F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Remote Viewers

The Man With No Name

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Well-Heeled Magic. (By Julien Bertrand (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Well-Heeled Magic. (By Julien Bertrand (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
The Man With No Name.

Magic Man.

He who sports work boots and flannel.

Mows his lawn at night.

This is a character I’ve written about in two of my novels, Sleepwalkers and Psychic, and a short story, “Tail Gunner.” The Man With No Name (aka “MWNN”) is a character I had the idea for way back. He makes himself known through…well, interesting means, which I don’t exactly want to give away. I have at least one more novel planned for his appearance. It would be in line with the previous two mentioned books. And even then he won’t be finished with by any stretch. My intent was to have him pop up in various pieces of fiction—short stories and novels. A crossover character. I like that idea and it’s quite in keeping with what he does. When I wrote “Tail Gunner” it was cool how he seamlessly incorporated himself into the story (he was the carnival’s Ticket Taker). He got his second name, “Magic Man” when I’d been driving to work one morning and passed by this van with “Magic Man” on its side. It just fit.

Talking about “Tail Gunner”…it still affects me on a creepy level.

Shiver.

Chicken skin.

Every time I go to the gym and walk by that now-hurtful-decible-levels-screaming-music-for-Zumba/whatever room where I first met my tail gunner, I look to that overhead fan. Yesterday (as I originally wrote this post, May 14th) that fan was spinning in an empty room (it isn’t usually spinning in an empty room). My tail gunner must’ve known I was gonna write about this.

Anyway, back to the MWNN. He is perhaps the coolest character I’ve ever written. He gets around…knows stuff…is kinda Forrest Gumpish in a certain way (think “JFK”). And he hearkens back to some of my earliest writing (my fifth manuscript of the 12 in whole or in part in my novel-length repertoire; only five are/will-be published, counting my current WIP). Back to when I was hot and heavy into the dream of getting published. The “halcyon days,” if the term be used. I was literally in the middle of creating all these new manuscripts, one right after the other. I’d finish one…then uninterruptedly start the next one. It was a wildly creative part of my life and I loved it! Now, I’m going over previously created material and publishing the better of them. There is at least one other trunk-manuscript I’d love to rework and publish, my second manuscript, Village Idiot. We’ll see….

But, I digress.

As the MWNN is sometimes wont to do!

So, who is this man with no name?

Though his origins are detailed in Psychic, he’s very much a part of me…or I’m a part of him? He embodies a lot of how I like to think of my perfect self: wears flannel, jeans, and boots. Does what he wants, when he wants…by slightly funky means. Helps others out. Filters out the bullshit. Did I mention he wears flannel? Sometimes a trickster. Always has a sense of humor.

He explores places most people aren’t interested in going…or are afraid to.

He’s bad-ass enough without resorting to weaponry, martial arts, or whammy shots.

And I love that he mows his lawn and weeds his garden at night.

Drinks iced tea. Loves his iced tea.

He is…the best part of me.

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Released: Psychic—The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory!

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© 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.

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

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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 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.