F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction Author

Leisure

Released: Psychic—The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory!

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© Psychic (F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design, coming mid-2014)
© Psychic (F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design, coming mid-2014)

A hotline psychic.

Ghost children.

A lost teenager.

JFK.

A man-in-black.

Remote viewers.

A Man With No Name.

The 1990s.

After 20 years, it’s finally making it out into the world!

Psychic.

I started with the idea and began taking notes and research and all that back in 1994. I started actually writing the book in earnest, in 2000. And now—in 2014—Psychic is finally released! My longest (published) work so far, at 328 pages. It has been a long, hard road, and (I must say) I’m quite happy with the result…looking forward to how it will be received!

Psychic is now available at both the  CreateSpace eStore and Amazon.com. It will be available at the following outlets in the following timeframes:

  • Amazon.com: 3-5 Business Days (already available!)
  • Amazon Europe: 3-5 Business Days
  • Expanded Distribution channels: 6-8 Weeks

I’ve talked about this a little before (I’m sure, in some other post besides this one, but can’t seem to find it…), but Psychic was not an “easy” book. No, not at all. Nearly all of my manuscript first drafts were “easy” in that I just wrote them out—without an outline—I’d just sit down, put my fingers to the keyboard, and out came the story. I like to say I “vomit out” first drafts (ask me about my “fish” story—I love to tell it!). First drafts have taken me about a month or less, but it would be in the next several years where I’d work and rework the heck out of those manuscripts. None of them was any trouble, though…it was just the necessary mechanics of putting in the time, the research, the effort.

Psychic was different.

To be honest, it was a slog. Even as I wrote the very first words, the first draft, it was like running through water…or (more like) a swamp. I can’t explain it. It was the first manuscript that took any real effort on my part. And the antagonist, Victor NMI Black…he actually scared me. Whether or not it was the actual character or the idea of such an evil man like him possibly existing out there (physically or nonphysically…). I remember taking a walk one day, in the brilliant Colorado daylight, thinking about this guy…how nasty and “evil” he was…and actually got nervous…felt…uneasy—even while chiding myself in broad daylight that he was just a frigging character in a novel I had created, and I had control over him….

But did I…really?

The very idea of this guy scared me. He was flat-out mean. It surprised me that feeling of momentary fear I felt during that walk. To the story, well, that will remain to be seen from its readers if I did the proper job of transferring that image into the novel,  but, to me, on a nonphysical, conceptual level, this character was extremely distasteful and scary.

It was like the idea of him was far too real.

Anyway, it’s not so much that I had “problems” with the story, the work, or anything “about” it, it’s just that it had a totally different energy about it. The novel involves messing around with the nonphysical in the physical. About fucking around with our sense of what’s real and what’s not. Our ability to utilize abilities that might well be considered out of our moral range. Not to mention such considerations, like, can facts change? If I really wanted to get all weird about it—all conspiracy theory on your asses—it was almost as if there really was some weird psychic conspiracy trying to keep this novel from coming out…actively and continually interdicting and meaconing me away from my efforts….

But I don’t really believe that.

Not now.

<checking outside my office…the rest of the house…all locks are locked—it is oh-dark-thirty right now….>

Sure, such considerations and stories make for great promotional copy, but the reality of it is that each book is different. Each book has its own energy, and given the nature of the story, what I experienced was and is totally in keeping with the nature of the story’s energy. The whole absolute weirdness of it all. In fact, while working on the formatting of the manuscript for upload, my formatter, Pam Headrick (of A Thirsty Mind), sent me a strange e-mail: “Wow, Frank, what did you do?” She mentioned that there were all kinds of “odd anchors” and “strange text placement,” to which I replied I’d forgotten how I’d actually had problems with the file months ago (after a system upgrade) and had to save the file in a slightly different format to get it to work. How the system kept hanging and saves took, like, 15 minutes!

Find your happy place…find your happy place….

Psychic is “an extension” of Sleepwalkers. I could call it a series, but I don’t know that that would be quite right. Sleepwalkers is quite a different book than Psychic. Sleepwalkers is a pleasant metaphysical road trip, funny, philosophical, even a bit Richard Bach-ish, while Psychic is a nasty trip on the wild side of psychic activity. More dense. I’d use the term “complicated” but am finding that term overused and trite. And the only character common to both novels is the Man With No Name. Granted, perhaps less has been made of calling a collection of books “a series,” but I just prefer to think of them as “related.” Maybe I’m just resistant to the whole “series thing,” given how trad publishing is glutting the market with them, I don’t know (and I’m really resistant to being told what to do—real or implied). So…

I’ll bill Psychic as the ultimate conspiracy theory, and leave it as that.

It’s an alternate reality not only to Sleepwalkers (and deals with the Man With No Name’s origins) but to our “known” reality. Deals with the dark side of life we may never really know about…what goes on in the shadows of our so-called truths….

It’s about obfuscation.

The evil men can do.

Perceptions.

Probabilities.

Metaphysics.

Have you ever felt a different version of you (the “you,” here and now, not in some other reincarnational existence) did something else? Behaved differently? Maybe even died earlier than the you reading this, now?

What do we really know about our reality? Our facts? How aware are we of what we think we know? How much of what we hear and read are true—or were true at some point?

Do we notice when things…change?

Or do we dismiss the seeming inconsistencies in our lives and immediately discount them, because they don’t make sense with everything else we think we know and see in our lives? What we think is a solid “fact”? Hey, I put my ring right there—where the hell is it?

Psychic says, don’t discount this stuff. Do not ignore. Pay attention. The devil is in the details. Do you absolutely remember something that is different from what everyone around you is remembering? I’m telling you, no, you may not be crazy.

Pay attention.

One might well ask: so what? What does it all mean and why should I care? Can we actually do anything about any of this? Can we effect any real change in a world that seems to be running amok?

The easy answer to that is that I’m an eternal optimist. I’ve plugged away at this novel for 14 years of my life, 20, in one way or the other. I always believe we can effect good and positive change in the world…and I believe once you’re made aware of “things,” made aware that, yes, facts really can change—that each and every one of us can change them—it opens up a new, exciting world for all of us. And…

What do you believe?

Will Psychic change the way you believe? How you perceive the world? Your life? That’s up to each reader. Life is all about beliefs.

What we believe drives how we behave.

In the end, Psychic is “just” a novel. It’s fiction. Victor Black…fictional. Yes, there are lots of facts in there, even a few facts from my own life. Weirdness, like the ring scene (yes, that really did happen, as did another similar experience, “The Grape“). And the “rototiller” and “Woomera” scenes. Facts, as you’ll see, aren’t always what they appear to be…if they ever were.

I do have a bunch of people to thank in getting Psychic released, and they’re all on my Acknowledgement page in the book, but I have to spotlight a couple of them: lots of thanks to Karen Duvall, of Duvall Design for the cover, to Pam Headrick, of A Thirsty Mind Book Design, for formatting the files…and to Joyce Combs and Mandy Pratt for copyediting and proofreading! With all the back and forth I’ve done, initially setting the novel in milieus, like 2005, then updating it for the likes of (man…the years, they pass by oh-so-quickly…) 2007, 2010, 2012, and even 2014…I finally settled upon 1994. Adding and removing all the details  for each of those years was time consuming, to say the least, and it was here that Mandy did a great job keeping me on track and proofing my work!

I am currently only doing a trade paperback book. I find that e-books really aren’t selling all that great (for me), so am putting off creating those for later. So, don’t despair, at some point in the future, I’ll do the e-book version.

Where do I go from here?

I do still have some unreleased work in the various dark places within which I keep things like these, and will be revisiting yet another one. This one will be #7 in my list. Yeah, the “unnamed” one. We’ll see how that one goes and whether or not it will get released. After that one, I may get back to work on the one I started in 2011 (#11), but that’s so far into the future and who knows what the “facts” will be by that time…where I will be in my probable and alternate realities…but I do have a ton of work to keep me busy for a number of years, and would even love to compile a collection of my short stories….

With any of my work, feel free to pass on any of the graphics from my blog posts, tweets, Pinterest, et cetera (though I ask that you render proper attribution). If you need a book or a speaker at your local library, book club, or writer’s group, either in person or via phone/Skype, please, feel free to contact me, at fpdorchak “at” fpdorchak dot com (or leave a comment in a blog post). Post reviews at your favorite websites (if you’d like a book for a book review, please contact me at the above email). Need to fill a blog post? Interview me! Direct me to a library and I’ll send them some free copies. If you come up with any ideas, again, contact me at the above e-mail address. If you’d like a signed copy, send it to the following address: F. P. Dorchak, P. O. Box 49393, Colorado Springs, CO 80949. Take my books to work or the gym and flaunt their covers! Tweet and blog about them! Any way you can all help out to get the word out is hugely appreciated! Mention me to radio shows. Local writer conferences. Reader groups. Send my social media links.

As always, thank you for all your support! I can’t thank you all enough! Publishing is a team effort, and I always manage to find a great team—but part of that team is also the readers! I love what I’m doing and all the support I’m getting from all of you!

And again…pay attention to the details of your lives…let nothing escape your notice, however “insignificant” those details may appear.

What does it all mean?

I think that’s up to each of us to figure out.

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Psychic Cover "Flat" (© F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design, 2014)
Psychic Cover “Flat” (© F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design, 2014)

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Ring Around The Rosies….

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I love this video! It is utterly creepy and, curiously, about 99.9% of the lyrics actually fit my 4th novel, Psychic, though it’s not a horror story.

When I began Psychic, back in the haze of the past, this children’s rhyme popped into my head and wouldn’t leave. As I wrote the novel, the rhyme beautifully integrated itself into the story…and as I researched the rhyme, I found that its origins were also shrouded into its own “haze of the past.”

This link (thank you, Mandy Pratt!) covers a lot of ground, and is a great place to start in trying to uncover the ambiguous origin to these words. It seems greatly debated and bandied about. Even some conclusions seems “jumped to,” if you ask me. But, people are people, no matter if they were lab coats, swing a sledgehammer, or study folklore. We all have our opinions, based upon whatever information we base them upon.

Here are the lyrics I use in my novel:

Ring around the rosy,

A pocketful of posies,

Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall down….

I did research the rhyme a little and did find there were different versions, which I found interesting, but given how I was going to use the rhyme, the above-chosen lyrics were perfect.

As the above link shows, there is great debate over the rhyme’s lyrics, but, sometimes, I feel, the most obvious is the answer, whether or not one can prove it. Whether it’s describing the Black Death of 1347 or the Great Plague of 1665, it does, indeed, seem to describe elements of a nasty disease. Perhaps it’s like our present-day version of cancer, where most people don’t even like to joke about it, lest they tempt the Fates themselves, maybe, back in the 1300s and 1600s it was so fresh in mind that most didn’t even want to attribute anything to it, whether it was a rhyme or a personal action. But one line in this link‘s analysis really gets me: “Moreover, in many versions, everyone gets up again once they have fallen down, which hardly makes sense if falling down represents death.”

Um, you’re kidding me, right?

Unless everyone whoever acts out this rhyme actually stays on the ground—forever—you can never really, totally act out “death.” The rhyme is representative, not literal.

As to why there are so many variants of the rhyme? Did you miss the part where the first version of the Plague had ravaged most of Europe? Yeah, there are multitudes of different cultures in Europe. Why wouldn’t there be different versions? Wouldn’t the curious mind more marvel at the fact that there were so many similar variants, instead? In fact, even in today’s world (and I maintain that people are people and we’re really not all that inherently different from our forefathers and mothers), today’s song writers, lyricists, novel writers, we all take and borrow from that which already exits and modify it—hell, look at me, what I’m doing with the rhyme, look at this video, above! It is the nature of things to change, to morph, for humans to want to modify and transform. To me (and I’m truly stunned at folklorists) that this is not factored into their historical equations! Especially with something as far-flung and widespread as the Plague.

And, maybe, the Plague was so known to the inhabitants of the post-Plague world that—to them—it was a given. That this minor little soon-to-be-nursery rhyme was inspired by the grisly events from which they had all just survived, and they had more important diary entries to worry about….

If it looks, smells, and feels like the Plague…yeaaah, maybe it really is the Plague….

In any event, I found and find all this debate fascinating. Even on a “Zen level,” without being able to document “hard evidence,” the nonphysical concept of the Plague maxed out the psyche of the world and found itself inspiring many forms of creativity without the purveyors realizing it…or maybe all the “creatives” did realize it, but never talked about it, or admitted to it in public. This would be akin to today’s world when one person writes a story and another feels they stole their idea, because, hey, they were writing about that, too, so the “only way” this could happen would be that the other somehow found out about the other’s work and plagiarized them. I truly believe that this happens more than people realize, buuut, we can’t prove this kind of thing in a court of law.

Yet.

So, go ahead, replay the video, I know you want to (I’m gonna), and enjoy the stunning creepiness of a new take on the whole “ring around the rosies” controversy…and look out for Psychic, when it comes out, next week….

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ERO v. Extant

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ERO (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2013)
ERO (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2013)

Okay, let’s have some fun!

Based on the trailers alone, for this new TV SF series that starts tomorrow, I’m going to begin comparing my novel, ERO with Extant. I see some basic similarities, so I’m going to start a tweet campaign. I’m gonna keep it light and fun, and try to stick to “the facts.” I urge all of you to do the same! Feel free to tweet any similarities or miscompares between the two items!

So,I’ll begin, here:

ERO has a solo astronaut in a space station…Extant has a solo astronaut in a space station.

ERO has a hot chick, Extant has a hot chick.

Extant is produced by Steven Spielberg…ERO is produced (and written) by…uh, ummm…me.

Extant is a movie…ERO, my readers say, should be a movie!

ERO has a creepy guy in a space station…Extant also has a creepy guy in a space station.

So, okay, that’s the idea! Have fun and tweet away! Let’s see what kinds of comparisons we can come up with!

My Twitter handle is @fpdorchak

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Happy Fourth of July!

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Yesterday we attended a Rockies baseball game against the Dodgers. We won’t speak of their loss, nor how close it was, nor whether or not they had fun (inside jokes with family), but we got to watch it from a private suite (sweet!), and afterwards, were treated to a spectacular fireworks show! Of all the fireworks I’ve seen, these folks at Coors Stadium kick royal ass! Coors stadium opens up most of the field to everyone to lay on the grass and watch, and the last two times we went, we laid out on the grass and watched in awe. This time, I stayed back with some of our family members who didn’t head down, and we watched from an outside landing…we were actually closer to the fireworks than being out on the playing field. But, in either location, at the hypnotic, finale fusillade, the explosions were so powerful, you felt the concussions actually pounding your body!

It’s nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Enjoy!

Rockies v. Dodgers, July 3, 2014
Rockies v. Dodgers, July 3, 2014

 

Loading up Coors Field for the Fireworks Display, July 3, 2014
Loading up Coors Field for the Fireworks Display, July 3, 2014

Unearthing the Bones: The Order of My Work

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I Have Skeletons To Unearth. By American Museum of Natural History (http://adsny.com/nyindian/nyindianintro.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Yes, I Know Where the Bodies Are. By American Museum of Natural History (http://adsny.com/nyindian/nyindianintro.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve been writing since I was six years old. That’s a long time, considering I’m in my early fifties. Admittedly, between the age of six and 26 that was sporadic, but in 1987, I got serious and began writing every day. I began (or should say continued) with short stories. Short stories and prose poems were where I began. I’ve lost track of how many I’ve written (I know it’s over a hundred, perhaps more toward 200?, is about all I remember), but only have a handful actually published. Someday, my plan is, is to published the better of those into a collection.

As I began indie publishing my novels, I thought it might be interesting to list out the order of the books, as I wrote them. So, that is what I’ve done here. I have also included in this list those novels I have not (and will not, as the case may be) publish, just to show the order of their creation, including my age when I began them. A couple of titles I will not give, since they are still works-in-progress that may or may not be actually released, or are novels I may yet return to, with titles that are more unique than what I already see out there. I thought, that might be an interesting point of view. How old was I when wrote Sleepwalkers? ERO? Was I your current age? What kinds of thoughts do you think of, now, at your age…that I might also  have been thinking? Do my works portray an expected state of mind, in my progression through time and aging?

Note: only the hyperlinked novels are released. The rest are unpublished.

So, here is my chronological list of novels, listing the years it took to write them. 1993 was a banner year for me.

Updated June 16th, 2015: Voice had been updated, #7, below. It is to be published July/August 2015.

  1. Satan’s Stairs, 1987 – 1990 (26)
  2. Village Idiot, 1990 – 1993 (took 2nd in a 1993 writer’s conference contest; 29)
  3. (Title hidden), 1993 (first draft only; 32)
  4. Second Coming, 1993 (incomplete first draft; 32)
  5. Reunion, 1993 -1996 (32)
  6. Sleepwalkers, 1993 – 1997; 2001 (32)
  7. Voice, 1997 – 1999; 2013 (36)
  8. Psychic, 1994; 2000 -2005; 2014 (33)
  9. The Uninvited, 2001 – 2004; 2013 (40)
  10. ERO, 2006 – 2008; 2013 (45)
  11. (Title hidden), 2011 (incomplete first draft; 50)
  12. (Title hidden), 2012 (first draft; possible series; 51)

Yes, I was—and continue to—write a fair amount. I take my writing seriously, and do try to write every day, but don’t beat myself up about it if I miss a day or so. I work a full-time job, so all this is part-time effort. A couple hours a day, and some (or not) on weekends. I’m less anal about the weekends the older I get. I do need some time off, you know.

Thanks to all of you who follow my social media and who’ve read any of my work. I do appreciate your time and effort spent on my words. I love playing with them. Thank you for sharing my fun!

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