F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

To Be Human

Conscious Living Interview With Wendy Garrett

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Click this link for the interview!

Second time’s the charm?

Wendy and I tried to record this interview a week ago (the last interview that never happened…), but ran into…let’s just call it “doppelgänger issues”…and the interview was lost….

But yesterday, all things fell into place! The irony of it all was that this interview was originally scheduled for yesterday‘s date, but Wendy had moved it to the previous week (and there’s more about this in the podcast, above).

Insert doppelgänger issues.

Here we are now.

Sorry about the occasional feedback issues, but it is technology.

Wendy is so charming, gracious, and fun! Thank you, Wendy, for two fun interviews, thanks for having me, and I hope we do some more of these! Thank you, listeners, for listening! And thanks to Matt, for his excellent production efforts!

Enjoy!

Things are not always as they seem….

“Blondie’s” – An Audio Story!

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I was trying to get an actor-friend of mine, Paul Neal Rohrer, interested in doing the reading of a couple of my short stories for an upcoming interview (September 1st), when Paul sent me this audio file of one of the stories he was to read. Damn, but how it breathed LIFE into the story! To see a story on paper is one thing…to hear yourself read it aloud…but to hear it performed is quite another! Paul did such an incredible job!

I’d met Paul a couple of years ago when he’d interviewed me for ERO, on his internet radio show, The Roaring Success Radio Hour. He’s a published author (Listen, Feel, Respond An Actor’s Workbook, published by Players Press, Inc., and Acting on Camera: A Workbook and Guide are both available through Amazon), and has been a SAG/AFTRA member since 1986. He’s a veteran actor of film, television, and stage, since 1971, and is the founder of the Roaring Success Workshops (1986). Some of his alumni include Naomi Grossman, Anna Sophia Robb, and Caitlin McCarthy.

Paul has done numerous voice gigs and has studied and worked with some of the most recognized and successful leaders of the film and television industry: Richard Dreyfuss, Chris Cooper, Tony Barr, Lynn Stalmaster, Marvin Paige, Mike Fenton, and Dabney Coleman, to drop a few names….

And as if all this isn’t enough, Paul also trains Law Enforcement in Crisis Intervention.

Anyway, I’d brought Paul in on this at the suggestion of a mutual friend of ours, Jan C J Jones. Paul and I hadn’t heard from each other for a bit (I’d thought he’d been abducted by aliens), so it was great reconnecting. I’d been contacted by Eric Singer, of The Gazette, who’d asked me if I’d be interested in doing a new gig of his, called Take 10. And when Eric mentioned that the readings needed to be dramatic, Paul was the first person that’d come to mind. I’d sent him my Do The Dead Dream? manuscript and mentioned a couple of stories for him to look at, and he said “Blondie’s” really grabbed him, so he did up a promo reading and sent it to me—this is that promo reading.

Hope you are as drawn into this recording as I was! To read some background on “Blondie’s,” see my original posting.

As things currently stand, we’ll be on Eric Singer’s Take 10 segment, Friday, September 1, at noon MT. More on this as it develops!

Paul Neal Rohrer’s Contact Information:

Web Site: www.roaringsuccess.org

Acting Workshop Web Site: http://roaringsuccess.org/rohrering-success-acting-workshop

E-mail: pnr1@mac.com

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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Do The Dead Dream? Update

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Do The Dead Dream? (© F. P. Dorchak and Jan C. J. Jones 2016)
Do The Dead Dream? (© F. P. Dorchak and Jan C. J. Jones 2016)

Just a quick update!

I have begun requesting blurbs and looking into reviewers. I have been pleasantly surprised at the level of support from my writer friends! Thank you, all of you, for your consideration and possible participation! I know that just because you agree to taking a read, does not necessarily guarantee that you will actually provide a blurb…if you don’t like what you read!

If my material is not for them or to their liking, I will not blame them one bit for passing. But I am eternally grateful that they are giving me the time-of-day and support in trying to help me out. That is all I ask.

So, blurbs are under way. Editing is continuing. No cover art yet. And I will still make one more intense pass over the collection, en masse, once all stories have been edited and included.

Do the dead dream?

Oh, they do…and they have so much to tell….

The B-17 “Madras Maiden”

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The B-17 “Madras Maiden” (© F. P. Dorchak, 2017)
The B-17 “Madras Maiden” (© F. P. Dorchak, 2017)

Last weekend the Madras Maiden, an actual B-17 Flying Fortress that flew in WWII, made a stop at our town and flew our skies. A couple times it flew directly over our home. I did manage to capture a few photos, but this is the best of them, and the others really aren’t much different.

It is quite a sight, hearing and watching this Flying Fortress grace the skies again. Granted, it is a flat-out war machine, it’s very raison d’être was to fight and destroy, but it is still a machine of the air, and I am fascinated by it. I wish we didn’t need things like these in our existence, but I can still appreciate their “aircraftness” in and of themselves.

This is the link to the Liberty Foundation’s website. I’d discovered them while writing my short story, “Tail Gunner,” and visited the Liberty Belle, another B-17 that had made a stop to our town. I’ve not gone up in either of these, but had climbed around inside the Liberty Belle. The Liberty Belle ended up going down in flames, and that is why the Liberty Foundation now flies the Madras Maiden.