She Wrote a Zombie Novel. She's Also A Veterinarian.

Let's be honest for a second.

If the zombie apocalypse actually happened, the first people to know would be veterinarians.

Not the CDC. Not the hospitals. Not the public health officials running their dashboards and attending their very important meetings.

The vets. The ones watching animal behavior change in real time, case by case, town by town, while the rest of the world is still arguing about whether to close schools.

That is the premise of All Creatures: Zombie Invasion -- How to Survive the End of the World, the debut Kindle novel by Dr. Jill Lopez, DVM, MBA -- founder of Vet Candy, practicing veterinarian, and apparently, author.

Yes. She wrote a book. And it's really, really good.

The Story Behind the Story

The idea started with a question that had been living in the back of Dr. Lopez's mind for years.

"What would happen if the people best equipped to recognize a disease outbreak -- the ones who watch animal behavior for a living -- were the first ones to see it coming?"

It's not a hypothetical. Veterinarians have a documented history of being early warning systems for zoonotic disease. The H3N2 canine influenza outbreak. West Nile. COVID-19 and its animal reservoirs. Time and again, the human medicine world catches up to what animal medicine already knew.

Dr. Lopez took that reality and asked: what if we pushed it to the absolute extreme?

The result is All Creatures: Zombie Invasion, Book One of what is planned to be an ongoing series. It follows Dr. Caitlin Greathouse -- a newly minted veterinarian running a small animal clinic in Riverton, Connecticut -- whose quiet Friday afternoon turns into the end of the world when a stray Chihuahua with all the wrong behavioral signs walks through her door.

"I wanted to write something that was fast and funny and terrifying," Dr. Lopez said. "Stephen King taught me that the scariest stories are the ones that feel real. The X-Files taught me that the truth is always stranger than you think. And Scooby-Doo taught me that you can be absolutely terrified and still stop to look for snacks."

Real Science. Real Experts. Real Stakes.

What sets Zombie Invasion apart from your average end-of-the-world thriller is the science.

Dr. Lopez didn't guess at the biology. She called in reinforcements.

Dr. Richard Joseph, neurologist, contributed expertise on the neurological mechanisms at play when the brain is under assault -- the kind of precision that makes the horror feel grounded and the science feel airtight.

Dr. Aleksandra Zuraw, pathologist, brought her expertise in what tissues and systems reveal under extreme pathological stress -- the stuff that makes you realize that medicine, at its most fundamental level, is detective work.

"I wanted readers to finish this book knowing something real," Dr. Lopez said. "Not just entertained -- actually smarter about how disease works, how the body responds, how veterinary medicine fits into the bigger picture of public health. The experts made that possible."

The result is a thriller that reads like fiction but thinks like science. Which, if you know anything about how veterinarians actually work, is exactly right.

A Lifelong Dream, Finally on Paper

Dr. Lopez has been building Vet Candy for years -- a media platform, an education engine, a community for the veterinary profession. She has produced CE content, launched NAVLE prep programs, built clinics, and created media partnerships.

But the novel was always there. Waiting.

"This is a lifelong dream," she said. "I grew up reading Stephen King. I was obsessed with the X-Files. I have always believed that the veterinary profession deserves to be at the center of the story -- not in the background, not as a side character, but as the hero."

Dr. Caitlin Greathouse is that hero. And she is, unmistakably, a veterinarian.

She worries about her student loans. She chases Chihuahuas across parking lots in her good shoes. She has a best friend who moonlights as a locum vet and makes terrible puns. And when the world ends, she shows up with a cooler full of biological samples and the knowledge to actually do something about it.

"The veterinary profession is full of people who chose the hardest, most underpaid, most emotionally demanding job in medicine because they genuinely love it," Dr. Lopez said. "I wanted to write a story that honors that. And also, yes, I wanted zombies."

Get the Book

All Creatures: Zombie Invasion -- How to Survive the End of the World is available now on Kindle.

Book One of the All Creatures series. The outbreak is just the beginning.

Available on Amazon Kindle

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Dr. Jill Lopez is the founder and CEO of Vet Candy LLC, a veterinary media and education platform serving over 50,000 veterinary professionals worldwide. She is also the owner of Pet Candy Veterinary in Avon, Connecticut, and a graduate of Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine.