F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Psychic

Writing The Distasteful

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No Frills, No Thrills. (Gregorio De Ferrari [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
No Frills, No Thrills. (Gregorio De Ferrari [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
I do not like violence.

I like writing about it even less.

While working the Psychic manuscript, I have great misgivings about  how nasty I should go, regarding a certain scene that comes later in the book (to be honest, I have a couple scenes, but one, in particular, really bugs me).

Do I back off it, or give it its full measure?

It’s not a pleasant scene. Very distasteful to write.

I’ve written plenty of distasteful stuff over my writing career, most of it may never be seen, since it was my early horror writing years (unless I do a collection of my short stories—which I really want to do!—and clean up the more presentable works…). In The Uninvited, I have some nasty scenes. And after writing my last post, many might well wonder, what the hell, Frank? Really? Practice what you preach, man!

Being a writer puts a person in an interesting position. For one thing, when you write something, people wonder how much of it is really “you.” I get it. It’s like when I hear songs, I often wonder the same of the groups singing them. Curiously, I don’t necessarily think the same of writers, because I do understand the process…that just because a writer writes something inflaming or physically nasty or offending doesn’t necessarily mean the writer is the same. I do begin to question that, however, if there is a series and they’re all nasty (I’m defining “nasty” as incredibly violence, distasteful, offending in some manner, beyond just taking a haymaker to the head or saying “someone was raped”).

You see, when you write “nasty,” you have to focus on that. The nasty thing you’re writing. For extended periods of time. And when you focus on something for so long, it’s in your mind. A lot. Even when not writing. I don’t like to focus on the negative and violent. So, any time I do have to write a violent scene, I try to make it as short as possible, while not cheating the story. When I write violent scenes (say the front lawn bathtub scene in Uninvited), they serve to advance the story in a way merely talking about them, “politely referring to them,” simply cannot do. I need to show the bad side of a character or event for a reason…whatever that reason is. I may not even know that reason…you see, I don’t outline ahead of time. I don’t preplan. When I write a story, I let it flow out of me, on its own. It’s called “organic” writing. I just sit down to the keyboard and start typing. It’s only later, when I “reverse outline” the book, that is, I list out in outline form the beats of the story. Then I rework, reshuffle, edit x 3 my work. But as I’m laying down the first draft, I allow the story to come to me in its own form…its own way. I do not censor in any way. I don’t sit and think, “Gee…it would be really cool if this scene was in there…” or “Wow, something more graphic would really stir up the pot!” The story reveals itself to me on its own. In its own way. Afterward, I may or may not do some of this (and, in fact, I did add an “inorganic” scene to this novel, after a friend of mine read the thing and made a suggestion that just nailed the whole “Victor Black” thread…). I will, however, embellish.

So…I have to be true to the story.

If all I did was gloss over certain things I found objectionable, it would be akin to the old “No Frills” books that had been put out in 1950s. Fifty or sixty pages long. “He was abducted and tortured. The good guys came, killed the bad guys, and released him. He went home.” There’s no emotional investment in any of that. Nothing to get you all riled up and pissed off at the adversaries. To really root for the hero/ine…feel his or her pain and, later, redemption. It’s not like the writer has to get incredibly graphic…but they do have to give you enough…mentally or physically—even spiritually—to make that point. Make you feel a part of the story. Sympathize with the characters. Drive that emotional stake into your soul.

So, this section has bugged me, since I wrote it, 14 years ago. I’ve reworked it, thought about removing it. Gave it less shrift than it deserved, perhaps, but finally decided to dive into it and face it. I’ve been working on it some 2 1/2 weeks. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been so focused on it this past few weeks that it’s become a “issue” for me, and it’s really nothing at all to be worried about, but, I think I’ve done all I can with it (for now), and am leaving it for a spell. See what my proofreader thinks about it.

But, in any case, I simply need to get away from it!

It’s tough when your spouse asks you if you had a good morning of writing. “Yeah! Sure did! Man, wrote a killer scene in which a person gets (<brutalized>). Repeatedly. Man, the things I thought of reworking that scene (Being intentionally vague, here, since don’t want to give the scene away)!

So, don’t take me (or other writers like me) to task over these things…don’t ask me why do I think of this shit. Don’t rub my nose in them. They are what they are, and they came with the telling of the story. I didn’t sit around thinking of them, trying to come up with their horrific content. I don’t walk this Earth contemplating mean and nasty ways to abuse others. But, when the story demands a needed scene, I try not to shy away from it. If my stories don’t “ring true” (verisimilitude) to real life enough…my stories won’t work, because I deal with real life situations, not fantasy writing.

And there’s another consideration.

What if…these stories I’m relating…have something to do with other lives of mine. A Zen reincarnational aspect to my life, where I’m releasing and dealing with tendencies from other lives in a more positive and less violence manner than I may have in those other lives? I do believe I’ve lived and fought in the Civil War, was a WWII B-17 tail gunner…and it’s been mentioned another thought I might have been a Roman soldier.

It always comes back to the metaphysical for me, doesn’t it?

But might there be some truth to this? We don’t know everything. And, it’s all energy…good and bad, are forms of energy. If I have had more violent existences in other lives, maybe my writing is giving a cathartic release to that type of energy and yielding a more positive growth experience for all involved?

It’s something to think about.

I know, on the cosmic scale of things, to readers, this [most likely] won’t be a big deal…but to me, the writer, to my constant focus on the subject matter for 2 1/2 weeks, it was problematic. I think I’ve worked through it, I think I did it justice…and that scene will make a later scene even that much more “sweeter.” Okay, maybe “sweeter” isn’t a good word choice. More justified.

And, I know, I can’t please everyone. It’s impossible. There’s good and bad out there, and in my work, I do try to mirror that so that—in some way—I can help explain it. And in explaining it from my point of view, hopefully see how we can do better. Give new or different points of view from which to act…and if the points of view are no different, maybe the words are expressed differently enough so that the end result is easier to see, to act upon in our own lives.

Again, these scene just come with the story.

In the end, I am driven to write. These stories beg my attention. I do my best with them.

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The Monroe Institute

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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.

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Psychic Cover Reveal!

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

Here is the front cover to my new novel, Psychic.

I decided to do the cover early, this time. I’m still polishing the manuscript, which, I think, still has a couple of months to go. But I’ve had such a hard time visualizing what I wanted for the cover since the very beginning of this manuscript’s creation…and, with the help of Karen Duvall, of Duvall Design, we came up with a great image, huh? I really love it.

Psychic is about a humble and angst-ridden hotline psychic who gets embroiled within a remote viewer government conspiracy, headed up by one shady, evil, Victor NMI Black. It’s an action/adventure that shows the origin of The Man With No Name (MWNN), a character from Sleepwalkers, and interlaces an alternate history storyline with John F. Kennedy. The story takes place in 1994, where JFK is 77 years old. The date is also significant, since the official remote viewer organization the government had used (in our present-day reality) was officially disbanded that year. I use a present day organization, The Monroe Institute and morph it into an alternate location, called the JFK Center, where my story’s remote viewer activities take place. The story is heavy on probabilities…the different roads that actions and people can take…or not. I play around with time…time travel…paradoxes…how scary, nefarious people can come into other people’s lives and simply take them over. How much of what you read in the news is real…or fashioned. Can “facts”…change? This is an intricate story…a gritty story (much grittier than Sleepwalkers…but it is part of the Sleepwalkers “universe”; I expect at least one more novel to come out of this universe)…and gets into the “backgrounds” of our lives and how things may—or may not—come into being in our everyday lives, however nasty those things may be….

Check out my Psychic Pinterest board for images related to this novel!

Many, many thanks go to my “cover girl,” Karen Duvall, of Duvall Design. And I hope you’ll all join me when Psychic is unleashed upon the world, and enjoy what I’m billing as the ultimate conspiracy!

Feel free to freely use the cover graphic in any (legal and tasteful) ways possible, just properly attribute ownership!

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The Global Consciousness Project

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This guy, “hardware hacker” Adam Michael Curry, has a dream. A global one.

To borrow a little from the article, and Gregory Weinkauf, Mr. Curry sees that the world reads news together…even listens to music together…now, he queries, can the world feel together? And furthermore, can this shared awareness, this collective consciousness, actually impact our physical world?

Can we affect reality?

The basic idea is that there’s all this “new” research out there being done by laboratories, like Princeton University’s PEAR lab and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (among others) to investigate how deeply our collective consciousnesses are connected to “the fabric of physical reality.” It’s called The Global Consciousness Project (GCP; which is, curiously, like my Psychic novel’s, “Global Foundation for Peace,” or “GFP”…), employs random number generators spread around the world, global events that “polarize human attentions,” like 9/11, earthquakes, or Princess Diana’s death, and analyzes the results that manifest the “unexplained ordering affect on chaotic systems.” And, furthermore, this research suggests that the odds that “the combined GCP data” are “due to chance” is less than one in one hundred billion, which implies that there’s a “deep connection” between the mind and physical reality.

That’s one hundred billion.

Wow, lots of cool phrases. And “one hundred billion.”

Oh, and Mr. Curry is pushing a smartphone Consciousness app.

Okay, why does it always have to be about a smartphone?

I applaud Mr. Curry and the others in this area of exploration, but I have to inform them that this line of investigation is nothing new. Not at all. And it’s not even a question…but a fact. I also understand how science always lags in this department, the Department of Mind over Matter. At least in the public displays of research.

There have been many texts written over the history of Humankind about the association of the mind and matter, aka, “reality,” aka what we think affects reality, and it’s largely and roundly been poo-pooed and publically “discredited.” But one set of books have done an incredible job of discussing this reality and has been out since the sixties. This is the work of Jane Roberts and Rob Butts (both deceased). They did this by tapping into their own inner world, through one of Jane’s “entities,” called “Seth.”

Oh, now, see, I hear the eyes rolling!

I talk about it and the eyes roll, but science talks about it—and throws in a frigging smartphone—and you’re all over it.

The basic concept of the Jane, Rob, and Seth view is that we create our own reality. That’s it. No smartphone needed. Just intent and focus. You want a good life, focus on it. Believe in it. Live it. You want wars and poverty or peace and riches, then go ahead, focus on it.

You get what you focus upon, there is no other rule.

But Mr. Curry wants all of us to download an app where we apply our minds to random number generators during life’s great, polarizing events.

Fifty years, it was said, research has been going into all this (not Curry’s work, but others), and this is as far as they’ve come? Random number generators?

One the one hand, quite disappointing. Well, on both, really. What the heck have they been doing all this time, when all this corroborating material has been out there, like Jane, Rob, & Seth’s work? Has it even been looked at, or, again, dismissively poo-pooed? Essentially, what science seems to be doing, is reinventing the wheel. Oh, sure, you could say, they’re just applying the scientific method, and are just duplicating claims in scientific settings. Perhaps, but people are people wherever you go, no matter what they wear, what they do, or languages they speak. Prejudices come into play (yes, even in the scientific community). And, not the least of which, is science itself. Science measures the observable, which seems obvious, but what happens when what you want to observe isn’t, well, observable? What if the targets of your investigation can only be examined by the mind itself, and not under some electron microscope or injection into some CERN collider?

This is the problem with prejudices and attitudes with any so-called “psychic” disciplines, like remote viewing.

It’s not quantifiable.

Sure, we’ll be able to find all the physical links and manifestations, and the like we can using all of our best equipment, but we’ll also be missing out on the best parts that simply cannot be viewed using physical instruments. As much as I’m dismayed at the use of remote viewing for spy-type activities, these Hal Puthoffs, Dale Graffs, Russell Targs, et al (including Stanford Research Institute), made the leap into looking into the mind with the mind. The mind is a nonphysical entity, how the heck are you going to look at that with a microscope of any kind?

Quantum physics comes the closest with all it’s weird micro-behaviors, like entanglement and wave/particle theories, and this has given rise to some really earth-shattering theories…but nothing ever seems to “come of it.” It all just seems to stop short of “going there” by saying we all affect and effect our own realities by the thoughts we think.

But, really, all you only have to do is examine your own life and the lives of those you know. Look at how your beliefs color and mold and form your own life. Do you believe life is hard, unfair, and controlled by others? And has it been? Do you know others who are happy and carefree and seem to have a fun life—and has it been?

How can it be both ways? Either it’s one way or the other. Sure, one can definitely get into circumstances and privileged lives, and whatnot, all kinds of other variables, and, yes, all of this knowledge from entities like Seth come from the “nether regions” of life, the nonphysical, the spiritual, where we mortals wrapped in corporeal form cannot really venture (though we’re told we can…), and what of all the other religions, etc., and yes, it does get rather sticky, here. Billions of rabbit holes. But what I did was look for explanations that didn’t matter what the belief was…just the mechanics that are behind all beliefs. And it is up to each of us to do this. It is part of our growth. But my point to all this is not to preach, but to show that others have already gone there with the whole “our thoughts affect reality” thing, investigations have been ongoing for fifty frigging years, and all we have to show for it is a smartphone app? I really don’t want to slight and dismiss Mr. Curry’s investigations into the mind/matter arena, but, come on, people, so much has already been done on the topic, don’t keep reinventing the damned wheel! Don’t keep starting over from scratch by ignoring already existing work! Build on it! Take it, take its tenants and expand upon them.

Sigh.

Yes, I may have been a bit smug and smarmy over this post, but overall…I am enjoying the scientific entrance (however late) into all this, because it does show a broadening of consciousness on other levels…i.e., that of hard-nosed science. Where this goes will be interesting, but it’s up to each of us to employ this in our everyday lives, like I’ve discussed before. We create our own lives…how we look at life is how we live our lives. It’s that simple. And if you want to change something, you have to begin inside your own head—how else can you effect change? If you don’t believe in the change you seek, then you’re not gonna give it any thought, not gonna write it down, not gonna further “transmit” its concept into the world or tell someone about it, or write that book or movie, not create that patent, not gonna discover that new theory.

It all starts in our minds…and before that damned smartphone…was the concept of that damned smartphone in someone’s mind.

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The Invaders

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I remember watching this show as a kid, but honestly don’t recall if I’d seen it when it first aired, back in 1967, or later, but I do remember watching the show. The Invaders was/is (like every alien show is) about aliens from another planet coming to ours. To take us over. They take on human form and disappear in a blaze of red when killed. Same old, same old…but I liked Roy Thinnes (as “David Vincent,” an architect) and the really cool UFO the aliens flew in! As a kid I was all about spacecraft and aircraft models (okay, and monsters, too…). As I was creating the first draft of Psychic, back in 1994/2000, and was writing about Travis Norton, one of my remote viewer characters, the model just came to mind when I started going down that “what’s happened to my life” reminiscing with Travis. I started thinking about “being a kid,” and the loss of that naïveté…one thing led to another…and I dug out that model I had stuffed away in a closet. Next thing you know, it’s been nicely incorporated into the story, inner “compartmentalized” UFO sections (and inch-tall “space babe”) and all.

It’s kinda like the “where do your ideas come from?” question.

Everywhere.

When you’re writing, you’re not always (at least for me) consciously thinking I should incorporate “this” or “that.” The stuff just flows out your fingertips and onto the page. Sometimes even genuinely surprises you. Sure, there are times I consciously want and need to add something, but for all the minutiae of the story it all just genuinely flows out “organically.”

The alien invaders UFO model I have is one of several variants created over the years, some made as recent as 2003. I believe mine must be the 1975, Aurora #256, version, given the time I was actively buying and making models…and that that box seems the closest to what I remember having had…color scheme and intensity and all. If I’m wrong, it would most likely be the 1979 version, but I doubt this; I was pretty much done with model building by that time….

The Invaders (A Quinn Martin Production, 1967) Ship, c. 1975
The Invaders (A Quinn Martin Production, 1967) Ship, c. 1975
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Crackers

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I always talk about my last dog, Mac, but one of the other dogs in my life was one of our family dogs, Crackers. Crackers was a mixed Dalmatian. We’d found her in a Yonkers area (I believe it was, since we’d been visiting our New York City area family at the time) animal shelter, when I was still a kid. I remember this clearly, but we’d walked into this shelter, looking for a new dog, and as we were talking to the person up front, one of us (me?) went into the back and saw this cute little puppy all happy and puppy-y, leashed up by another desk. The person up front said, sure, we could take a look at her, even take her; she was so new, she’d just been brought in and hadn’t even been in-processed.

We took her.

She was such an adorable puppy (what puppy isn’t?), and as we were beginning our long drive north, home, we were all trying to come up with a name for our new critter. I wish I could remember who it was, it might have actually been my dad, now that I think of it, but one of us said “crackers.” We all loved it, so “Crackers” it was!

Crackers actually plays a part in Psychic. I have  a couple scenes where she’s incorporated, but in her first scene, one of my characters, a remote viewer, named, Travis, is reminiscing as he laments about his current position as a government-trained remote viewer (basically, a psychic spy). He’s recently divorced (“I’m not really a loving husband, but I play one in real life“), and hates that his life has become devoted to “…poking his nose around in everyone else’s shithole business….” He goes on to remember that:

“…he [Travis] and Crackers  had gone for a walk on crusty snow in a field of theirs in upstate New York. Crackers had run up ahead and gotten caught in a section of snow where brush had poked up through the crusty surface. She’d fallen through and couldn’t pull her hind legs out. She looked up to him, helpless. Travis, his heart breaking, rushed to her, lifted her out of the hole she’d made for herself, and taken her away to where the snow wouldn’t break from her weight. He knew he wouldn’t see her that next year…and hadn’t. His dad had had to put her down. Her arthritis had been far too advanced, she’d had a loss of bowel control, and there had been all her whining and groaning at night in her sleep. It was too much even for his father, a tough upstate New York State Trooper. Crackers had had one last summer before she’d met her Maker.”

Except for the remote viewer and NYS Trooper part, that’s all real, pulled from my life. I can still see that helpless, pathetic look on our now-long-gone-girl’s face, as she’d gotten stuck in that encrusted snow. It was heartbreaking. It was also the last time I’d seen her (I had to have still been in college and must’ve been home on a Christmas break). She’d been hit several times by cars, over the course of her life, so arthritis had set in. My Dad had to listen to her whine in pain at night. He gave her one last summer, then did the only humane thing he could.

So, to Crackers, I thought, I wanted to somehow immortalize her. She was a good dog and I love her part in this novel, however small. It always puts a smile on my face reading her scenes.