New Girl’s Nick Miller spent most of the series working on a novel, which went through a couple of changes from the first time he shared his plans to the book finally being published – and season 2 setup the protagonist of the novel. Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, New Girl made its debut on Fox in 2011 and came to an end in 2018 after seven seasons. From the beginning, New Girl was very well received by audiences and critics, who praised the series’ sense of humor, style, and the performances of the main cast, with Max Greenfield considered the breakout star of season 1 and Jake Johnson the one of season 2.
New Girl follows Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel), a bubbly teacher who finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her, and so moves out and ends up living in a loft with three complete strangers: Nick Miller (Johnson), Schmidt (Greenfield), and Coach (Damon Wayans Jr), who was quickly replaced by Winston (Lamorne Morris). Though adapting to her new roommates and to a person as quirky as Jess wasn’t easy, they ended up becoming very close, with Jess’ best friend Cece (Hannah Simone) also joining the fun. Each character had their own struggles, but perhaps the one with the most was Nick.
A bartender and law school dropout, Nick was lazy and lacked any motivation and long-term goals, which was a common worry among his friends (mostly Schmidt and Jess). Nick had only one “plan” in his life, but he spent most of the series postponing it for one reason or another: he wanted to write a novel, and it was one with a very specific theme. Nick claimed to be working on a zombie novel called Z is for Zombie, and the premise changed a couple of times as he didn’t really have a clear idea. Nick had a moment of sudden inspiration and motivation in season 2’s episode 9 “Eggs”, where he wrote Z is for Zombie, but as noted by the rest of the group, it had a lot of mistakes. A few episodes later, Nick decided to keep an eye on one of Jess’ students, and for that, he used the alias “Julius Pepperwood”.
Julius Pepperwood was a skilled detective – a zombie detective, but in his first proper appearance in the show, he was just a regular detective trying to save Jess from what he thought was a dangerous student. After more procrastination, Nick finally wrote a novel, but it wasn’t Z is for Zombie. In season 6, he finished a novel titled The Pepperwood Chronicles, and even though it was initially rejected by a publisher, it saw the light of day thanks to Reagan (Megan Fox), who got a deal with a bookstore to sell it. The Pepperwood Chronicles had Julius Pepperwood as the protagonist, who was described by Schmidt as a “hard-boiled Chicago cop turned New Orleans detective, racing around on fan-boats, drowning that two-faced DA in a bucket of jambalaya”, while Nick described him as a man “fighting with the alligator within”.
Just like when Nick took on the identity of Pepperwood, the one in the book was a detective who went through all types of bizarre experiences, such as finding JFK alive and being handed a brown paper sack with blood-soaked beignets. The appearance of the (former?) zombie detective Julius Pepperwood in New Girl season 2, way before the novel finally happened, is a nice little detail that ended up shaping the project that changed Nick’s life for good, as season 7 revealed that he went on a book tour and was working on a new novel.