What is the title of your latest release?
ONE YELLOW EYE
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
After a viral apocalypse, one scientist will risk everything to save the life of the only zombie remaining: her husband.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The book is about one woman’s increasingly unhinged fight to bring her husband back from the undead, and it’s set in London, UK. It was inspired by my experiences of caring for my dad when he was terminally ill with a rare type of blood cancer. We had to keep venturing out across London during the Covid lockdown for his chemotherapy appointments, just the two of us driving through the empty city together, trying to make light of an unbearably grim situation. I spent over twenty years living in London. It’s a city I love for all its faults. It’s still home even though I moved away four years ago. I love the chaos there, the energy, that juxtaposition of the historic and the contemporary. It’s a city full of stories, full of secrets, ever-changing. It made sense to base One Yellow Eye there because for a first novel, I found it helpful to draw on things that were very real to me to hopefully give the story a feeling of authenticity for the reader.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. Kesta is a social outsider and a real worrier. We have a lot in common there. But she’s fundamentally a passionate person who feels an innate sense of responsibility to help people, even if it compromises her own wellbeing in the process. Everything she does in the novel, even where her efforts stray into morally grey areas, she does for love.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Relentless. Loving. Grief-stricken.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I undertook research into virology and the scientific disciplines that Kesta needed to have a grounding in in order to strive towards finding a cure for her infected husband. I wanted her world to feel real and for the science to read like a character in the novel rather than overwhelming the reader with impenetrable detail – I hope I got that balance right, I still worry about it. I think the scariest thing I learnt was simply how unpredictable viruses can be in terms of their spontaneous genesis, their adaptability and the sheer speed of contagion. With all our scientific knowledge, something we cannot see with the human eye can still outsmart us. We are entirely at the mercy of things yet to be created by the natural world.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I’m still learning how to work effectively as a writer, so I think how I approach drafting and editing keeps changing. Perhaps, there is no foolproof process? I used to write a draft through to completion and then, edit it, but, now, I’m more likely to revise things in sections as I go through the manuscript. What I would say I do more than ever is plan the novel out in as much detail as possible before I start writing. But editing is always a torturous process. I don’t know many writers who can be completely clinical about it.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I would have said red wine, but you did specify food, so… glazed donuts. My ultimate weakness. I smile just thinking about donuts.
Describe your writing space/office!
It’s anywhere my army of cats deign to give over to me. Usually, they want to sit exactly where I have chosen to work, or one of them will have thoughtfully elected to vomit all over the chair I’d intended to use. I live and work at their discretion. But if they’re occupied, then I’m in the tiny attic room of my cottage in Norfolk, staring out across the trees. Just a little desk and a chair by the window, surrounded by piles of books, no music on – I like to make playlists for my novels and characters, but I can’t focus to write if I’m listening to music – and an endless supply of coffee. I tend to write very early in the morning too, so I’m often in my pajamas.
Who is an author you admire?
I am a huge fan of Olivie Blake. Her work is extraordinary in its ambition. It’s always engrossing, and her range is very eclectic. I am bowled over by how prolific a writer she is. And even though she must be incredibly busy all the time, she was generous enough to find time to blurb my book, which, honestly, I almost fainted over. That was a proper pinch me moment. I hope that one day I’ll get to meet her, although I simultaneously dread the thought of that as I will inevitably embarrass myself completely.
Is there a book that changed your life?
DIRTY WEEKEND by Helen Zahavi which was published in the early 1990s. It was a scandalous book at the time because it centers on a woman’s spiral into acts of violence as a means of challenging the toxic male behavior that is sabotaging her life. It was the first time I’d read a novel – I was about nineteen and Dirty Weekend was included in the feminist writing module of my English Literature degree – that defined female rage, and it reassured me that it was okay to be angry and frustrated and defiant, basically, all the things that girl children are still raised to believe they shouldn’t be. Helen Zahavi really screams at you in that novel.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I’d been working on my manuscript with my literary agent for a couple of months, me finalizing the draft and, then, us going through a few rounds of edits together. When the book was ready, it went out on submission in the UK first. I had some interest from different publishers and got to speak to them via Zoom. It was very humbling and also surreal hearing people talking to me insightfully about my book that even my own mother hadn’t read! Then, we went to auction, and PanMacmillan in the UK offered me a two-book deal which was thrilling. I was thick with a cold at the time, but I still proceeded to dance around the house for a good hour, chugging prosecco, although I was suitably punished for this with a headache that lasted for three days. There was an agonizing four-month wait before the book was sent out on submission to publishers in the US, and I went with Simon & Schuster because I thought the editor there would be an absolute riot to work with. And she has been!
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love speculative fiction because it’s so wildly fantastical in its approach to exploring our most extreme human emotions. Escapism grounded in something profoundly human and universal. But I am a sucker for a murder mystery, that’s always my beach read of choice. A blood-soaked whodunnit with a body in a library, yes please.
What’s your favorite movie?
Sometimes, it’s Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese. Other times, it’s Heat by Michael Mann. But almost always it’s Jackie Brown by Quentin Tarantino. No one has ever been cooler in a movie than Pam Grier is as Jackie Brown.
What is your favorite season?
I’m not convinced we actually have seasons here in the UK because our weather is so consistently inconsistent. Every season seems to blur into the next… I would say summer but then I’d need to move to Italy before I could express an opinion.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I try to book a trip somewhere for a bit of a sunshine pick me up. I love to travel, and visiting new places, exploring galleries and museums and soaking in the sights kind of takes the edge off a birthday just being about me getting progressively older. My perfect birthday involves drinking a glass of dry white wine somewhere warm over a great dinner with even better conversation. That and a giant glazed donut with a candle in the hole.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I love Hacks. Jean Smart is a comedic genius. I enjoy Poker Face because the similarities between Natasha Lyonne and Peter Falk as Columbo are uncanny.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I am not a good cook, so I’d say anything my husband cooks for me is my favorite cuisine because he has absolved me of the responsibility of doing it myself. Whereas if I cook, it’s to prevent us from starving to death, but when he cooks, everything is an event meal. There is nothing that man will not try to BBQ. He does expect liberal fanfare, but I consider this a small price to pay. However, if I’m home alone, it’s a takeout curry – chicken bhuna, chana masala and a garlic naan - every day of the week.
What do you do when you have free time?
I read, I watch a lot of football / soccer, and I love going to the theatre. I just saw John Lithgow in Giant by Mark Rosenblatt, which charts Roald Dahl’s antisemitism controversy in the run up to the publication of The Witches. It was unexpectedly funny and incredibly tense throughout.
What can readers expect from you next?
My second novel is due to publish next summer. It’s about a woman who gets possessed by a malign entity in an unusual way. As yet, its untitled because agreeing on what to call the thing has been harder than writing it.
In this heart-wrenching and unique spin on the zombie mythos, a brilliant scientist desperately searches for a cure after a devastating epidemic while also hiding a monumental secret—her undead husband.
How far would you go to save your marriage? For British scientist Kesta Shelley, there is no limit.
Having always preferred the company of microbes, Kesta has spent her life looking down the barrel of a microscope rather than cultivating personal relationships. But that changed when Kesta met Tim—her cheerleader, her best friend, her absolute everything. So, when he was one of the last people in London to be infected with a perplexing virus that left the city ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.
Though the government has rounded up and disposed of all the infected, Kesta is able to keep her husband (un)alive—and hidden—with resources from the hospital where she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, but he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts are becoming more frequent. As Kesta races against the clock, her colleagues start noticing changes in her behavior and appearance. She is withering away, self-medicating with alcohol, and has stopped attending her mandated ZARG (Zombie Apocalypse Recovery Group) meetings. Her care for Tim has spiraled into absolute obsession.
There are whispers of a top-secret lab working on a cure, and Kesta clings to the possibility of being recruited like a lifeline. But can she save her husband before he is discovered? Or worse…will they trigger another outbreak?
Science Fiction | Horror [Gallery Books, On Sale: July 15, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book , ISBN: 9781668081211 / eISBN: 9781668081235]
Leigh Radford trained as a broadcast journalist. She produced and presented arts and entertainment content and documentaries for British commercial radio, BBC Radio, The Times, and more. A former book publicist, she is a 2023 graduate of Faber Academy. She is currently developing content for film and television through her production company, Kenosha Kickers.
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