F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Fun

The North Country

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The View Out Our Camp's Front Windows, Lake Titus, New York (© F. P. Dorchak)
The View Out Our Camp’s Front Windows, Lake Titus, New York (© F. P. Dorchak)

My wife and I just returned from a trip to “The North Country,” or upstate New York. It was my dad’s 80th birthday, so we timed our annual trip back east with his birthday. Since there were several of us showing up, there was not enough room at their place, so a “camp” was rented on Lake Titus, just a few minutes outside of Malone, NY. An upstate New York camp is not a tent or KOA, but is a rustic-or-better building used as a camp. Most are rough, but some, called “Great Camps,” have many amenities and are the size of hotels. It just depends on how much money and effort one wants to put into building these things. Here’s a link explaining the Great Camps and their architecture, but just scale it down a bit for the “everyday person’s camp,” and you’ll get the gist. Anyway, we had a place large enough for the four of us. And it was right off Lake Titus, with a dock and paddle boat and kayak. And thanks to Phil and Meredith, who own the camp! Such terrific people! We had a blast!

Our flights in and out went beautifully. We met my brother, Greg, and his son, Alek

The Lake Titus, New York Camp. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 14, 2016)
The Lake Titus, New York Camp. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 14, 2016)

(Greg also has a daughter, Niki, but she couldn’t make it), in Vermont and we all drove to my dad and stepmom’s place, in waaay upstate New York. We did all the touristy things and revisited the old stomping grounds were Greg and the rest of my siblings and I grew up. Stopped by the old middle school we’d attended and walked about its halls (it was open—and I even ran into an old classmate of mine there who now works there; he told me several of our class now works there!). Stopped by the school’s auditorium where both Greg and I had acted in plays (I had been the gangster in “The House on Whaleshead Rock“; this is all I could find on it, but I do still have the play’s script somewhere…). This is where Greg got his start as an actor (he’s also a screenwriter, producer, author, and has even done Stand-up comedy in Las Vegas, Nevada—I’ve seen him perform, he was great, even working a drunk in the front row…), so it was cool to show his son and take pictures of it, though we couldn’t find all the light switches to switch on all of the auditorium’s lights.

We visited the old Lake Clear House, where we all grew up.

Visited Ausable Chasm.

Made multiple trips to Donnelly’s Corners!

Visited our paternal grandparents’s graves.

Frank Dorchak, Jr., Malone Golf Club Birthday Party (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)
Frank Dorchak, Jr., Malone Golf Club Birthday Party (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)

And there was my dad’s 80th birthday party! It was held in the banquet hall of the restaurant of the Malone Golf Club. There were over 70 in attendance, representing all the areas of his life from childhood, the Navy, his Forest Ranger service, to his current efforts with Clear Path For Veterans, and more. My dad spoke, sang, and we all danced. Some came up to say a few words. I spoke. Then, when it came to his birthday cake, he insisted on on having all 80 candles on his cake. In his words: “I earned every damned candle“! As he “blew” them out with a wave of cardboard or paper or whatever it was he was holding, the smoke filled the air above the cake, and Greg and I looked to each other. We both said, yeah, that’s gonna set off the fire alarms! Not two minutes later, yup, off went the alarms! After the fire department arrived, we took pictures of Dad shaking hands with the fireman who responded. We later sent an e-mail to the Malone Telegram and got an article in the Friday, August 19th, paper, the upper right corner of page A3! It’s quite large!

The rest of the trip involved hanging out with family, playing games, talking, standing and sitting around an outdoor fire pit at my folks’s place, and more. At the Lake Titus Camp, my wife and I swam and kayaked the lake. I’ll detail more of some of these and other aspects in some upcoming posts. But it was a glorious 10 days in the North Country, visiting family and reconnecting with an area of the world I love. I love the woods and waters of the Adirondacks and upstate New York and can’t get enough of them. Love visiting my Dad and stepmom, Wanda.

It was a great trip!

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The Way We Were

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Nevermore. (Image by Gustave Doré [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Nevermore. (Image by Gustave Doré [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
A prose poem about looking back.

Memories.

Days gone past.

Remembering past movies, mindsets, and a sense of public decorum.

And, okay, a few ties to other works. I think I can get away with that last word….

But nothing is ever perfect. As we remember it. There are always dark shadows (pardon the veiled pun).

Change is what it is.

This poem has never been published. Probably should have stayed that way.

 

The Way We Were

© F. P. Dorchak, 2003

 

We would never die and never grow old

Polite to each other

Always young

NYC known for publishing, Greenwich Village, “The Big Apple”

HIV was no more than just three letters in the alphabet

Gas was under a dollar

Our dreams were on fire

We could change the world

Nothing could get in our way

Stephen King was It

Nevermore

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Beyond The Trope Interview – Denver Comic Con 2016

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A Beyond The Trope Podcast. (Image by By Badseed [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
A Beyond The Trope Podcast. (Image by By Badseed [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
When I attended Denver Comic Con 2016, I was thrice interviewed. The first posted interview was with Reel Nerds, and this one is with Beyond The Trope. In this interview I am grouped with C. R. Richards and Sue Duff. I’m the middle, or second interview.

Beyond The Trope Interview.

It runs 40:17.

Or…you can listen to just my interview below. It runs 11:35.

Early in my interview I say that I don’t write about “monsters”…which is sorta true: in my novels I don’t write about fantastical monsters…though I do write about the human kind. However…in my short stories, I have written about them! Sooo, sorry about the lie. It was Denver Comic Con. It was crazy.

Beyond the Trope on iTunes!

I have one more DCC 2016 interview, with Solikeyouknow.com (SLYKRadio). They will contact me when that podcast is available.

Thanks, Beyond The Trope! Had a blast!

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Reel Nerds Podcast Interview – Denver Comic Con 2016

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A Reel Nerds Podcast. (Image by By Fourandsixty [Own work] [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
A Reel Nerds Podcast. (Image by By Fourandsixty [Own work] [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
When I attended Denver Comic Con 2016, I was thrice interviewed. This is the first of them:

Reel Nerds Interview.

It runs 11:58.

Thanks, Reel Nerds, for a fun time!

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Short Story Listing

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What Lies Beneath...And Beyond? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)
What Lies Beneath…And Beyond? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)

Well, here it is, the complete listing of all my short stories and their dates…those already released on this site and those scheduled for release on this site…and their scheduled dates. As they get released I’ll update my Short Stories page, though this page may not be as quickly updated, if at all.

Admittedly, not all of these are short stories…some are poems, and one, “Nightdrive,” is an essay I put out on my Reality Check blog. And these are not every short story I’ve ever written. Just the better of them…and the ones I’ve found. There are many hand-written ones I haven’t gotten to, but those are the ones written during high school and earlier.

When I release my short story collection (scheduled for 2017), I will take only what I consider to be the best of the below-listed stories. My purpose in the free releases on my blog was to show the work in as close to their original form as possible, with only minor editing (though some did required more!), but when I put them into my short story collection I will edit harder…though (as it currently stands) I do not plan on updating them to present-day technology, et cetera. And yes, there are a couple new stories (2016) in this collection as well (“Rewrite” and “Broken Windows”…that latter started in 1997 [four double-spaced pages], but the remaining 19 double-spaced pages were written this year)!

The dates listed below are when they were released on my blog sites and is not their original creation (and copyrighted) dates. For those not-yet-released those are their scheduled release dates…though I may move them around. Short stories should technically be “quoted,” as in “Tail Gunner,” but I’m not gonna do all that; it’ll make it too busy looking, so I left all quotes off.

Feel free to forward or link to or reblog anything of interest, just give proper attribution.

Original copyright creation dates are all listed on the individual story postings.

Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read and comment! These have all been hidden away for far too long (well, some can’t be hidden away long enough, perhaps…), been toiled over for years, in some cases, and it was so much fun revisiting them and giving the best of them renewed life!

  1. Tail Gunner – 11/27/15
  2. The Death of Me – 12/04/15
  3. The World’s Greatest Writer – 12/11/15
  4. The Coming of Light – 12/18/15
  5. Dark Was The Hour – 12/24/15
  6. Tick, Tick, Tick, Tock – 12/31/15
  7. The Ice Gods – 1/1/16
  8. Rainy Nights and Christmas Lights – 1/08/16
  9. Fear – 1/15/16
  10. Spirit of Hope – 1/22/16
  11. The Ballad of fReD BeAn – 1/29/16
  12. Brains – 2/05/16
  13. Saint Vincent – 2/12/16
  14. Entombed…Resurrection…Unbound…. – 2/19/16
  15. Etched in Stone – 2/26/16
  16. Bone Poem – 3/04/16
  17. Clowns – 3/10/16
  18. Garden of the Gods – 3/18/16
  19. The Girl Who Chased Gargoyles – 3/25/16
  20. Snow Paper – 4/01/16
  21. Crypt of Vampyres – 4/06/16
  22. Nightborders – 4/15/16
  23. Red Hands – 4/22/16
  24. The Chain Letter – 4/29/16
  25. Contamination – 5/06/16
  26. A Conversation With Hell – 5/13/16
  27. Nightdrive – 5/18/16
  28. Walkers – 5/20/16
  29. Rewrite – 5/27/16
  30. Blondie’s – 6/03/16
  31. Allergies – 6/10/16
  32. For Whom the God <burp> – 6/17/16
  33. Bloodtales and Flies – 6/24/16
  34. What Dreams Are Made Of – 7/01/16
  35. Drive-Ins – 7/08/16
  36. The Running – 7/15/16
  37. Casa – 7/22/16
  38. Spiders – 7/29/16
  39. Plaything – 8/05/16
  40. Freefallin’ – 8/12/16
  41. The Way We Were – 8/19/16
  42. Jumper – 8/26/16
  43. The Lifter – 9/02/16
  44. Attention Span – 9/09/16
  45. Werewolf – 9/16/16
  46. Seeing Things – 9/23/16
  47. The Interview – 9/30/16
  48. Shelf Life – 10/07/16
  49. Blue Diamond Exit, Mile Marker 15 – 10/14/16
  50. Red Envelope – 10/21/16
  51. Love, What a Way To Go – 10/28/16
  52. The Hallowe’en Tree – 10/31/16
  53. A Sermon Unleashed – 11/04/16
  54. Please Have A Seat, Mr. Jordan – 11/11/16
  55. The Wreck – 11/18/16

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Updated Headshot Portfolio

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This Is Me. Take It Or Leave It. (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)
This Is Me. Take It Or Leave It. (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)

Last Friday I finally got around to updating my social media photo portfolio I use for writing promotion. I’d been putting it off for a couple years…for different reasons. Chief among them was the weirdness, well, of just doing so… you know, looking into a camera lens that’s all focused on me… your truly. Sure, I studied modeling, but, geez, that was 28 years ago! Also, it was just finding the time to put out the effort to do so. We’re all busy (a term quite “used” today). Yet, as more gray hair began emerging upon the sides of my head I thought, well, I better get on it. I hate it when public figures use images of when they were twenty years old and I meet em…and they’re not. Be proud of who you are, dammit, and be honest about it…wrinkles, gray, and all!

So…I finally gave in. I want my headshots to be an honest portrayal of me and I didn’t want to be freaking lazy about that. Because writers need headshots to send to outlets that ask for them. When you guest blog, blog hosts (rightly so—I’ve asked for them of those I’ve interviewed) want headshots. Readers wanna know what we look like…I get it, it’s a natural curiosity. Turnabout is fair play.

So, I gave my friend, Jan C J Jones, a call. Hey, Jan, what can you do fer me? I just want two or three headshots….

Well, as is normal for Jan, I wasn’t just getting two or three mug shots. Nope. Jan don’t work that way. About anything. When you ask Jan for a favor…you get 1,000% of her attention and creative concentration…and there’s just no easy way of saying this: she just blows things out of the water….but for YOU. Her creative mind is always cranking and now I’d just put myself [back] on her radar.

Oy, what have I done?

Yes, I’ve been there before! Jan is an amazing person, and if you ever get the chance to work with her, drop whatever you’re doing and do it! It’s humbling and awe-inspiring! From her website:

“My strength is understanding story structure and audience psychology…knowing what the viewer “needs” to see, and when, in order to keep them engaged, entertained, and satisfied with their viewing experience.” [www.forest-rose-productions.com]

And she ain’t no slouch there. I was far from being her first rodeo on the subject. She manipulated me for my photo shoot like the consummate professional she is. It did actually bring me back to my short-lived modeling “career.” She’s done this for a living, among other things, as a film producer, screenwriter, video editor, artist, tutor, and author. You’ll note I said “among other things.” She’s won awards and co-produced a retrospective touted as the “quintessential history of Disneyland,” for Buena Vista Home Video (a Disney company). Her current project is titled, “A Journey with Strange Bedfellows,” is a classic Victorian “steampunk” Gothic horror audio drama that is also a graphic novel, music album, and educators’ guide, and it’s really cool! [www.a-strange-journey.com] See? She even goes all-out on her own work, spreading it out across multiple platforms! Jan is just plain fun to work with!

Anyway, no sooner had I opened my mouth, when she started talking costumes and props and location scouting…and I had to throttle her back right there, because I’m not into lions and tigers and bears, oh—dang it, really? Now I gotta go location scouting?—but she did get me to thinking. I did have to, you know, wear something…so whether or not you call them “costumes,” you do have to think about what you’re gonna wear. Patterns, Jan tells me, really aren’t what you wanna wear…it’s distracting…unless that’s what you want to do. So, okay, Jan, fine, you win on that account. I put out an array of clothing (aka “costumes”) and she selected the best of them for our purposes.

Props: no, Jan, I’m not into “props”…just me…you know…a couple-a-headshots…bing, bang, boom!…we’re done. Don’t wanna abuse your time and all because I do know how busy you are and you’re semi-retired, and, but on the way out of the house, I thought, huh—props? How about—

So, I grabbed our largest kitchen knife.

Crap: she got me there, too. I now had a “prop” in my possession (um, wrapped in a towel, you know, because walking around out in public with a large, shiny knife….).

Jan C J Jones, Forest Rose Productions, LLC.
Jan C J Jones, Forest Rose Productions, LLC.

During the couple of weeks leading up to all this she kept pinging me on how my location scouting was doing.  Fine, I said. Kinda. Had all kinds of excuses for not doing it, cause, you know, this was just gonna be a couple-a-headshots…but I thought, okay, she has a great point here. My original intent was an hour or two shoot around the house, maybe Garden of the Gods…or, hey, how about…yes!—how about a cemetery! I mean my writing is all about peeking behind that thin caul of reality, right? Buncha short stories about graves, and death, and dying? One with a knife, even (“Clowns“). There is a cemetery I really like in the area, large deciduous trees and all…a kinda Night of the Living Dead look to part of it. As to Garden of the Gods, Jan told me that shooting in well-known locations can be problematic…possibly requiring permits, yada x 3. I really wanted to make this easy on Jan, so—<buzzer sound!>—that was out. But, the more I thought about the cemetery, the more I liked it! We also used the gardens of a mausoleum we both knew of.

But let me clarify…I didn’t want it all about cemeteries. But cemeteries and their ilk can have cool surrounds…leafy trees…beautiful landscaping…and that’s why I chose those two locations. We could shoot the creepy stuff…but also accentuate the portfolio with non-creepy stuff, and (pardon the pun) kill two birds with one [grave]stone. By the way, cemeteries sometimes have such incredible artwork…but few will see it…or only see it in times of great emotional distress…so will miss the beauty of the artwork in and itself. I do recommend you find a cemetery with such artwork, and just walk through it with a clear head…you might just be amazed at what you find!

So…<sigh>…Jan got me there, too, with location scouting. Good thing I “throttled her back” right at the onset.

So we headed out!

It was an overcast day, which turns out to be perfect for photography! The uniform lighting! There was a forecast for “a chance of rain,” but it never materialized. Maybe a sprinkle or two, but nothing thunderous and sheeting. So, it worked out beautifully. We shot at the cemetery, the mausoleum, and my home. The sun came out at the tail end of our photo shoot…too much squinting for yours truly, so we ended all that. Then we brainstormed a couple of special effects (SFX) set-ups we could do…so we took a couple of “staged” shots for those that would look odd in a portfolio if you didn’t know why they were there (like “back” or “butt” shots of me on a step stool against a white wall…backlit shots in the garage…these would be SFX’d if needed), and Jan worked her magic on some of them and they turned out totally cool! We ended up with just shy of 500 shots…but since some were taken in preparation for SFX work, and some we were simply experimenting with, not all will see the light of day…and to be honest, after a while of going through a lot of them (I still haven’t gone through all of them), I’m getting tired of my own face….

But.

Now I have up-to-date images I can send to those who request them. I’ve already begun to update my social media Gravatars and all. I even have some images we can mess around with for cool effects. Jan really went light-years out of her way in helping me get far more out of my simple request than I’d even dreamed of. And, again, that is just how she operates. She’s not half-assed about anything she does…and she will get you to think in directions you never considered thinking or going. Granted, this may be a “minor” example, but it’s salient. I’ve known and worked with Jan for years, and this is how she operates in everything she does. She’s quite simply a most wonderful woman!

So…I’m a bit apprehensive to include any photos here, because I really don’t want to appear narcissistic…as I said, I’m quite over looking at my own face…but I thought it might be appropriate because of my previous modeling post…and to show some samples of Jan’s work. So…okay, I’ve included a few of the shots we took. We had fun, experimented, and came up with some good images I can use for a good couple years…and for that, I am extremely grateful and indebted to Jan for her experience, expertise, and friendship. Thank you, Jan, for taking an entire day out of your busy schedule to help a guy out!

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Jan C J Jones, Executive Producer/Writer, Forest Rose Productions, LLC, Information

Forest Rose Productions, LLC

Forest Rose Productions, Facebook

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PO Box 1948
Monument, CO 80132
719/487-0435

E-mail: jcjjones@aol.com

Strange Bedfellows Project: www.a-strange-journey.com

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My Short-Lived Modeling Career (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)