This news is about a month late, but I’m still excited for it:

The title is self-explanatory. It’s Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, except with added bits where they fight zombies, written by Seth Grahame-Smith (author of How to Survive a Horror Movie).

When I first heard about this at the end of January, I said “Nothing about this can fail.” Now that I’ve had awhile to think about it, however … I’m a little more worried, for the same reasons I don’t like fanfiction: I generally hate it when people muck around with a story I liked, whether adding to it or fleshing out secondary characters or writing alternate endings or drawing in romantic relationships between characters. (I’d make an argument about disliking the Star Wars prequel movies, but that’s too easy.) For this book, I’m concerned that the zombie bits won’t be woven in with the original plot, the cuts will be too sudden and too bizarre, and the whole thing will read more like a clever way to cash in on the trendiness of all things zombie.

Of course, I don’t know much about this book other than the cover image (which ROCKS ZOMG) and the blurb on the publisher’s site. I hope that the transitions will be seamless, the writing superb, and when it’s out we’ll all wonder why Austen didn’t include the zombie parts in the first place. Until then … we wait, in fortified top-floor safe zones with weapons and a full pantry. With scones and tea.

[Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is published by Quirk Books and due out June 1, 2009. Preorder it on Amazon.]