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Feature Mon Oct 25 2010
Answers and Questions: Scott Kenemore
Answers and Questions is a biweekly column that asks Chicago writers to remember the funniest or strangest things they've been asked in a question-and-answer session, during a talk, or in an interview.
With tomorrow's planned zombie attack, it's a good thing we have our own undead expert Scott Kenemore to help us out. Well...maybe.
One question I am asked at virtually every reading is: "What's your personal zombie survival plan?" I don't have a lot of faith that a full-scale outbreak would be survivable, so my plan is usually just to fight zombies as awesomely as I can. Currently, I think this would involve taking a box of homemade Molotov cocktails to the roof of my building in Logan Square, and throwing them down on the zombies below to creating a giant mass of flaming zombies.
Some fans want to understand zombies' mass appeal...
Another question I get frequently is: "Why are zombies suddenly so popular?" I reply that I think zombies are a reaction against vampires. Not all horror fans can relate to vampires, who tend to be well-dressed, need to be the center of attention, and seem fabulous at all times. A lot of horror fans prefer a monster who just gets things done without a lot of frou-frou. Zombies don't care how they look, or what people think about them. Zombies don't try to be suave or stylish. They just lumber in and eat your brain. Awesome.
...while others (possibly doing fan-fiction research) just want to know about zombies' sex appeal.
For whatever reason, when I do readings at horror conventions, I tend to get a lot of graphic questions about zombie reproduction. Like:"Can a male zombie get an erection? What if it's an undead zombie with no heartbeat and blood-pressure?"
"Can a female zombie have a baby?"
"What would happen if a human had sex with a zombie? Would they make a half-human, half-zombie baby?"
These are not topics I write about in my books, so usually, my answers will depend on how many cocktails I have had before the reading.
