Parallel Universe, USA

There's at least one parallel universe that I know about because I've lived in it most of my life and still do. I enter it through a hideous black hole every time I wake up in the morning.

It's an unrealistic realm where no one reads a book unless they see an ad for it on TV, a place where learning ends on high school graduation night and Madison Avenue tutors the young who have been nursed on fairy tales about happy consumers living in sit-com houses.

Nothing goes "bump in the night" in this parallel universe because all the bogeymen carry cell phones and PDA's and MP3 players and you can spot them coming a mile away.

Manhattan Wormhole

I was actually lost in a wormhole once, repeatedly trapped in it for over two years. It was a twisted and horrifying time corridor between Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania and Manhattan Island. I entered it each time I went to the post office to mail a query to a literary agent, along with a bio, synopsis and the first three chapters of a novel manuscript or whatever it was that their listing indicated in the current volume of Writer's Market.

Then the strangest things would happen. Via the same wormhole I would get back letters from the agents I'd queried, telling me about the books they had written and where to buy them, with no further mention of the book for which I was trying to secure representation. Well, I knew I wasn't in The Twilight Zone because that was merely a figment of Rod Serling's fertile imagination.

The wormhole suddenly closed one day and I stopped receiving replies from agents altogether. I eventually forgot all about it. But, I was walking past the post office in Snow Shoe today and I saw the dark spiral of twisted time descending again like a waterspout.

Then I ran.

Evermore Anniversary Date

One year ago today I self-published Evermore, my first novel, and became a published author for the first time. The book had a different cover back then. I began this novel (my very first book) in early January 2002 and finished it on March 30, 2002. Yep, it only took me three months to write my first book.

Then, for the next two years, I peddled it to 45 of the Great and Powerful Publishing Wizards of America, most of them located in Big Apple City, and to 47 of the Literary Agent Gnomes of America who serve them. But, being an unknown author and an independent author to boot, the big bad Wizards and their pet Gnomes were just chewing me up and spitting me out without even tasting me.

It took me two years to finally realize that Americans hate indie authors more than anybody else in the whole wide world because indie authors don't guest star on talk shows or sign books on C-Span and you can't find their mass market paperbacks at Walmart. So, if it's not on TV, no one in America knows anything about it and they don't want to know anything about it. In America, if it's not on TV, it's not real.

While I hawked my first science fiction thriller, I wrote two more, undeterred by American shortsightedness. By May 2003 I'd completed The Evermore Trilogy and was unsuccessfully hawking the entire trilogy to traditional publishing houses for the next year or so.

Would I do it all over again? You gotta be kiddin'. I know when to stop beating a dead horse. Besides, I'd rather be vivisected by extraterrestrials than subject myself to the galling snobbery of my fellow Americans, half of which are "upscale" snobs and half of which are "rube couch potatoes" who get all their information and entertainment from TV.

So, why didn't I try to get published outside the USA? I did. But after mailing two or three queries to Canadian and British publishers who then threw out or else stole my material along with the Self Addresses Stamped Envelope (SASE) and who used for their own purposes the International Reply Coupon (an international stamp called an IRC that I had to purchase and include in the query) I decided that's it's better to be snubbed by your own countrymen than to be robbed by foreigners.

Bricks and Mortar

People have asked me where I get the ideas for my novels and I tell them that my material comes from basically two places. My imagination, for one thing, which is more than just active. It's seemingly boundless, a fictional treasure trove for which I am eternally grateful. The other source is a lot less mysterious and it has a big price tag attached to it. And that would be my own observations of life as I live it.

I've always lived a marginal existence, even when I appeared to be knee-deep in the muck and mire of typical human struggles for the same things everyone else was fighting for. Except that I was always standing outside looking in as I continued to work the inside like everyone else, doing it all but never really fitting in. Watching, making mental notes, dissecting, categorizing all the human and inhuman activity while I participated as best I could at the same time, wearing the performer hat and the audience hat and the critic hat and finding that none of them really fit very well.

Then I picked up the hat of the novelist at age fifty and liked the way it looked and felt. And now, what I have seen and suspected all along, I pass along to my readers.

The Self-Publisher Hat Rack

One of the things I've learned is that a self-published author without much a budget has to wear many hats.

The editor hat is a hat that no author should ever wear but it gets donned when there is no one else to wear it.

A poor author also has to be his or her own proofreader (an impossible job), publicist, agent, advertising copy writer, publisher and worst critic, whether or not any of those hats actually fit.

Nuts & Bolts

In my novels I employ science fiction themes such as alien abduction, the artificial creation of life (as opposed to the worn-out, cookie-cutter creation of artificial life theme — two different concepts entirely), time travel, the afterlife, the dreamworld and supernatural phenomena in order to explore these topics for their own merit.

But I also use them as vehicles for exploring many contemporary issues such as copycat business practices, consumer responsibility, unethical health care policies and the need for national health care insurance, racism and bigotry, responsible public behavior, diversity, technological dependency, misplaced values, false patriotism, shadow government activity and unbridled personal ambition.

I do this through in-depth character development, semi-omniscient narration, action and dialogue, all in the third person. Oh, I forgot to mention that I also inject a little foul language (not much compared to most fiction these days), some romance (but no graphic sex whatsoever), violence (only that which is necessary for character and plot development) and a lot of lampooning and humor.

Something for everyone but the biggest offering is adventure for thinkers and seekers.

Conspiracy, Schmeeracy

Although I write about underground government conspiracies, I’m not really a conspiracy theorist. Dangerous conspiracies can provide a solid anchor for a science fiction plot and a meat-and-potatoes storyline but fiction is not proof. If you want proof of anything, read the newspapers or crack the spine on a non-fiction book.

To quote myself, Fiction is real life without its mask. That means that only fiction can uncover the real underlying truth. But it's a truth that can never be proven, only suggested, merely hinted at, an idea thrown into the ring. Fiction is the little birdie that whispered in your ear. Fiction is the one clear thought on an otherwise cloudy day. Besides, I think all genuine conspiracies are predisposed for self-exposure and are, therefore, doomed from the very beginning. Why fight to bring them down when they'll eventually oblige us and do that themselves? You've heard the old saying, "Give a fool enough rope and he'll hang himself." The same applies to those who embrace evil for power over others. Give them enough time and the power they misused will be their own lethal dose of poison.

Despots come in all sizes, shapes and colors and their inevitable downfall invariably follows their suppression of voices that speak truth in one way or another. For example, the New York publishing “community”, like Hollywood and the American television industry, has a history of thwarting new voices that threaten to dispel the clouds of mystery, ignorance and false beliefs that have kept mankind in the dark for millennia.

Hollywood and the television industry, America’s biggest purveyors of untruth and complacency through conspicuous consumerism, nearly lost their control when they opened their doors to Ray Bradbury and then Gene Roddenberry. But, alas, that bold human spirit which seeks out the unknown seems to have died along with them.

When readers began forsaking the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Kurt Vonnegut for industry-selected authors who promised unflagging sensationalism and an endless supply of cookie-cutter characters, the New York publishing “community” was granted a similar reprieve.

It could be said that such business practices — the deliberate cloaking of the truth with the trappings of the material world — have all the earmarks of a true multi-media conspiracy. But, then, I’ve never been much of a conspiracy buff.

Tools of The Trade

I still write all my novels on a Canon StarWriter JET 4000 word-processor. A word-processor is something that no one sells today because everyone wants to write on a computer.

I really admire Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. who did all his writing on a typewriter. Hemingway wrote in notebooks with a pencil. But, of course, they had editors and agents.

The picture below shows my writing room, a small upstairs bedroom in Snow Shoe, PA. The room has a nifty dormer with a southern exposure where I, unfortunately, had to put my computer and not the word-processor. I have to write with my nose to the wall and a cup of coffee on my left or I wouldn't get anything done.

I scribble notes throughout the day on pieces of paper and stick them on the wall in front of me with poster putty. When they have been incorporated into a novel they are moved to the wall on my right. Then they are boxed up with the original manuscript and floppy disks when I start the next novel.

When I write I like it quiet but when I do file maintenance I like to listen to NPR and especially to Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and also to classic jazz music. This photo was taken when I was writing The Dreamer Never Sleeps.

I love to write and I don't mind rewriting but I despise marketing. Selling oneself is making the hardest sales pitch of all.

Author's Note: This photo is a scanned image of a Polaroid snapshot, taken long before I ever had a digital camera. That's why it looks blurry and faded.

Why I Chose Sci-Fi

On my ninth birthday, at age fourteen, and again at seventeen, my life was altered forever by mysterious encounters with otherworldly phenomena.

The most vivid memory I have is about waving a UFO down from the sky when I was seventeen and then waving good-bye to it several seconds later. Those few seconds turned out to be an hour and a half of lost time.

My novels are not based on these experiences but the new genre I chose — blending sci-fi with mainstream and throwing in a lot of contemporary issues — was definitely influenced by these events.

In the immortal words of the late Robert D. Barry who hosted a local late-night Pennsylvania TV show called E.T. Monitor in the 1980s: Something to think about.

The Self-Published Author

Authors who self-publish are often those who have been overlooked or simply ignored by the conglomerate-owned publishing houses that control most of what the world reads today. The annual flood of manuscripts, winnowed by agents and editors into the market-driven products found on the shelves of major booksellers, unfortunately drowns out many new and inspired voices that ought to be heard.

Self-publishing doesn’t mean that an author has nothing worthwhile to contribute to the world of literature or to the world culture. It simply means that an author has undertaken a bold new initiative in his or her quest to establish a following, a readership that will make the effort of writing a worthwhile endeavor, after all.

What's In A Story?

Fiction is real life without its mask. This is my official signature line. But what does it mean?

It means that, as a science fiction author, I'm not pretending to be an expert in the way things are. I simply tell a story about what might be. There, underneath the mask, behind the lie.

The Motivation Behind Writing

My reasons for wanting to write novels are threefold.

To entertain people by making them laugh and getting them to think shares the motivational spotlight with the idea that, I wanted to write books that would make readers want to be better people.

The third reason is that, before I die, I want to make a positive difference in the world.

Time Lines

I started writing Evermore in early January 2002 and finished it in late March 2002.

In April 2002 I began Time and Time Again and finished it in December 2002.

Providence (the third and final book in The Evermore Trilogy) got underway in January 2003 and I completed it in May 2003.

Finally, I started writing The Dreamer Never Sleeps in June 2003 and completed that novel in February 2004.

Hopefully, there will be many more to come.