F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Writing

My Evil Plan

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My Evil Plan™—which I’ve been formulatin’ for a spell (pardon the pun)—is to consolidate my in-need-of-update website with my blogs through use of WordPress.org. So I can go to one place and manage my stuff. I plan on using a StudioPress theme, a new host for fpdorchak.com, then sucking over all my WordPress posts and whatnot. Y’all’ll still get my posts. I’m told.

So far it’s been anything but graceful.

It has been a barrel of headaches and frustration.

None of the above-mentioned organizations seamlessly interact with the other—though they make innuendoes to the effect. Talk about how well they work with each other.

Yeah…no.

In no short order I discovered how messed up it all is. It’s exactly like the initial scarecrow scene in The Wizard of Oz. Exactly. Right down to me falling all over the place with straw falling out of my head and gut.

You see, several things are not made as clear as they should be, and nowhere do I find succinct, consolidated procedures. Though StudioPress claims to give step-by-step procedures. As does WordPress.org. And Blue Host. And a couple not-associated places also do. And you know what? They’re different.

I’ve tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that I’m just stupid…but even that falls flat. Though, in all fairness, the help aspects of all involved were timely and professional…even if they did occasionally echo existing “procedures.” I had to do a lot of digging on my own. A wizard would be a great idea in setting this stuff up…

If I only had a brain!

But enough complaining!

Hopefully my domain name (fpdorchak) will transfer over in the next week and my new host (where my revamped website will sit) will capture it without any more issues. Then I’ll be able to do all this other stuff that all the procedures claim I can do. Like download themes and transfer blog posts. Rebuild a better mousetrap. A website that’s up-to-date and cooler looking. That consolidates my blogs and site. Sell books from it. I have high hopes.

And I really am looking forward to it! I just have to walk away from all the above and let my head air out. Or fill in. Whatever. In any event, I hope you all like what I have planned. It will be under http://www.fpdorchak.com. I could never remember my blog post URLs.

So my WordPress.com account will then be terminated and you’ll be redirected to my new host…through WordPress.org…by way of a StudioPress design…on a Blue Host platform.

Got it?

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!

Related Articles

Best Reads…

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Best Reads In A Long Time! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, 2017)
Best Reads In A Long Time! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, 2017)

…in a long time!

I had started reading these four books about a year ago—and last week had finally finished them all. I think I’d started around September. They’re all anthologies. They all have the element of The Weird in them. The stories run the gamut from pretty much mainstream to the out-and-out horror. It’s so funny—and interesting—that in the past few years I have not been happy with nearly every novel I’ve picked up and [tried to] read. Either the story or something about the story/writing just didn’t grab me. But this last year, during all the author events I’d participated in (local and distant library gigs to Denver’s Comic Con), I’d come across these books. Many of my writer friends are in these books, and that’s how I found them: they were selling them at these events. And I must tell you that—hands down—wow. I was so impressed with these works! I loved all of these books—maybe not every story, but the en masse entirety of the collections. The quality of the writing…even if I didn’t like a particular story, man, they were all well-written! I really appreciated the writing, since the past couple of years I have not appreciated much of the writing I’ve read or tried to read.

This is important, becaaause….

I’d begun to wonder if I’d become jaded as a writer-reader. That nothing I read was ever going to be “any good” any more…is this how editors and agents feel?

And I’d worried that perhaps it wasn’t that the works I read were actually bad…but that perhaps in my mind’s eye nothing I read would ever measure up to some insane and wholly arbitrary ego-constructed measure. Yes, I was a little bit worried I was becoming that angry non-selling author sitting on that front porch with a double-barreled shotgun yelling out at all the authors out there to get the hell off my lawn!, while I fired some well-placed buckshot into their collective literary asses.

Open, pop em, reload.

But having read these books reassured me that I was fine. I don’t know what my major malfunction is, but having read these books showed me that there still is great writing out there—great reading. I’m not into pure horror fiction anymore, but I still love well-written “dark fiction” pieces with elements of The Weird in it, however defined. And that’s another thing—seeing The Weird defined by other writers. How they look at the world and suitably warp the hell out of it. I’m more into the psychologically, the metaphysically bent stories, not the gore…but love “weird.”

It was also fun as hell to see what my writer friends had written!

So often we run into each other at these promotional gigs (well, when I go to them, that is, and 2016 was a banner year for me attending them…) and talk and stuff, look at each others books, but to buy everyone‘s books…all the time…becomes prohibitive. I know too many writers and I only have so much income and wall space—as I’m sure is the same for every other writer out there. I always feel terrible that I have to put a friend’s book back down and somehow slink away with my tail between my legs because I haven’t bought anything—but hey, I wish you the best!

Ga, I hate having to do that!

But, this time I made an active attempt to better support those friends I haven’t read anything from and find something of theirs of interest and buy one or two books per gig…annnd read them! These four books I’d bought around the same time so they all “went together” in my head. The two books on the right (The Deep Dark Woods and Nightmares Unhinged) are straight horror and dark fiction and have some outright startling stories in that vein (pun intended). Tick Tock and Found are not really “dark fiction” per se, but have some elements in some of the stories, and they are stories that involve the element of their titles (i.e., stories about something found and the element of time). Really well-written stuff!

I’m not going to call any one writer out, here. That wouldn’t be fair without commenting on all of them, and that would get long…and to be honest, I’m not known for my memory, so that would involve a bit more rereading and note taking and I don’t want this post to be a book report on authors. I just wanted to say that if any of you have any interesting whatsoever in dark fiction—weird fiction—stories about something found or that involve the element of time in them…well-written short stories…give these anthologies a try!

And to all my writer friends who wrote this stuff–outstanding effort! I really am impressed and look forward to reading more of your work!

 

Kirschner Cover Art: Looking For Przybylski, by K.C. Frederick

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Looking For Przybylski, by K.C. Frederick, ©2012
Looking For Przybylski, by K.C. Frederick, ©2012

In looking for the next of Lon Kirschner’s cover art I wanted to review, I came upon one I’d been looking at for a while: Looking For Przybylski, by K.C. Frederick. Now, I don’t read all these books as I review their cover art…I just don’t have that kind of time, right now…so I look at the cover art in-and-of themselves. How the covers affect me. How Lon’s work “hits” me. Sometimes I’ll look at reviews, and once, like with A Long Cold Fall, by Sam Reaves, I even got to interview the author (thanks, Lon, for putting us in touch!). On this shot, I looked at some of the reviews. One review in particular talked about the “…difficulty of writing about race with moral integrity.” There were one or more references in the review of the book dealing with or not properly dealing with being a “goddamn Detroit Polack” (the reviewer, oddly enough, was also a “Przybylski,” J.J. Przybylski). This reminded me of when I was growing up and “used to be Polack.”

All through my formative years I’d thought—well, our family thought—that my mom’s side had Polish in the bloodline. So I’d valiantly defended all the Polack jokes. But after graduating high school we’d all come to find out that that line of her family we’d thought had been Polish…had actually been Austrian.

Sonofa….

Really, Mom? You couldn’t have done a little research a few years earlier?

Sigh.

If I remember all that had been discovered right, the family-member-in-question had been Austrian during WWII and had fled Austria on the basis of claiming to have been Polish to avoid being drafted into the Austrian army…hence, the lineage fabrication.

What does this have to do with the book?

Well, apparently nothing…except that J.J. Przybylski’s review reminded me of the whole “Polack thing” of my youth, and, well, apparently, this book deals-or-not-properly-deals-with that “whole Polack thing.”

Back to the cover: I picked this cover this time around because I love road trips and being on the road, and well, that is what this cover is all about!

It’s portraying a road trip into the night. And what does the night typically symbolize? Mystery. The unknown. “Darkness” of some kind beyond the obvious. But there is a light being shone (“shined”? “Shone” works for what’s coming next…) into that darkness, as is (pardon the pun) shown at the bottom of the cover. And that is what this book seems to be about: Przybylski is an undertaker who has taken down a one-time Detroit criminal, named Ziggy Czarnecki. Ziggy hears about Przybylski and goes in search of him cross-country. On a bus. Weird things happen. Interesting people are met. And according to J. J. Przybylski’s review, “It’s a good book…written with a gentleman’s reserve.” Now, if something supernatural was involved, I be tempted to take a read….

I also love the artistic perspective of the road, vanishing not only into the distance, but also into the night. And sometimes…sometimes I feel it’s better to leave such musings there…and not actually discover what is actually found there…in the night…in the “vanishing point” that is at the end of that road, this novel. I’m sure given the plot and characters, nasty things will happen, and I don’t necessarily want to know those nasty things. But I like the mystery that this cover implies. Love the imagery.

Here is what Lon Kirschner has to say about his work in designing this cover:

“When I first received the manuscript I remember thinking, Hmmm…I can’t even pronounce the title of this book. That led me to thinking that it should somehow become part of the cover in a very clean way. For the uninitiated in Polish names, I kept the typography simple and pretty straight forward with a color that evokes the flecks in the road.

“Yes, this is a road trip and it does take the form of a bus ride through lonely country. I remembered long bus trips when I was a teenager in upstate NY going to visit my sister at college and a certain sadness I felt traveling home alone on the bus at night when the weekend visit was over. It was that feeling of riding a bus alone that inspired this. The trip in the book is odd as bus trips often are when you are closed in with people you don’t know but somehow manage to form some kind of bond with the person next to you. Things seem accelerated in the small amount of time you get to know (or choose not to know) your fellow travelers.

“You are right, this book does have a supernatural quality to it, but nothing terrible happens. In fact you actually don’t know if something does happen out of the ordinary, because it is the ordinary that somehow becomes extraordinary.

“The cover does represent the bus trip in a literal sense, but more importantly it represents someone getting closer to a knowledge about themselves that they never would have discovered had they not gotten on the bus and made the journey.”

Thanks, Lon. I also used to ride buses during my teenaged years. My parents had divorced and I had taken the Trailways line down from Saranac Lake, NY to Glens Falls and Albany to visit my mother. As Lon says, I also felt “a certain sadness” upon my return trip from seeing my mom. I found the Trailways trips cozy. I don’t recall if I traveled alone or with my brother, Chris (my other two siblings stayed with my mom), but since those bus rides involved a bit of distance, buses stop every few miles, the night was always involved. And, as I’ve already mentioned, I love driving, being on the road, and night drives…so I liked the nocturnal atmosphere of the drives, and being in a big comfy bus. I don’t recall too much interaction on these bus rides. Just lots of pleasant smiles and politeness…and intense reflection about how our family had fractured and life would never be the same.

Perhaps not too far from how this story unfolds….

Lon Kirschner may be contacted at:

Phone: 518/392-3823

E-mail: info@kirschnercaroff.com

Book Cover Site: http://www.lonkirschner.com/

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Edward Bryant, Jr.—A Tribute

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Ed Bryant on Far Right, on MILEHICON48 Panel, Oct 30, 2016 (© F. P. Dorchak)
Ed Bryant on Far Right, on MILEHICON48 Panel, Oct 30, 2016 (© F. P. Dorchak)

“I have such wonders to show you….”

I learned this last Sunday that Ed Bryant, Jr. had passed on from this life.

Wow.

The above quote is from Ed’s short story “Marginal Ha’nts,” in Hex Publishers Nightmare Unhinged. You have to read this story–especially now–the ending will give you chills. I read this story in October, but I just went back over the ending and it was…well, weird.

Ed and I were not drinking buddies, or anything, but we were writer friends. It all started (good, Lord, how the time flies!) some 25 years ago? He and John Stith were running a critique group at UCCS, in Colorado Springs. I can’t remember if I’d heard it from John or from Ed himself. I think I’d learned this at a local writers’ conference I used to attend/work at where I’d run into one or both of these gentlemen. Anyway, the critique group was by invitation only, so I threw my name into the hat…and waited. Well, low-and-behold, an opening was had, and I was invited. I joined.

It was a medium-sized group and Ed and/or John would helm the meeting. I don’t remember the specifics, but the group had been going around talking about a writer’s efforts (I don’t think it was mine), and “opinions” were made, let’s just say. Some…pretty narrow-minded and limiting.

Then it got to Ed. It was his turn to talk.

At first, he just sat there…you could see the gears turning in his head. He paused a little longer…then out came his words in that deep, warm, radio-voice of his—and he blew me away. Ed’s conversational cadence only knew it’s own time, but the advice and comments he gave to that writer’s work were grounded and worldly. It was exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to come out of the mouth of an individual of his caliber. And though he totally contradicted and “put in place” all the other “exalted and ebullient opinions and ravings” that had been previously expressed by some in the group…he was never (as one writer put it in a tribute to him) cruel. He was tactful…thoughtful…and kind. He just stated how it was…and that, well, there’s more than one way to get there from here.

Man, how I really wished I could recall his words! I was really blown away by the guy!

That was the beginning of my interaction with the man. I’d run into him from time to time, e-mail him. Once, even ran into him while standing in line a-couple-people-away-from-each-other to attend a Stephen King presentation at a high school down here. Then we lost touch for many years, plus-or-minus an email or FB exchange or three. Then I got back into the promotion game and began to attend author gigs, and ran into Ed at the last three MILEHICONs and 2016’s Denver Comic Con (DCC). We were on a panel together (might it have been about short stories?)…he was moderating. As the moderator he’d compiled blurbs about each of us and introduced us. I’d been so impressed that he’d taken the time to do that. Most of the panels I’ve been on, we’d all intro ourselves (not that I mind that, but it goes to show you how classy Ed was…and I’m going to try my hand at this next time I moderate panels…). And when he came to me he mentioned how when he’d run across on my website that “weird things happened to me,” he was so amused! Got a kick out of that. But, yeah, weird things do happen to me, and I try to detail them as much as possible on my other site, Reality Check. That was my first DCC.

Every time over the past three years, when we’d see each other at MILEHICON we’d come talk with each other. He was always glad to see me and when we’d depart he’d always say something about how it was too bad we didn’t get to see each other more often. That always surprised me! That he would say something like that to someone he didn’t know all that well, you know, compared to his actual “drinking buddies.” I always liked Ed…he was fun to talk with…like others who knew him better would say, he had a dry wit…and was never at a loss for things to say. And his conversations were never rushed. He never seemed in a hurry to leave you, once engaged. I also wasn’t always sure what he’d say! It was that incredible mind of his, you just never seemed to know what thoughts he would voice! But those words he would voice were always thoughtful and considerate, again, with a splash of that dry Edward Bryant wit. In the end, it didn’t really matter what he had to say…it was fun just listening to that baritone voice!

I ran into him multiple times at last year’s (2016) MILEHICON. We spent two of those time in lengthy conversations. The first was in the open second-floor rotunda of the Hyatt Regency, and we partly talked and joked about getting used to the various issues befalling our respective decades-in-life.

How telling that conversation had proven itself to be.

But the second looong conversation we had was after the large en masse book signing. I saw Ed making his way around to all his friends, chatting them up, and as things wrapped up and we were all breaking down, Ed came over to me and spend the entire time I was packing things up, chatting. I had just read his short story, “Marginal Ha’nts,” in Hex Publishing’s Nightmares Unhinged (a great anthology, by the way, y’all need to buy it if you’re at all into dark fiction), and it was either Dean Wyant or Josh Viola who told me to go ask Ed about the inspiration for that short story of his. I wish I could remember all of what Ed had told me, dammit, but from what I recall, Ed had actually fallen down some stairs just like in the story, and I remembered seeing him in a torso support (and neck brace, I think…) in the 2014 or 2015 MILEHICON. But in any event, pardon the pun, we had a great conversation together as he walked me out. As much as I really enjoyed his time and talking with him, even then, I thought the multiple, lengthy encounters…weird. Something just felt…strange…about them….

Then last weekend happened.

Wow.

I flipped back to his “Marginal Ha’nts” story in Nightmares Unhinged and reread the ending.

Holy (Excusez mon français…) shit. The ending…well, it seemed as if…well, you really have to read this story! I really want to quote some lines from the end of that story, but I don’t want to spoil it for you all, but I can’t emphasize enough to go read this story!

(Damn it, I’m beside myself, hopping up and down at my keyboard wanting to quote passages from this story that are so damned creepy and—yea, foretelling?–of what Ed’s probably doing right now!)

So drop what you’re doing and go read that short NOW. It’s chilling given his passing. Suffice it to say that the passage that begins with “Boo? Screw that.” is a passage I’d love to point out, among others….

So, Ed…you—marginal?

Hardly. Again, that dry wit of his.

Wherever you are, Ed…this is how I’m preferring to think of you…there, in your Twilight Zone existence…with all your new peers:

“I have such wonders to show you….”

Edward Winslow Bryant Jr., August 27, 1945 – February 10, 2017

Thank you, Ed, for everything.

Ed Bryant "Marginal Ha'nts" Autograph (© F. P. Dorchak)
Ed Bryant “Marginal Ha’nts” Autograph (© F. P. Dorchak)

Do The Dead Dream? Status

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Do The Dead Dream? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)
Do The Dead Dream? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)

I am working toward the completion and release of my short story collection, but timelines have shifted to the right a bit. When I first envisioned releasing this collection, I’d thought maybe Valentine’s Day might make a good release date…then as things didn’t progress as quickly as expected, and I’d attended my first Comic Con, I thought having it to release the end of June at the 2017 Denver Comic Con would also be a really cool release date. But other issues came up and I’m now realistically looking at a Hallowe’en release date.

I also have a new editor, Joyce Combs. She did my Psychic novel. She’s a retired editor, among other things. I thank my previous editor/proofer for all she’d done–she’d done a great job!–but we just had scheduling issues. I wish her well!

But while I’ve been working along on this project, I have written a couple new short stories! I’ve written “A Beautiful Summer’s Day” (takes place in the Wild West) and “Behind Things” (takes place in a gym). And while reworking some of these stories I found myself getting unexpectedly emotional. “Dark Was The Hour” was one where I just couldn’t keep from getting emotional as I reread it.

Anyway, this will be my last book for a couple years as I work on writing my next novel, so I want to do this as “right” as possible. As I get most of the stories into the manuscript from Joyce’s efforts, I will offer free copies to any who want to review it. I’ve never done this before, but want to try it. I will let y’all know closer I get to that stage….

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.