F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Metaphysical

Released: Psychic—The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory!

by

© 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.

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/fpdorchak/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fpdorchak

Twitter handle: @fpdorchak

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/F-P-Dorchak/624941894190230

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

Related articles

Ring Around The Rosies….

by

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….

Related articles

ERO v. Extant

by

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

Related articles

Unearthing the Bones: The Order of My Work

by

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!

Related articles

2014 Graduation Speech: Were I To Deliver One

by

Give Your Life Some Serious Thought! (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Graduation_Thinker_LuMaxArt.jpg)
Give Your Life Some Serious Thought! (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Graduation_Thinker_LuMaxArt.jpg)

Perusing through the Sunday paper, last week, I was inspired by an article that talked about graduation speeches. I’ve never been called upon to deliver one, doubt I ever will, but I thought, hmmm…what would I like to hear in one, were I, once again, graduating from Saranac Lake Central High School or Northern Arizona University…and my life was still ahead of me?

To The Graduating Classes of 2014:

Take control of your life.

When you leave here, setting out for your course through life, you will have all sorts of choices. Some of you will enter the military or government services. So will become celebrities of one kind or another. Some will become academicians. Journalists. Managers. Writers. Film makers. Some will lead simple, quiet lives.

But you will all, eventually, die.

We all will.

How will you look back on your lives at the end?

Will you be satisfied? Even have time to do so? Will you have helped make life a better place to live?

Here is what I ask: be yourself, and don’t cave into the fear mongering that’s out there. Create the world you would like to see, to live in, and spread the joy.

There’s a lot of “evil” out there, and evil is as evil does…but there is also far more good. If there wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here. We would not be enjoying what freedoms we do have, however meager you may, now, feel we are or are not enjoying. Now, there are a lot of arguments out there about protecting those liberties, and the “mechanics” behind said protection, but I’m here to tell you of a very simple way we can all practice without putting ourselves into harm’s way or debating global politics.

Focus on the good in your own minds.

Now, this might sound all Pollyanna nonsense, but think about this: nothing becomes exterior in your lives that has not first existed within your minds.

There is a quote by Joe Queenan, columnist in the Wall Street Journal (not sure if he still is), who said, “People are…sensitive about what they put into their bodies…but will put anything into their brains. They eat free-range chicken, but they watch TV shows about headless suburban demons. They ingest loads of parsnips but never Picasso. Call me a hidebound traditionalist, but the brain as every bit as important as the small intestine.”

I substitute “mind” for “brains,” but the sentiment is adequate.

You put out what you think about, what you concentrate upon. If you think the world a bad place to live, you think everyone’s out to get you, absolutely every one of your actions will telegraph that. Spew that. Absolutely everything you do will be to that end. Consciously or unconsciously, this will be your experience.

If you believe we all get sick the older we get, this will happen.

If you believe all politicians are all corrupt, this will happen.

If you believe in living in fear, this will be your experience.

There is much truth to this on a Zen level, but on an everyday level it also bears itself out. You will not look for optimistic, beneficial solutions. You will only look and see and select the negative side of things. You will only see fear and only do things that will attract and corroborate fear mongering. Because you cannot see past it.

If, however, you look outside the box, as the phrase goes, if you open yourselves up to the optimistic, you have now given yourself at least twice as many options. While living in fear, you only see half the coin. Flip that damned thing over. Put as much effort and energy into the rest of the equation, into positive approaches to living and creating life.

On the Zen side, we’ve all heard the other time-worn phrase that like attracts like. Where do these trite phrases come from? Might there not be some truth to them?

Haven’t you ever notice that when you were in a bad mood, a sick mood, everything appeared dour and wicked…while in a great mood and enjoying yourself, everything seemed happy and optimistic? It’s not just brain chemicals, no matter what your science courses may have tried to impress upon you. Sometimes the effects are real, not just chemically induced hallucinations.

Simply stated, there is a lot to be said for sunny dispositions. Positive outlooks. Even medical and psychological sciences are beginning to see this. Sub-atomic physics.

Find new and creative ways in expressing this philosophy that fits into your life.

Take control of your life.

Change the entrenched paradigms of fear and negativity that seem to be permeating the media. Turn off your damned cell phones and look up, as that one video rapped. Look around, look down. Look into the faces, the eyes, of the people and places you meet. If you’re going into the film or video business, quit making films that degrade or cheapen the human experience. There’s a lot of talk about whether or not video games or movies make killers out of people…but if all you do is immerse yourself into violence and depravity…whether in a movie or video games…all day, and that is the sum total of your daily experience, tell me, what the hell else do you expect of that person when they go out into the real world? In fact, what is real, what becomes real, to someone like that? What the kind of output do you actually expect from that kind of mind? You honestly expect that person to become a preacher, a teacher, a kind and caring parent?

If all you watch are news reports about death and destruction, do you really expect to have a positive outlook in life?

Take control of your life.

If we can all take control of our lives in more positive ways…the benefits will be enormous. Earth- and life-shaking. It can, literally, change the direction of all our lives. Because, and this is another Zen thing, there are things called probabilities out there. Roads not taken, waiting to be taken. And they all intersect, so one road not taken at one point, can certainly be taken later on down that other road taken. Not everything talked about has to be manifested into physical reality. Wars, droughts, climate change. Sometimes they can be manifested in the nonphysical, the mental landscapes of Humanity…and sometimes both. There seems to be a lot of angst and fear out there…and through all this—all I’ve had to say, here—I ask that all of you out there steer clear of that fear and angst. “Go around the rocks,” as I’d once read. Expect a different probability than what we are all currently experiencing. A more positive one, free from wars (or lessened conflicts, at the very least). Where we can all live among each other, tolerating each other, trying to make a go at this thing called life, but not at any others’ expense. Wish for the best, and the best will come. Maybe not completely (not everyone is a saint…but not everyone is a sinner, either…), maybe not exactly as you might expect it to be, but it will come. If we all focus and act in the best possible ways, then what else can one reasonably expect—even if you don’t buy into all I’ve said 100%? What could it hurt? Even 10% is doable. Would make a difference.

Try it.

Take control of your lives.

Congratulations to all of you, I wish you all the best. And congratulations, Alek!

The Monroe Institute

by

We Are More Than Our Bodies. By Luigi Schiavonetti (†1810).Tvwatch at de.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.
We Are More Than Our Bodies. By Luigi Schiavonetti (†1810).Tvwatch at de.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.
I learned about The Monroe Institute (TMI) long ago, and am not sure if it was through Jane Roberts and Rob Butts’ exploration into the nature of consciousness or from Robert Monroe’s original book, Journeys Out of the Body, published in 1971. But as I read about the world of remote viewing, I discovered that it had also been part of the remote viewing world. TMI is situated near Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, and is, according to their website, “...a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to enhancing the uses and understanding of human consciousness.” They claim no religious, philosophical, nor spiritual affiliations. Further, they state: “We ask only that you consider the possibility that you are more than your physical body.”

TMI is about exploring human consciousness. It’s about expanding what we think we know about consciousness, life, and death. Anyone who can afford the time away and fee for attendances can go and learn how to tune into the inner world, through various programs and the incorporation of cutting edge audio technical wizardry (e.g., Hemi-Sync, Spatial Angle Modulation). I’ve purchased some of the home-use material, over the years, and have loved what I’ve used. Really cool stuff. I’ve been meditating off and on since kidhood, and have read metaphysical works since same, so none of this was new to me, but I loved how Mr. Monroe, like Jane and Rob, had brought the inner world out into the mainstream. There will always be people out there to dismiss and stomp on anything, no matter the “proof” that exists, and one person’s proof is another’s myth, but I learn from experience. What I learn may not be what you learn…but there is certainly much to be learned from TMI’s (and others’) experiences.

We all have our paths to follow.

So…as my fiction writer’s mind went to work (back in the late 90’s and early 2000s) and I considered probabilities, alternate realities, JFK, psychic “mechanics,” and my next writing project, I thought, man, I’d love to write something about remote viewing and this TMI stuff. Psychic is the result of those musings. Psychic is not Sleepwalkers, but the two are related. Psychic is darker, grittier. In my novel, I created “The Center,” which is a mash-up of TMI and Fort Meade, where the government’s remote viewing projects were located. The Center is a might darker than TMI. TMI is nothing like my novel. I’ve never been to TMI. I like what it’s about, and hope for more of that kind of research to flourish and make itself known. So much good can come from that kind of exploration, spread across the globe without the guise or filters of “religious, philosophical, nor spiritual affiliations.” In my humblest of opinions, we need more non-denominational explorations into the nature of consciousness. People can and will apply that knowledge through their various personal filters, and that is as it should be, but we need to know the lowest common denominators of what it is consciousness is all about. What we make of it, how we employ that knowledge is up to us.

But, hey, let’s make the world a better place with it.

Related articles