research. It was an even better excuse for me to audit epidemiology courses and read books with titles like Virus X, The Speckled Monster, and Return of the Black Death: the World’s Greatest Serial Killer. It was a good time.
“I also did a lot of practical research. We “staged” several of the fight scenes, to confirm that our distances were accurate. I went to firing ranges, and watched how people handled their firearms. I was unable to drive across the Sacramento River railway trestle, but believe me, the idea was there.” (SOURCE: Mira Grant on FEED)
SEANAN MCGUIRE ON THE DIFFERENCES AMONG THE FIRST THREE NEWSFLESH BOOKS
“Feed follows the political campaign of Sen. Peter Ryman as he is running to be the Republican candidate for president of the United States, and Shaun and Georgia and their friend Buffy have been selected to be his campaign bloggers, to basically follow him through this process. Deadline picks up where that left off, and it’s dealing with the aftermath of the political campaign, and Blackout is sort of bringing those two things together. So Feed is a political thriller with zombies, Deadline is a medical thriller with zombies, and Blackout is a conspiracy thriller with zombies.” (SOURCE: How Seanan McGuire Perfected Her Fictional Zombie Virus)
SEANAN MCGUIRE ON DIVERSITY IN HER BOOKS
McGuire has a policy: If someone she knows says they don’t see themselves in books, she writes a character that reflects them. “Well, one, your listeners can’t see me, but I’m a large lady, I’m a size 18. I have OCD and I am super queer, my girlfriend is here with me and we’ve been together 15 years. And you know what I have never seen, ever in a fiction book, is a fat girl with OCD who loves other girls. Because if you say that’s what you want to do, there’s someone going, Oh, so you’ve got a diversity checklist, huh? Because my existence is a diversity checklist.” (SOURCE: Readers See Themselves In The Many Worlds Of Seanan McGuire)
VIDEO: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse with Seanan McGuire (Cleveland ConCoction 2018)
When Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant, writer of the Newsflesh series) was announced as the author guest of honor for Cleveland ConCoction 2018, they asked if she would host a panel on how to survive the zombie apocalypse. Watch the video here:
Horror and comedy both make us jump—which is why these elements work together so well together. Looking at books from authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tanya Huff, Kelley Armstrong, John Scalzi, Diana Rowland, and Kevin J. Anderson, plus many authors you should meet.