Books, Beer and Blogshit: Winter of Zombie 2015: Scott Lefebvre

Books, Beer and Blogshit: Winter of Zombie 2015: Scott Lefebvre:

Winter of Zombie 2015: Scott Lefebvre

You're reading Books, Beer and BLOGshit! Its the only blog on the internet that loves to over-pronounce the word croissant. I am your over-the-top French accented host, Monsieur Fraaaaank!

I'm busting into the word driven version of my world famous, flamboyant French accent and that can only mean one thing! Author Scott Lefebvre is up on The BLOGshit today. Le-fev-REH or Le-Fehvvvvvvv. Or Scott Le Fleh, all acceptable pronunciations if you do it with the proper French flair.

Viva La France and Viva Lefebvre!

The Blogshit: Let’s cut to the chase, what are you promoting for the Winter of Zombie?

Scott Lefebvre:  As with all promotional opportunities, I’m hoping to draw the attention to new readers to check out my work as an author/publisher, hoping that by checking out one of my books they’ll like it enough to check out the rest of my books.  For the Winter Of Zombie event, I’m trying to raise public awareness of two novellas that are part of a larger epic-length post-apocalyptic zombie-epidemic project I’ve been working on, called The End Of The World Is Nigh.

The Blogshit: It’s rarely ever talked about, but how do you envision the outcome of the zombie world you have created? Is there hope? Will humanity succumb to the new world order? What is the outcome of all this horrible zombie business?

Scott Lefebvre:  I know what the end of the story is in the world that I’m working on, but I think that the journey will be more interesting than the destination.  Plus I don’t want to give away the ending, because, like every other author I think I’ve come up with a unique and interesting solution to the problem.  Different authors use different kinds of zombies.  The kind of zombies that I’m using are of medium speed and an animalistic/instinctual intelligence, but they’re not immortal.  I’m giving them about a year until exposure and starvation kills most of the “zombies” off.  But in the world I’m working in 95% of the population of North America becomes dead/undead so I’m more interested in the living characters having to deal with a mostly abandoned and dangerous world in the absence of any kind of central power keeping society running smoothly.  There will be cities on fire, fortified encampments of survivors, and roving bands of cannibals.  My goal is to take the few things I liked from the zombie-epidemic and post-apocalyptic books and films that I’ve enjoyed and use what I thought worked while avoiding what didn’t work for me as a reader/viewer.

The Blogshit: As a writer of zombie fiction, do you feel you can sustain your career writing about zombies only or do you feel you will need to write outside the sub-genre to continue? What avenues will you branch out to if you do feel a need to expand?

Scott Lefebvre:  As a fan of the George A. Romero zombie movies, I loved the way that his films explore the way that different small groups of people experienced the same phenomenon.  After watching his films over and over I started to imagine what that scenario would be like where I lived and in some of the places across the country I have had the good fortune to visit.  I was also a huge fan of Stephen King’s The Stand.  After the fourth or fifth time through that book I came to appreciate the structure of the book and the post-apocalyptic theme, but the metaphysical duality of good versus evil felt too simplistic.  As an atheist, I don’t believe that there is a higher power that can be appealed to and I’m more interested in the way that relatively ordinary people would deal with an extraordinary situation.  I loved the comic book series The Walking Dead, but it didn’t fulfill my desire to experience the ultimate in post-apocalyptic zombie-epidemic fiction.  My goal is to gradually write novella length installments until I have enough material to put together an epic-length work where I can shuffle together all of the novellas into an all-encompassing work.  But, to answer your question more directly, I’ve written in a variety of genres and mediums.  I’ve done fiction, non-fiction, reviews, and screenwriting, so I don’t feel limited to writing about zombies.  I just want to write the post-apocalyptic zombie-epidemic book I always wanted to read.  After I finish this book, I think I’ll be able to walk away from the zombie genre feeling like I’ve done as much as I could to try to push the concept to its logical conclusion.  If you follow the arc of the George A. Romero zombie movies, he was trying to do the same thing but guiding the idea in a different direction.  Even though it’s a sub-plot of Day Of The Dead, Romero was exploring the idea of trying to domesticate the zombies, an idea he explored further in Land Of The Dead, where the zombies seemed to be nearing a self-awareness as a different type of human.  As much as I enjoy those films, I’m not as interested in the concept of trying to domesticate zombies.  I like my zombies persistent, feral, and hungry.

The Blogshit: What is more important to the story: A sympathetic human survivor or a zombie with an interesting storyline?

Scott Lefebvre:  I know that other authors explore the possibility of using the awareness of the zombies as themes.  Philip Nutman’s Wetwork is a great example of how that can be done well.  In my book series, I’m more interested in the “man vs. man” conflict of survivors living in a post-apocalyptic world than with the “man vs. nature” conflict existing as a constant threat driving the characters to work towards a common goal.  The role of “nature” in the background of the books would be the zombies and the collapsing infrastructure of the world the characters live in, but even more dangerous than the persistence of the hungry hordes of the undead is the danger of other people trying to survive in a desperate situation.

The Blogshit: For you, who are the most important writers in zombie fiction at this moment?

Scott Lefebvre:  Obviously Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard are hugely important as influences in zombie fiction considering that The Walking Dead is one of the most popular shows on the air.  But the films of George A. Romero and the writing of Richard Matheson and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are much stronger stylistic influences on the style of work that I’m trying to create.

The Blogshit: Is there room for sex in the zombie apocalypse?

Scott Lefebvre:  Yes.  But the politics of sex and sexuality would by necessity be much different in the collapse of society that would occur in the wake of a full-blown zombie epidemic.  In civilized independent encampments of survivors, pregnancy would be an additionally stressful consideration without the modern amenities of hospitals with trained doctors on call.  Outside of the pockets of what remained of civilization the chances of being killed, raped, and eaten, not necessarily in that order, would likely be much higher than they already are in the absence of civil order.  In a world where resources are scarce and the threat of death is constant there may not be as much room for chivalry and courtesy as there is in our modern world.  That being said, I’m not planning on graphically exploring the consequences of roving bands of cannibals that want nothing better than to have rape for dinner.  I might mention it in passing, but I don’t want to describe it in detail.  My intention isn’t to write gore porn for rape fans.  There’s enough blood, gore, and violence in the books to earn the horror genre tag without having to use the “woman in peril” button too.

The Blogshit:  How much consideration do you give to the seasons in your zombie stories?

Scott Lefebvre:  In the project I’m working on, the seasons play a central role in the story arc.  I’m planning on working with between one and two years for the arc.  In the first year, the threat of the undead is constant and overwhelming, but the amount of resources available to the survivors, left behind by the dead/undead is considerable.  In the second half, the threat of the dead/undead remains, but the problem of survival in a world where the mechanisms of production that supply our desires for consumption becomes a much larger and more interesting problem than just having to escape from hordes of hungry zombies.  I’m interested in exploring life in a world where humanity has the chance to start over again, but with the constant threat of a disease that is incurable and could rise up again to end the human experiment.

Think Pink

The Blogshit: Our final question always revolves around zombie themed food. This Winter of Zombie, Books, Beer and BLOGshit wants you to consider setting up a food truck to cater to a zombie clientele. What would you name your Zombie Food Truck?

Scott Lefebvre:  In the interest of equality, and considering that to zombies, humans would be considered equal opportunity targets, I think I’d name my Zombie Food Truck: We’re All Pink On The Inside.

Paranoid or Steroid? You Decoid.

Lefebvre on Lefebvre:

Scott Lefebvre can write about whatever you want him to write about.

Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.

His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.

He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and Condemned; and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.

His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.

Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:

http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/

Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control

And here: master-control.bandcamp.com

Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt

Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre

E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com