If you want to stay, you have to die.
NOW AVAILABLE IN HARDBACK with beautiful, illustrated end-pages and a map drawing.
THE STORY: In a small fishing town known for its aging birding community and the local oyster farm, a hidden evil emerges from the depths of the ocean. It begins with sea snails washing ashore, attacking whatever they cling to. This mysterious infection starts transforming the wildlife, the seascapes, and finally, the people.
Once infected, residents of Baywood start “deading”: collapsing and dying, only to rise again, changed in ways both fanatical and physical. As the government cuts the town off from the rest of the world, the uninfected, including the introverted bird-loving Blas and his jaded older brother Chango, realize their town could be ground zero for a fundamental shift in all living things.
Soon, disturbing beliefs and autocratic rituals emerge, overseen by the death-worshiping Risers. People must choose how to survive, how to find home, and whether or not to betray those closest to them. Stoked by paranoia and isolation, tensions escalate until Blas, Chango, and the survivors of Baywood must make their escape or become subsumed by this terrifying new normal.
At points claustrophobic and haunting, soulful and melancholic, The Deading lyrically explores the disintegration of society, the horror of survival and adaptation, and the unexpected solace found through connections in nature and between humans.
“Do not eat fish from these waters. Or oysters. Really, just stay inland. Except that, in The Deading, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re safe, either.”
—Stephen Graham Jones, bestselling author of The Angel of Indian Lake Trilogy
“. . . dystopian eco-horror that perfectly balances social critique, lyricism and ghastliness. It’s a claustrophobic mosaic of a novel, and an outstanding debut.”
—New York Times
“Snailmageddon[!]”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
“. . . fantastical, and unnerving, exploring the strained relationship humans have with the natural world. A slow-burn with loads of payoff.”
—Electric Literature
“. . . effectively disorients the reader by offering a heightened you-are-there sense of urgency to the story, and Belardes’ thought-provoking exploration of societal collapse feels completely of the moment.”
—Booklist
“. . . an uncannily realized dystopian horror story.”
—Shelf Awareness
“. . . offers some fun scares.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
BOOKSELLERS
Kensington Books
A NetGalley and Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books Great Reads selection for Spring/Summer 2024. Check out all the blurrrrrrrbs!
Erewhon Books Executive Editor, AKA “Auntie Editor” Diana Pho says about The Deading: “Disquieting, haunting, and aching, The Deading kept me awake long into the small hours of the night thinking about the horrors of nature, both human and otherwise. Not to mention how much I learned about birding from Nicholas! This is a gem of a book, and I can’t wait for others to discover its dark beauty.”
Short bio:
Nicholas Belardes’s debut eco-horror The Deading combines elements of literary, horror, and science fiction. The New York Times Book Review says The Deading “perfectly balances social critique, lyricism and ghastliness. It’s a claustrophobic mosaic of a novel, and an outstanding debut.” Belardes’s follow up, Ten Sleep (2025), blends elements of gothic and eco-horror with Western fiction. While attending UCR Palm Desert’s MFA Program, Belardes received its Founder’s Award. When not writing, he’s either birdwatching or teaching essay writing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Ethnic Studies Program.
Additional bio:
Nicholas Belardes’s work reflects his studies, which includes pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside Palm Desert Low Residency, where he split his time studying the craft of monsters under the tutelage of horror writer Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians, The Indian Lake Trilogy), as well as the craft of family in literature under crime writer Tod Goldberg (Gangsterland). While studying at UCR, Belardes received the Founder’s Award, given each year to a promising new student.
Belardes has published short fiction in the first Chicano sci-fi anthology, El Porvenir Ya!, and Ohio State University Press’s Speculative Fiction for Dreamers. He doesn’t limit himself to speculative fiction, also having written Chicano fiction for Carve Magazine, Southwestern American Literature, Pithead Chapel and other anthologies and journals.
Nonfiction Pulitzer Prize nominee Kim Barnes describes his nonfiction as “part poet, part storyteller, part historian, part pop culture cartographer,” while Pulitzer-winning Los Angeles Times journalist Christopher Knight called his Boom California (University of California Press) essay, “South Bakersfield’s Confederate Remains,” an “engaging” and necessary read in the fight against infrastructural racism and student indoctrination. Belardes also contributed nonfiction to The Nervous Breakdown and Latino Rebels.
Between 2008-2010, Belardes fused technology and literature by writing Small Places on Twitter. The first twitterature in novel form and a critique of corporate culture, his work is considered integral to the field of Digital Literature. Small Places has been talked about around the world in university classrooms and featured in newspapers and news sites, including the U.K. Guardian, Vogue, Telegraph, Reuters, Christian Science Monitor, Wired, Folha, The Bohemian, and many more.
Belardes continues to write about the American West, the Chicano experience, birds, and the natural world. He currently teaches writing in the Ethnic Studies Department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is represented by The Jud Laghi Agency.
You can find him on BlueSky, Insta, Facebook, Threads, though he still mostly tweets: @nickbelardes
