F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Metaphysical

First of Two Wendy’s Coffeehouse Interviews

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Had a wonderful and fun interview on Wendy’s Coffeehouse tonight!

Thank you, Wendy, for having me, and thanks to your listeners for listening! Especially Japan’s listeners, who Wendy mentioned, she had just been informed were listing to tonight’s cast!

We talked about the paranormal and weirdness we’ve both had and continue to have in our lives, as well as some of my books and short stories. It was a fun show! Be sure to check out her podcast archive for a recording of this show!

Wendy’s site: https://wendyscoffeehouse.blogspot.com/

My next interview with her will be September 6, 2017, 11 a.m. MT, on KCMO talk radio.

 

Float Number 8

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, July 15, 2017)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, July 15, 2017)

Today, Saturday, July 15, I did my eighth float. It has been seven months since I’d last done a float. Let’s just say life got in the way. And since then Morgan and Ana-Alycia have hired an employee! Welcome Stacy to the Luna Float Spa team! Morgan, Stacy, and I had a great conversation today, after my float. Stacy has also had brushes with the paranormal, so it continues to show what I mean by saying ALL of us have instances of paranormal activity in our lives!

Like my past couple of floats, this float was also a subtle one…almost non-existent, actually. I had no real intense “visits,” where I “go somewhere” and pop back, or do a rapid-fire succession of multiple such visits. I mean, I might have had one, which I’ll mention below, but it happened so danged fast that it was like all I got was the end of it, returning to the tank. Maybe.

The Robochair

I had used the “Robochair,” as I call it, which is a Dreamweave massage chair, for 30 minutes before floating. I have done this twice, and I think I’m not going to do that anymore…before a float. I think it interferes with my floats for some reason…too much “stimulation,” so to speak. Or “working over” of the body when you’re trying not to even consider a body during a float (after all, these are sensory deprivation tanks!). In fact, just at the end of using this thing, I almost had an episode much like my floating experiences, where I “go someplace.” But the chair stopped and I was pulled out of whatever almost happened.

Yeah, it’s that good!

Okay, so I moved on to my float.

The Float

As I got into the pod, I felt that “internal movement” I sometimes feel, where the insides of me move around, but the physical me—the “outside me”—does not. I initially thought, this would be a great float…but I soon discovered that it was not quite to be. I again had stabilization issues, where I couldn’t keep from (lightly, albeit) knocking around the insides of the pod. In a good float I can quickly stabilize and not “roam” all over the place. That was my first clue.

Throughout the float I had images of people, places, and things, most of which I have since forgotten. But I did manage to remember a few and have written them down, two of them really cool images, but I now only seem to recall one of them, dang it! I also didn’t have the really cool colors I usually get, only getting a “spray” of light red/pink that materialized once toward the end.

Here is what I remember:

  • I saw a small light bulb, maybe a little over an inch in length, and it glowed a neat orange.
  • I saw a floating laptop! A bell had also materialized in front of it and floated with it. The bell was like the Liberty Bell, but a smaller version that fit with the laptop. They were both on a flat flotation device. In a pool? This was the one really neat experience I had that I could remember.
  • Saw several people. Some had spoken, but I’ve lost the words. One had said: “Oh, shiiit…,” followed by some other words I’ve since lost. It was a subtle utterance, not harried or under duress.
  • Saw a young girl in a long white-and-red stripped shirt. To be honest, she looked like one of my nieces! It was her profile I had seen.
  • I kinda had an experience where it seemed like I was “going somewhere,” but it got truncated and all I’d seen was this door closing, and that was that. Odd.
  • Eyes. I seem to see a lot of eyes, in some manner or the other. I didn’t see many, I think maybe two or three.
  • I jerked quite strongly four times. One of those times, my head jerked up, out of the water. The other times were more side-to-side kinda things. My hands also jerked a little.
  • Behind my eyes I saw a brief “spray” of red…but it changed into more of a pink, from its spraying effect.

So, there it is! Not like my first three floats, but it doesn’t have to be. I think that I might be feeling a bit “pulled in different directions,” and my energy wasn’t quite as focused as it should have been. Throw in the Robochair, and I think I just wasn’t as ready for the float as I thought I was. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a great session in and of itself! It’s so danged relaxing! But I’m trying to get my short story collection out there and other things are just on my mind, and I think I just wasn’t as focused as I should have been. But…I got a free float with this one, so I have that to look forward to!

Not every float is going to be a home run…you just have to take them as they come…but enjoy them and be open to what can happen in them!

 

Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Address:

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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Voice – Free Review Copies!

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Voice. (© 2015, F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)
Voice. (© 2015, F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)

I have 19 slightly damaged copies of Voice that I want to give away!

Their damages?

The inside graphic image of the front cover is grainy. That’s it. Nothing else is damaged in the book—well, if you don’t count my intense, troubled characters. So, this being the case, I want to give them out for free for reviews. I’ll also pay for shipping.

I’ll even autograph them for ya.

So, where’s the risk?

You can contact me at the following, but these are hardcopy trades, so I will need a name and address:

  • fpdorchak (at) fpdorchak (dot) com
  • F. P. Dorchak, P. O. Box 49393, Colorado Springs, CO 80949

So, there’s no risk! You not paying for the book, you’re not paying for the shipping, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep reading! But I’m hoping you will like some aspect of this intense, emotionally thrilling story and will write up a review on your favorite site as well as on Amazon.com. If you’re not interested, please pass this around to another who might be interested, and as long as I have copies, I’ll send them out.

I also plan on doing the same with some advanced review copies for my short story collection, Do The Dead Dream?, coming out this Hallowe’en, so stay tuned!

I thank you all in advance for your time!

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Night Driving

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Night Driving (© F. P. Dorchak, January 28, 2017)
Night Driving (© F. P. Dorchak, January 28, 2017)

I love driving at night.

I’d written a post about a particular night drive I’d taken years ago, when I was 27. It was a mystical cross-country drive I’d taken solo. My last such solo drive was from Wyoming to Colorado in November of 2015.

I’d taken this photo this past weekend as my wife and I returned from visiting family up north of us and were driving through Denver. I love the look and feel of this image. The lights of the buildings in the distance. Love the in-the-moment perspective.

Love the dark.

I love how my thoughts turn waaay inward in the night. I love the feel of the road. The passing of the night as I (we) plow on through it…are enveloped by it. Love how the imagination comes out in full force in the absence of light. Wonder where those lights in the distance are coming from and what’s going on at or around them.

Don’t get me wrong—I love daylight and all things associated with it! I’m not a Goth anything…I am a fan of both light and darkness. But…

Yeah, I really love driving at night….

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Boulder YMCA Author Talk

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Author Talk, Mapleton Center YMCA (© F. P. Dorchak, January 17, 2017)
Author Talk, Mapleton Center YMCA (© F. P. Dorchak, January 17, 2017)

Yesterday I had the honor of speaking at the Boulder Media Women’s (BMW’s) “Author Talk” session (also known as “Spoken Word”) at the Boulder, Colorado Mapleton Center YMCA. It’s a cozy gathering that invites authors to speak and discuss their work, with profits from some of the book sale going to the Y to support the Y’s scholarships, which is pretty cool. I didn’t realize that the Y did that. I’ve used a YMCA a couple of times, years ago, so it was nice to help them out in their scholarship with a couple of book sales.

Of note: one gentlemen there and I had been at the same unit when I’d been in the Air Force. He’d been there at the start-up of the unit, and I’d been there nearly fifteen years later. Small world!

The event was organized by BMW’s chair of the Boulder Valley YMCA readings, Jyoti Wind, who met we when I arrived. I had an hour and started off with a reading from The Uninvited, then talked about what I write, gave an overview of my work, how I think (as a writer), how I write, that kind of thing. The audience had so many good questions I was never able to complete my presentation! I love those kinds of presentations! Afterwards, Jyoti, myself, and a couple of others met for lunch at Turley’s Kitchen, a short walk away from the Y—and the Y picked up my tab. Thanks, Mapleton Center YMCA! Following lunch, I visited a good friend of mine and her husband who live nearby. We had a great afternoon chat, had some ox tail soup—which I’d never had before and was great, Karen, I’m not kidding! Karen is quite the “food scholar,” as she brands herself, and has a cookbook, Nature’s Wrap: Cooking in Leaves; Recipes From Around the World.

Overall a great day! Thanks BMW and Mapleton Center YMCA for having me and picking up lunch (and thanks to those in attendance for your time, interest, and stimulating conversation!), and thanks Karen and Wen for a wonderful afternoon chat and dinner!

White Rock – Garden of the Gods – and Time

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White Rock, Garden of the Gods? (© F. P. Dorchak, 2017)
White Rock, Garden of the Gods? (© F. P. Dorchak, 2017)

I think this might be White Rock, in the Garden of the Gods. As I’ve mentioned, I haven’t kept good notes from that January 1st, 2017 day I went out and took these. But I like the perspective from which I took it. It has such a neat, prehistoric look and feel to it. Many times when I go someplace—any place, really, it just depends if my mind “goes there”—I always wonder what that location looked like millions of years ago…and what it will look like in the far future.

Damn, am I ever really in the moment?

But what if considering the past and the future is being “in the moment”? If that moment is really only a perspective, if that “spacious moment”…that “spacious present” some Great Thinkers talk about really is all that…would not that mean that “present moments” really expand out into other moments? Cross and permeate chronologies? And if there really is no Time…the forward chronological progression of successive moments…that it’s all a Human Perception as I believe it is…than wouldn’t this make sense? That the moment is far more voluminous than we give it credit for? It’s a concept that actually expands in ways we have little perception…or maybe we can, if we allow ourselves to be open about it?

Yeah. If I’m not thinking about writing, I’m thinking about weird shit.

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