Undead Valley is the child of Justin Nicola. Justin is one of the few writers ever to write both the music, lyrics and the story of a major musical. He is also one of the arrangers and orchestrators. Typically it is three people, sometimes two that write the music, lyrics and story. Meredith Wilson wrote all three in his 1957 musical The Music Man. Jonathon Larson wrote all three for his show Rent in 1994. Lin Manuel Miranda is another who did all three for Hamilton, however he credits his story to be based on Ron Chernow’s book Alexander Hamilton. Although Nicola majored in music in college, he quit school soon after and left for LA, hoping to become a hit songwriter. He soon later leased a spacious park bench with a great view of the South Bay cities of Los Angeles County, creating a desire for him to become wealthy. Nicola became an entrepreneur making crazy millions through his thirties. In his early 40s, he lost it all. Justin wrote songs throughout his 20s, hoping one day they would be heard. Yet did he know he was just practicing his writing. Justin had made a million dollars in a day in his youth, but by 2021 had a total net worth of well under a week’s rent. In the spring of 2021, in the peak of the world’s craziness, and awaiting eviction, Nicola sat down at his baby grand piano in his apartment in Beverly Hills, which he had hardly touched in a quarter century, and started playing a song. The song is called Here for Gwen. He didn’t know where the words were coming from because although the overarching theme made sense to his own life, the song was about a guy going up against the US government in pursuit of finding a girl lost in the desert. Justin did not know why he wrote a song that he felt so deeply was about himself and his pursuit of anything pure in this broken world, but at the same time had nothing to do with his life. The song felt so right to Nicola but could only work within the context of a greater story. So he wrote it. In the moments and days to follow, Nicola knew that every day of his life was lived in practice to write the show of the century, Undead Valley, a love story set against the zombie apocalypse.