Just one week left
The paperback version of The Cough Is Loose will be released in 7 days, on July 1, 2026.
Meanwhile, I’m hard at work on Staying Human. Just like The Cough Is Loose, the serialized version will always be free on Substack. However, the Kindle and paperback versions, which will be polished, edited, and expanded, will be available through Amazon for reasonable prices.
In fact, you can pre-order the Kindle version of Staying Human right now! And if you do, I would be a super happy camper!
Happenings in the Bougie Apocalypse universe
On Amazon:
There’s reviews and genre rankings : The Cough Is Loose
Available for Kindle pre-order: Staying Human
We are officially a series: Bougie Apocalypse Series Page
I am an official guy on Amazon: Eric’s Author Page
Over on Goodreads:
I’m official there, too: Eric’s Goodreads Author Page
You can ask me questions: Ask Eric a question on Goodreads
If you are so inclined, I would love a follow or friend request on Amazon and Goodreads, it really helps an Indie Author get visibility.
Some other helpful things are to give a rating on Amazon and Goodreads if you have read the Kindle Unlimited or Kindle version of The Cough Is Loose. Just clicking the honest number of stars you think the book deserves is helpful. If you want to take some time and write a review, that’s awesome.
Cover of Staying Human is official!
That’s all the news that’s fit to print this week. Expect an update every couple weeks, or so. I won’t hammer your inbox, but you will get an update to let you know how the Bougie Apocalypse is doing.
Bonus Content
Last Call At The Dixie
The neon sign above the door flickered with its usual lazy rhythm, casting a weak red glow across the cracked parking lot. Last Call at the Dixie sat just off the two-lane blacktop in a sleepy coastal Georgia town, one of those places where the marsh grass grew right up to the edge of the blacktop and the air always carried the heavy salt smell of the tide. It was a little after eight on a warm Tuesday evening, early enough that the real crowd had not yet rolled in from the highway.
Carla wiped down the scarred oak bar with a damp rag. She had worked this shift for fourteen years, long enough to know every regular by the sound of their boots on the wooden floor. Peanut shells crunched underfoot. The jukebox played low country music in the corner, something about lost highways and broken hearts. A few locals nursed cheap beers at the tables while the TVs above the bar ran the same news loop: reports of The Cough spreading fast up north, hospitals filling, officials urging calm.
“Another round, Carla?” called old Pete from his stool, already halfway through his third.
She poured without thinking, the familiar motions steadying her. At home her teenage daughter Genevieve waited with the doors locked and the TV off, just like Carla had told her. Get through the shift, get home, ride this out. Carla had given her that name years ago, something elegant and strong she had read in an old book, hoping it would lift the girl beyond this life of late nights and peanut-shell floors.
The door swung open and a handful of travelers stepped inside, faces flushed and coughing into their sleeves. They had come down from the interstate, eyes tired from the road. One of them, a thickset man in a faded work shirt, ordered whiskey neat and kept glancing at his phone.
The air inside the Dixie felt close, thick with cigarette smoke even though the state said bars were supposed to be smoke-free. Nobody around here bothered with those sorts of rules anymore. The haze mixed with spilled beer and the faint metallic edge that always seemed to linger near the marsh. Carla kept the sawed-off 12-gauge under the bar, hidden but close. She had never needed it for more than show, but tonight something in the coughing travelers made her keep one hand near the stock.
The whole night changed in one disastrous moment.
The thickset man was in the middle of a dirty joke when his head jerked hard to the side. His body convulsed once, twice. Then he rose from the stool with a snarl that cut through the jukebox music like a knife. He lunged at old Pete and drove him backward into a table. Beer bottles shattered. Peanut shells scattered like spent brass across the floor. Blood sprayed warm across the polished oak.
Screams erupted. Pool cues came off the rack as men tried to fight. A broken bottle flashed in the neon light. Carla grabbed the shotgun and racked a shell.
“Back door!” she shouted over the chaos. “Move!”
Two regulars made it past her, stumbling toward the rear exit. She pumped the shotgun and fired into the growing knot of bodies near the dartboard. The blast tore through the thing that had been the traveler and sent it sprawling across the peanut-shell floor. But more were turning now. The coughers from the road, the locals who had laughed it off minutes earlier. They moved wrong, fast and hungry, teeth bared under the flickering beer signs.
Carla stood her ground behind the bar. She fired again, the recoil slamming into her shoulder. Glass exploded from the liquor shelves. Blood and whiskey mixed in puddles that reflected the red neon. A clawed hand reached over the bar and raked across her forearm. Pain burned hot and immediate. She clubbed the thing away with the hot barrel of the shotgun and kept shooting until the weapon clicked empty.
The back door slammed shut behind the last runner. Carla locked the front from inside, dragged a heavy stool against it, and listened to the pounding start. Her arm throbbed where the scratch had drawn blood. She knew what that meant. She had seen the news.
She poured herself one last neat whiskey, the good stuff she kept for special occasions. The liquid burned clean down her throat. The jukebox kept playing, some sad song about holding on through the dark. Outside, distant sirens wailed once and then fell silent. The marsh wind rattled the windows. Inside the Dixie the peanut shells lay sticky with blood, and the neon sign still flickered its tired welcome.
Carla raised the empty glass in a quiet toast to the empty room. She wondered if Genevieve would stay safe behind those locked doors, if men like that old soldier Jackson Harlan she had heard stories about would figure out what was coming in time. The pounding on the door grew louder. Carla found her last box of shells and started loading the shotgun.
The fluorescent lights above the bar buzzed steady and indifferent. Last call had come early tonight.
Bougie Apocalypse
A serialized military-flavored post-apocalyptic pulp story about heirloom beans, De Buyer carbon steel skull-crackers, good coffee, and refusing to let the apocalypse win.
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Next chapter drops soon → Start Here & Full Reading Order