Hi Justin
A brilliant up and coming horror writer is David Wellington. I've just finished reading his amazing trilogy:
Monster Island,
Monster Nation, and
Monster Planet. Dave's trilogy is a slightly different take on the "Undead/Walking dead" genre. The dead have come back to a "zombie-like" half-life and are hungry. The "safest" place on earth is the new "Women's Republic of Somalia", and a former UN weapons inspector must return to undead New York to salvage anti-retrovirals in order to buy citizenship into Somalia for himself and his daughter. Dave comes up with a highly entertaining, gory, and compelling premise, and his characters are memorable and engaging. Even his villains are brilliant.
What makes this trilogy incredible is that Dave has been posting his serialisation of these three novels on a blog for the past year and a bit - completely and absolutely free for anyone to read. One chapter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - as he writes it with no rewrites! (except for the odd typo correction). He's generated an eclectic and eccentric following, and the comments posted to the blog-novels by the regulars are almost as entertaining as the books. He's finally posted the final chapter of the concluding novel, and announced a book deal with Thunder's Mouth Press. Monster Island should be available in April 2006 - so look out for it. I will definitely be adding it to my collection and I'm sure I'll read it a few more times. But I highly recommend having a read online in the meantime. It's well worth the read.