The Weep Zombie Book Series Reading Order
Weep Reading Order
Man of Famine (Release Late 2024)
The Lost Letters (Ongoing and free to newsletter subscribers)
Frostbite (release Late 2024)
The Weep Reading Order has caused a little bit of confusion, or rather, I have. Here’s why: The second book was published first, the third second and the first book third. So allow me to set things right. There is no wrong way to read the first three books available in the Weep series; Slack Jaw (1st mainline book in series), Irish Epidemic (second mainline book in series) and Ring of Oak and Apple (companion novel).
The reason being, both Irish Epidemic and Slack Jaw begin at the same time, a few hours before the outbreak. They take place in different locations; Slack Jaw covers The Aran Islands and Galway. The Irish Epidemic explores what happens in Westport and its surroundings. They have different main characters, so both work well as an entry into the series. In the third mainline book Man of Famine, these characters share the telling of that story.
A Ring of Oak and Apple
A Ring of Oak and Apple is free to read as a digital download to my newsletter subscribers. The benefit of signing up there is you’ll also get short stories delivered to your email as part of The Lost Letters series. The catch being, these shorts are not yet professionally polished.
If you’re interested in the series, but worried a near 600 page book might be a bit much to start with (Slack Jaw), then A Ring of Oak and Apple is the book for you. Mostly because right now it’s available free to newsletter subscribers. It can be read as a standalone. Fin, one of the main protagonists of the series is several weeks into the outbreak. He is forced to spend the night on a lake island survivors camp. As the story progresses, we’re introduced to characters telling their accounts of where they were when their worlds ended. You have a crane operator with a front row seat to the fall of Dublin and a night shift worker at a 24 hour petrol station. As the night progresses more survivors join the camp and bring the weeping plague with them. This book is a quick 125 pages and will let you know if the rest of the series is for you.
Slack Jaw
If you want to go straight into the series, then Slack Jaw is the best starting point. I had a lot of fun writing the morally grey character Samantha. I’d like to think readers would side with her rational approach to an irrational situation like a zombie apocalypse. In this book you’ll find a lifeboat team heading out on shouts to try and be a light in the deepening despair. Their actions, though noble have some nasty consequences. There’s a céili at the end of the world in Dún Aonghasa. A ghost ship that destroyed a small Cork Village. There are claustrophobic close encounters with weeping zombies in a Galway pub and an island quarantine hotel. Slack Jaw has a much darker tone than The Irish Epidemic and I think that’s a good place to start for an apocalyptic series.
Just wait until Man of Famine, you’ll think Slack Jaw was written as a children’s book (evil laughs all the way back to the writing desk).