JANE: When you told me that you’d bought a story for DreamForge issue one that was set in a zombie apocalypse, I’ll admit.  I was less than thrilled.  Zombies are right up there with vampires on my list of “Things that will keep me from even starting the story.”

However, I read and enjoyed “Z-Spot” by Barbara Barnett.

Because we’re long-time friends, I happen to know you actually like zombies.  Haven’t you published at least one story with zombies in it?

SCOT: I have stories in two zombie anthologies edited by James Lowder and published by Eden Studios. “Online Zombies and Dry-Land Skates” in The Book of All Flesh and “The Hyphenated Spirit” inThe Book of More Flesh. 

I wrote an unpublished novel Sovereign Ice, set in a future ice age, where one of the main characters is a zombie, essentially a sentient, undead slave under the control of magic wielding overlords.

JANE: So what is it that makes you interested in writing about zombies?

SCOT: Because we are all zombies, driven by impulses and appetites we can barely understand and marginally control. And because we are all not-zombies, sapient problem solvers and philosophers, every one of us in conflict with the infection of irrationality which overwhelms us to one degree or another, every day.

In my zombie stories, there is no bright line between zombie and not-zombie.

JANE: Whoa!  Let’s back up here…  We’re all zombies?  When I think of zombies, it’s not the appetite that comes first, it’s the rotting flesh, the smell, and the being forced to continue on after death.  I “get” what you’re saying about zombies being a metaphor for what the Elizabethans might have termed our “animal nature,” but why does this particular metaphor appeal to you?

SCOT: “Appeal” would be the wrong word for me. The way I view zombies is just self-evident. In saying which, I’m not trying to be smart about it; I truly mean it’s the only way zombies have ever occurred to me. They are driven by their most rapacious, self-serving instincts or controlled to serve the same instincts of another. The smelly, rotting, living dead part is just a dramatic physical marker to set them off as “other.” And we’re always afraid of the Other.

JANE: What is the source for the sort of zombie that appeals to you?  There’s the original zombie of voodoo that was, in fact, not undead but a living, mind-controlled slave.  Then there’s the mindless undead, animated by some force – often a virus or the will of an evil necromancer.

You seem to be leaning toward a different type, closer to the narrator of “Z-Spot.”  Since I am, to put it mildly, not a fan of zombies films or lit, I am not familiar with where the intelligent, if rotting, zombie originated.

SCOT: In my case, the only source may be my own projections on the undead. That said, The Walking Dead has its Whisperers, a group of hostile survivors who clothe themselves in the skin of the undead to walk among them. Z-Nation has Talkers, a zombie state where consciousness and civility return as long they remain well fed (on brains, of course). Whether you have humans trying to be more zombie-like or zombies fighting to keep their appetites at bay, a deadly state of disregard for others seems close at hand.

JANE: This has been enlightening for me, although I can’t say I’m likely to write zombie fiction any time soon, I think I understand the appeal more now.

You made an interesting comment above: “we’re always afraid of the Other.”  I’m not sure I agree.  Maybe one of these days we can chat about aliens and elves and some of the other “Others” that make SF and Fantasy so provocative.

SCOT: That sounds good. I especially enjoy it when an opposing viewpoint makes me think hard about what I just said. Maybe we can demonstrate how that shouldn’t make anyone fearful at all.

I’m going to leave our readers with a teaser. Here is some cover art my good friend and fabulous illustrator Frank Schurter produced for an as yet unpublished novel of mine: Sovereign Ice.  Maybe we’ll hear more about that toward the end of the year.