Leigh Radford is a broadcast journalist and writer, who has worked for the likes of the BBC and Time Out. Her novel, One Yellow Eye, is a novel zombie story that has been described as ‘a post-apocalyptic heartbreaker’ and ‘equally charming and grim.’ We caught up with Leigh to find out more.
How would you pitch One Yellow Eye to someone who’s only just discovered Night of the Living Dead?
One Yellow Eye is about how far we go to keep the ones we love alive. Even if they look like the cast of Night of the Living Dead. Maybe it’s Shaun of the Dead meets The English Patient, set in a post-zombie-apocalypse London.
Is the zombie infection the scariest thing about a zombie?
I think for me it’s the loss of agency and humanity, less so the biting and the bleeding. Zombies are us as we are on the cusp of losing everything that makes us human and when they reach that awful point of no return and succumb to the virus. Zombies as they change forever are about the clearest depiction of mankind’s ultimate capitulation to mortality as you’ll ever see or read. And that’s what makes them so frightening. They represent what lies in store for all of us.
Why do we keep telling each other horror stories?
Horror novels give us an emotive language to say the unsayable. Horror allows us to feel things more deeply, to process the grief inside, the pain and suffering around us, to embrace our fears wholeheartedly. By heightening the extremities of gore or jump scares – whatever the source of the horror might be – can perversely allow us to feel more alive than ever. Horror is oddly cleansing that way, it speaks to our endurance, our humanity and to the hope we never let go over, even when life feels very dark.
What inspired you to write this particular story?
One Yellow Eye was inspired by my experiences of nursing my lovely Dad, Roger, through terminal cancer. I lived with him for the last six months of his life, a time I’ll always cherish. But his was a slow and brutal death and I felt very changed by what I went through with him. I wrote the novel as a catharsis to try and exorcise my grief. A lot of the profound responsibility I felt caring for him – essentially holding his life in my inexpert hands – was humbling and at times overwhelming. I could not cry when I was with him, I had to keep my feelings locked tight. But that took its toll. I really, really loved my Dad, so writing a novel that it essentially a love story at its heart, felt like a good way to honour him.
If you could sit one of the characters from the books down and have a word with them, who would it be and what would you say?
I would give Jess a stiff talking too. There’s a good friend in there somewhere (I think?!) once you strip away the narcissism, jealousy and her unhelpful grief-fatigue. She ought to be more patient with Kesta and understand that grief never leaves you it simply changes shape. I would tell her, honey, this is not about you, it’s about Kesta and it might be about her indefinitely. You just need to show up, be there, be kind and not put a timer on your friend’s recovery.
Why is life so difficult for Kesta in One Yellow Eye?
Kesta is stricken by emotional dissonance. She’s living in two opposing realities; one in which her husband is dead, and the other in which she is still in the process of losing him, incrementally – and with this enormous weight on her shoulders alone to save him. No one around her knows the truth of what she’s dealing with. She’s in a kind of purgatory, unable to grieve Tim because he’s still sort of alive, but also unable to give up on him, to relinquish all hope. There is so much at stake for her, so many audacious, crazy risks she has to take, on her own, to try and keep that hope alive. Deep down in her scientific brain she knows the pursuit of a cure is likely futile, but love is never logical, is it?
What other projects would you like to work on?
I am keeping everything crossed that one day One Yellow Eye will be adapted for the screen. I would be over the moon to watch the film of it in a cinema – that would be mind-blowing! And I have several other novels plotted out across different genres, I just have to summon the courage to write them.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently ploughing through the painful second draft of my next novel, as yet untitled, a story about possession and exorcism. I don’t want to jinx it (?!) but I hope we’ll get it out in early 2027.
Pop Music or Opera?
Both depending on how deeply I want to feel.
Vampires or Werewolves?
I’ve got three rescue cats and I support a local colony of feral cats in my rural neighbourhood. So I’m already a mother of little werewolves.
Truth or Beauty?
Always truth.
One Yellow Eye is out now and is available from all good booksellers.
