F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Woods

The North Country

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The View Out Our Camp's Front Windows, Lake Titus, New York (© F. P. Dorchak)
The View Out Our Camp’s Front Windows, Lake Titus, New York (© F. P. Dorchak)

My wife and I just returned from a trip to “The North Country,” or upstate New York. It was my dad’s 80th birthday, so we timed our annual trip back east with his birthday. Since there were several of us showing up, there was not enough room at their place, so a “camp” was rented on Lake Titus, just a few minutes outside of Malone, NY. An upstate New York camp is not a tent or KOA, but is a rustic-or-better building used as a camp. Most are rough, but some, called “Great Camps,” have many amenities and are the size of hotels. It just depends on how much money and effort one wants to put into building these things. Here’s a link explaining the Great Camps and their architecture, but just scale it down a bit for the “everyday person’s camp,” and you’ll get the gist. Anyway, we had a place large enough for the four of us. And it was right off Lake Titus, with a dock and paddle boat and kayak. And thanks to Phil and Meredith, who own the camp! Such terrific people! We had a blast!

Our flights in and out went beautifully. We met my brother, Greg, and his son, Alek

The Lake Titus, New York Camp. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 14, 2016)
The Lake Titus, New York Camp. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 14, 2016)

(Greg also has a daughter, Niki, but she couldn’t make it), in Vermont and we all drove to my dad and stepmom’s place, in waaay upstate New York. We did all the touristy things and revisited the old stomping grounds were Greg and the rest of my siblings and I grew up. Stopped by the old middle school we’d attended and walked about its halls (it was open—and I even ran into an old classmate of mine there who now works there; he told me several of our class now works there!). Stopped by the school’s auditorium where both Greg and I had acted in plays (I had been the gangster in “The House on Whaleshead Rock“; this is all I could find on it, but I do still have the play’s script somewhere…). This is where Greg got his start as an actor (he’s also a screenwriter, producer, author, and has even done Stand-up comedy in Las Vegas, Nevada—I’ve seen him perform, he was great, even working a drunk in the front row…), so it was cool to show his son and take pictures of it, though we couldn’t find all the light switches to switch on all of the auditorium’s lights.

We visited the old Lake Clear House, where we all grew up.

Visited Ausable Chasm.

Made multiple trips to Donnelly’s Corners!

Visited our paternal grandparents’s graves.

Frank Dorchak, Jr., Malone Golf Club Birthday Party (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)
Frank Dorchak, Jr., Malone Golf Club Birthday Party (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 13, 2016)

And there was my dad’s 80th birthday party! It was held in the banquet hall of the restaurant of the Malone Golf Club. There were over 70 in attendance, representing all the areas of his life from childhood, the Navy, his Forest Ranger service, to his current efforts with Clear Path For Veterans, and more. My dad spoke, sang, and we all danced. Some came up to say a few words. I spoke. Then, when it came to his birthday cake, he insisted on on having all 80 candles on his cake. In his words: “I earned every damned candle“! As he “blew” them out with a wave of cardboard or paper or whatever it was he was holding, the smoke filled the air above the cake, and Greg and I looked to each other. We both said, yeah, that’s gonna set off the fire alarms! Not two minutes later, yup, off went the alarms! After the fire department arrived, we took pictures of Dad shaking hands with the fireman who responded. We later sent an e-mail to the Malone Telegram and got an article in the Friday, August 19th, paper, the upper right corner of page A3! It’s quite large!

The rest of the trip involved hanging out with family, playing games, talking, standing and sitting around an outdoor fire pit at my folks’s place, and more. At the Lake Titus Camp, my wife and I swam and kayaked the lake. I’ll detail more of some of these and other aspects in some upcoming posts. But it was a glorious 10 days in the North Country, visiting family and reconnecting with an area of the world I love. I love the woods and waters of the Adirondacks and upstate New York and can’t get enough of them. Love visiting my Dad and stepmom, Wanda.

It was a great trip!

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The Running

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Runner's High. (Image by Pete Chapman, Image by CC BY-SA 2.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Runner’s High. (Image by Pete Chapman, CC BY-SA 2.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Years ago, when I had visited my dad and was still into running, I was inspired to write this story. I lived at (and still do) well over a mile in altitude in Colorado and going back home drops me significantly from that altitude. So, (without getting into the science of it all) for a brief period of time people in my position can perform all kinds of physical activity like we are gods.

You can run forever.

Life incredible amounts of weight.

You seemingly never tire.

One day during a late upstate New York afternoon, on a back road very much like the one in this picture, I ran into the growing darkness….

This story has never been published.

 

The Running

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

I run.

I know no end. It is as if my sole existence…is to run.

My legs pump powerfully down the gravel of a leaf-strewn, backcountry dirt road in late October. I know it is October, I know I am running, but that…that, sadly, is about all I know.

Pump, pump, huff….

And I know that this is an easy run for me. I know not how far I’ve already gone or even what time it was, but it has to be late afternoon, for the sun is low and lonely…the near leafless trees standing as silent witnesses as I sprint past. There is a wonderful chill to the air, too, as my breath turns into wispy ghosts about my face. I seem to be the only one in the entire world and I revel in it!

Pump, pump, huff, huff!

I am at one with creation; a Zen, if you will, as though running and I were one—the ultimate runner’s high, I tell you. My legs are on auto (they have a will of their own, indeed!), but my mind also runs wild, runs free! My wind is limitless, but I feel strange…disjointed…like one forced to look down upon oneself from an out-of-the-body perspective. The ultimate, mobile, isolation tank!

The gravel crunches and fires out from beneath my driving heels…my body and arms slicing through the autumn air like a banshee. Such raw power crackles through me and I feed upon it! I inhale deeply of the air and it further fuels me. I inhale vitality and out do I exhale my corporeally challenged ghosts….

Pump, pump, huff….

I couldn’t stop if I wanted to, for to stop would violate the immaculately sacred…eradicating the flow of chi.

Should I stop I should very well perish.

Perish?

Then why am I running? What is my purpose? Am I in flight? Fleeing something, someone? No—I think not. I feel no such inspired adrenaline rush, yet, in fact, feel quite at ease and free.

No, I am here of my own volition. A training session and nothing more.

Pump, pump, huff, huff….

So I am in training. Good. At least that is something else I know, which means I have a destination to which I head. Vaguely, I recall a house…an old one…surrounded by open fields.

Wait…another image…yes…there’s a barn, nearby, with a dog leashed to the decrepit old barn…a truck parked in the driveway!

Yes! It’s down off a stretch of sparsely populated country road! More memories! I know this house! I am remembering!

But…what do I do?

I wonder, but nothing more comes to mind. No matter, I’ve gotten this far, I must be doing okay. It’ll all come back to me. I simply drink in the runner’s high—why fight it?

Pump, huff; pump, huff….

I return my attention to my running…my surroundings…which I adore!

It is so gentle and serene running among the stands of trees…deciduous…evergreen…the setting sun blinking in and out from behind their forested silhouettes…the leaves blowing across my path or crunching beneath my feet—the cool air against my cheek and that wonderful Octobery must from the earth and leaves!

The sound of my exquisitely tuned body!

My feet pounding the ground (pound, pound!), my stride long and mighty!

I am the perfect machine…nothing can stop me…a finely tuned engine firing through the autumn world unchecked! My breath wisps out from me, like steam from a locomotive!

(pump, pump, huff, huff!)

I weave back and forth across the single dirt lane, stones kicking up in my Mercurial wake. My legs, I chuckle, they pound like pistons! I fly over this gravel road, my mind continually expanding.

I am more than just at one with running…I am at one with my being and my world….

My mind leaps from my physical shell, its supernatural tentacles interlacing with the skeleton-like extremities of the trees…and pierces through the loam-like earth.

I feel the woodland creatures as they roam the secluded countryside…or fly between the trees…and am lifted—elated—a rush of cloudy headiness blurring my mind!

Pump, huff! Pump, huff!

Oh, it is godlike to be in such extraordinary condition!

Though I seem to have an unnerving sense of amnesia, I do remember this: I am one of the best.

No—I am the best!

Running is who I am…what I do. I have always run…and run better than anyone else. My whole being thrills to its sensations!

Come on legs—harder, faster! More…more!

Pump, pump, huff, huff; pump, pump, huff, huff….

 

Oh, but the end is near and I am saddened beyond despair!

Up ahead I spy a break in the trees…a highway crossing my own dirt path (my own—no one else’s!).

Damn, but it was a good run!

Perhaps, I will finally find the remaining answers to my nagging quandaries—it will not be long, now!

But, I can hardly wait until the next time!

Pump, pump, pump, pump!

My body is tuned to exacting, spiritual perfection! Seeing the paved road just ahead I feel an added rush of adrenaline as I kick up my pace ever higher, more powerful! I feel all the eyes of the forest upon me…coaxing me…cheering me! The gravel spits and crackles beneath me as I pull out of the clearing toward the road just a sprint ahead. As I pull away from the tree-shaded back road, I realize I miss the run already knowing that it is over for yet another day—but look forward to the final sprint!

I easily make it to the road and turn onto it…`feeling the pavement pound back up into my feet as I kick off from it.

My kick is high and proud…as I begin to cool down….

Pump, pump, huff, huff, yes, I am proud! Pump, pump, huff, huff, I am proud of what I am, and why not? I have worked long and hard, I—

 

Run.

I know no end. It is as if my sole existence is…to run. My legs pump powerfully down the gravel of a leaf-strewn, backcountry dirt road in late October. I know it is October, I know I am running, but that…that, sadly, is about all I know.

Pump, pump, huff….

And I know that this is….

Pump, pump, huff, huff!

The gravel road lay out before me, the tree-lined dirt road stretched out as far as I can see—

I am back on the path!

Something is wrong—but what is it? What happened? The last thing I remember is…oh, why fight it….

As I fly down this back road, I again feel transcendent from the physical…but now feel as if I also blaze across time and space—galaxies and universes!

Bright colors, I see, bright and fluid!

But I out run the light itself! Nothing escapes me! I am invincible! I am more than just running down a backcountry road…I am soaring through realities…as not just myself, but as every runner that ever runs.

I am more than one runner…more than any run.

I seem able to individually tune into individual thoughts…global gestalts…

I am intoxicated!

Now, I find myself running in the mountains of the southern hemisphere…high into the clouds…or I am in flight for my life from a charging polar bear on a blindingly white background…I am in a race on a coast in the western hemisphere with thousands of runners…on the beaches of tropical islands…on the manufactured tracks of global games!

Oh, how I laugh and feel my energy fire out across universes!

It suddenly all comes back to me, now, as I remember who I am…what I do!

How could I have forgotten?

It is the intensity I devote to each and every run…the high that allows all to forget…and be in the moment. I give everything to all…I am everything to all….

I smile, as I pour it on.

I am Running….

Pump, pump, huff, huff!

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Snow Paper

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The Woods Hold Secrets. (Image by By Estormiz, own work [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons)
The Woods Hold Secrets. (Image by By Estormiz, own work [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons)
Family tragedies, knives, deserted, wintry forests, wolves, and, well, the stuff of fantasy.

This is yet another story I don’t  remember writing, and was written in the early years (1989), but as I stumbled upon it, it just captured my fancy as such an odd little story. A cool one, so I moved it up in the line-up…especially since we just had a blizzard dumped on us (March 23rd), two days later, another eight inches. And this week? A couple more days of fast moving snow squalls. It’s still snowing outside my window….

This story has never been published.

 

Snow Paper

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

“No! Don’t do it! Please, don’t—”

The shrill screams pierced through the frigid, moonlit night, originating behind the closed doors of a mountain cabin. Behind tattered, backlit curtains forms moved…jerked…flickering images engaged in a heated argument. Yelling. Pleading. Crying.

Outside, smoke from the chimney mixed with blowing snow.

“Daddy no!”

A gunshot.

Another.

Out from the door dove a dark form.

The shadow was far from maturity…short in height and small in frame…and it plunged directly into the several-foot-deep accumulation of snow. Behind the small-framed shadow—her—the door was left open.

“No! No-no-no-no-no!”

Shelain collapsed face-first into the snow.

“Mommy! Why? Daddy—why?”

But her cries only fell upon the hushed ears of a snow-packed forest.

Blood on her clothes.

Shelain lie face down in the snow, arms covering her head, and sobbed….

She looked up. Into the woods before her.

She didn’t need moonlight to see. She knew what was out there. Snow. And trees. Lots of both and little respite from either.

Shelain had grown up in this forest. She had always been a fast learner. In better times her parents had remarked at how good she’d been in finding her way back home while out hunting. That she could survive in the snow if she had to (she’d built her first igloo at the age of five), and that making fires and snaring food was now quite commonplace to her. Her parents knew she could survive, and so did Shelain. She was a tough little girl, and now she would be put through her right of passage.

Shelain didn’t understood what had happened between her father and mother, only that it had happened…and that was all that mattered just now. But she also knew she couldn’t live here anymore. This had been a home, now it was a tomb—and the living didn’t live in tombs.

She did not want to go back in there.

The woods were her only option. Yes, she would go there. She would go to the woods and find a new place. But before that was to happen, she needed things. And that meant…

Going back inside.

And she did not want to do that.

As soon as she got back up to her feet, she felt her head pound, like the outsides had moved too fast for the insides, and her insides were ready to explode…her heart….

Shelain stood. Wiped snow off herself, and turned.

Entered the cabin.

On the floor were—

She moved around them.

She was unable to take her eyes off what now lay on the floor.

But her father’s woods training and her mother’s practicality took over and she immediately set upon collecting what she needed. She grabbed food and clothes. Water wouldn’t be too much of a problem this time of the year, but she took a flask or two anyway. Putting on as many pieces of outer wear as she deemed practical and useful, she slung the pack over her back and

The floor still mocked her. She couldn’t ignore them.

Stooping, Shelain went to her father…unable to look directly at him. She searched around him before she found what she was looking for. Removing it, she put it into her jacket.

His hunting knife. Now it was hers.

Shelain went to her mother.

She was also unable to look directly at her. She went to her hand. Shelain removed the wedding band. Like gutting a trout or cleaning a rabbit, her emotions suddenly seemed turned off.

That was enough.

Pocketing the band she strode out the door, not bothering to close it.

She felt the crunch of the snow beneath her feet, and headed around to the side of the cabin, adjusting her pack. She pulled her snowshoes out from their snowy groves alongside the building and put them on. She’d gotten these two birthdays ago. She was very adept in them, even able to run in them, dodging in and around trees….

“It’s going to be a cold winter,” she said to no one. She stood back up and looked off into the moonlit night.

Off she trekked, into the dark tree line of the forest.

 

Shelain felt as if she was living one of those fairy tales her parents had so often read to her as a child.

But she was a child no longer.

As prepared as she was, she had forgotten two very important things. One was that she might not be as energetic about things after the shock and the jolt had worn off. Two, she had completely forgotten that she had not yet eaten that night.

She figured she’d been walking for several hours (this she did by the movement of the stars), and though she was young and strong, she needed food and rest, and now was as good a time as any to stop. Unloading her pack, she collapsed against a giant snow-covered fir, careful as to not knock any of the snow capping off. She might end up needing the tree as shelter and would need the snow for insulation.

Fishing through her pack’s contents, she removed a small salted slab of venison, immediately digging into it.

She watched the stars.

Then heard the noise.

Noises.

Only moving her eyes, she surveyed the dark…through the trees and back from the direction she’d come.

She’d been followed.

How stupid of her! She knew better!

The moon lit her trail, but that wasn’t all it had lit up. It also lit up a second trail which had veered off on its own into the woods mere paces away. It didn’t take an expert to know that she was being followed.

Wolves.

Shelain slowly placed the remainder of her venison on the snow.

She sat. Listened.

There came the low, throaty rumblings again….it was all around her.

She positioned her pack firmly in front of her; held it with both hands.

All her training had not prepared her for this. She was alone now, no father to get her out of this one. No mother.

Solo.

The rustling came closer, the growls no longer muted.

Shelain saw the wolves emerge from the darkness. She could actually see their eyes.

Four of them.

Slowly coming to a stand, Shelain kicked the chunk of venison toward the advancing pack. That tiny morsel wasn’t going to satisfy anything. She stayed close to the tree. Shelain felt her mind beginning to go limp…lose its focus.

Fear was taking over. She’d felt this once before.

The wolves closed in…formed a semi-circle….

They pounced!

Three went for the venison…but the fourth charged her.

Pack forced firmly out before her, Shelain managed to deflect the wolf off to the side, but it quickly got back up and resumed its attack. Shelain was only vaguely aware that the other wolves were fighting over the venison—but, how long would that last?

The attacking wolf again leapt at her.

For several minutes they faced off with each other. There was no stopping this beast…and soon the other three would also be upon her.

She was alone, snowshoes strapped to her feet, and mentally and physically exhausted.

There was nowhere to go. No one to turn to for help.

This was it.

What would her father do?

Her hand fell to her side.

Yes. The knife.

She unsheathed the gleaming blade.

The wolf lunged.

She missed the first time, but connected on the immediate back swing.

She was soon lost in the frenzy of teeth, claws, and blade when she felt the knife plunge deeply, she felt something hot spray her face, and her attacker suddenly fell on top of her.

She was bleeding.

Three more! There are three more!

“No!” she screamed. “Oh, Father, why did you do it? Mother, I miss you!”

She so desperately wanted things to go back to the way they had been…to the way they’d been before….

Why couldn’t we turn back time when bad things happened to us?

She’d been mauled pretty good by the dead wolf and her grip on her knife was no longer sure, but her survival instincts again kicked in. Shelain was again on her feet. As she saw the three wolves approaching her, she grabbed her pack and dumped it out in an arc before her. More venison and fruit and bread sprayed out before her…and she ran.

She’d never had to run on snowshoes to save her life before.

All she could do was what she was doing.

Run.

 

She dropped heavily to her knees in knees deep snow, heart beating up and into her throat. She was tired, wet, had lost much blood, and was about to lose much more if she didn’t change her situation…

But she no longer cared.

She’d been foolish to believe she could make it on her own, no matter how smart she thought she was. There was nothing to make it to. Nowhere to go. She’d lost her family, lost everything. And the wolves

(where were they?)

would be on her in—

Her hand hit something.

Dragging her knife through the snow to the object, she poked it through to the surface. It unraveled just enough for her to see it.

It was cylindrical and

Made of paper?

A…calendar?

A paper calendar…and there were days marked off.

Well, great, at least she would know what day she died.

The calendar was dated last year…but not all the days were marked off. What a stupid thing to find in the snow…out in the middle of nowhere…a pack of hungry wolves chasing after you—

And why hadn’t the wolves caught up with her?

But…a calendar….

Her curiosity got the better of her, and with bloodied and freezing hands, she began unrolling it.

The year on the calendar shifted before her eyes.

One moment it read 1830…the next 1700…but always it showed past years, nothing current. And the marked-off dates remained the same. The calendar unrolled, she tried to turn the pages, to see other months, but she couldn’t…none of the pages would yield. She couldn’t unstick the pages. As she looked at the crossed-out dates (what day was it?) she noticed how some of the crossed-out dates looked more messed up than the others. Smeared. In fact the very last crossed-out date was really smeared and blurry and anything but neatly crossed out.

She heard the rustling.

They would nearly be upon her!

Good, let them come…put an end to her misery….

Shelain traced her bloody knife tip along the weeks and stopped at the next open day after the really smeared and soiled and blurry crossed-out

(yesterday…)

date. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, if she could go back and change things…make what daddy did never happen. Turn back time? Wouldn’t it be—

 

The wolves broke through the snow-covered trees and leaped upon their prey…but only ended up landing upon one and other, instead. Confused, they shook the snow from their lean bodies, sniffing around the indentations in the snow before them.

There were blood stains…her scent…but no meat.

All that was before them was a snow crater of someone who used to be there.

The wolves dug, but never found Shelain. They did find, however, a useless pile of paper in the snow. They sniffed at it—it was not a good smell—and hurriedly left the area, one less member to their number….

Deep in the woods of the north rested a small log cabin. The smell of hardwoods permeated the air as the smoke mixed with falling snow. Inside the soft glow of the fire’s light filled windows, and there resided a small family of three. It was a meager birthday, but it would turn out to be the best birthday Shelain would ever have….

 

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Kirschner Cover Art: In Pinelight, by Thomas Rayfiel

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In Pinelight, by Thomas Rayfiel, Triquarterly (Publisher), 2013
In Pinelight, by Thomas Rayfiel, Triquarterly (Publisher), 2013

When I first saw this cover, I was stunned—stopped in my tracks, much like The Grievers.

I loved this cover!

Much like my discussion of Grace, this cover also brings me back to my life in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. The North Country. If you haven’t guessed it yet, I had a great upbringing. I loved where and when I grew up. Love the wild lands…the brooding mysteries of the dark waters and woods. I spent so much time roaming the woods on my own…hanging out at the lake across the road from our house. Soaking in this cover really brought it all back. Now, the story itself…it’s method of delivery…did not work for me. I wanted it to…because of the cover…because of the subject matter (an upstate NY town that was flooded out)…but simply couldn’t. It simply didn’t work for me.

But…back to the cover…I love the feeling of foreboding…the mystery…the darkness. I love the trees and all their shadows…how trees and shadows and mist-over-water lends toward an implied deep, dark mystery…implied goings-on that are hidden in either-or-both the water and the woods. Again, since I had not finished reading this novel, I can only guess…but it all implies some dark dealings going on in some dark woods…and/or water. Back country secrets….

I can feel the crisp coldness of the water…the resilient bounce of the humus-carpeted forest floor…inhale the heavy scent of the pines. Feel myself weaving in and out between the trees…moving deeper into the mystery forest and snapping off dead branches as I go. Holding the stiff, dead branches in my hands as I trek ever farther into the woods…listening to the distant woodpeckers and the wind….

Yet above it all is the sky with rising ground fog.

Whatever darkness lies below…there is “a light at the end of the tunnel”—or, in this case, “above the trees.”

But in the woods there be secrets.

“Book covers are visceral,” Lon says it best on his book-cover-dedicated website, lonkirschner.com. “A good cover grabs you in an unexpected way,” he goes on to say, and In Pinelight had done just that…much like Grace had also done for me. Some covers you “just like”…they’re eye candy, they’re cute, they’re whatever (in a good way)…and some just immediately get under your skin and into your marrow. And that’s what’s happened in In Pinelight. Lon’s work has a “heart” to it…and maybe it’s because he reads every manuscript for which he creates a cover. Maybe he’s just good.

No “maybe’s” about it!

So, yes, I think In Pinelight has become one of my favorite covers.

What went through Lon’s mind as he worked this cover?

Here are his words:

“Yes, you are correct. This was a difficult book to read because it uses no punctuation or paragraphs. It is the ramblings of a thought process put to words. As you know, I make a commitment to read every book so I can (hopefully) get it right. The author gave me a warning about the quirky style of this book so I was prepared. It was a slow start, you had to get into the rhythm of it. I found myself enjoying it because it was like I was uncovering a mystery. Sometimes you had no clear idea what was going on but then out of nowhere you made a connection. You are the listener to this man’s oral history of his life. It was a strange life with many twists and turns but the constant was the lake and the trees. You would feel their presence on almost every page, it was the natural way to go. The problem was to find an image that had the right sense of place and mystery. I came across an image that felt good but there were things that just were not right. Fortunately we are able to make corrections with the tools we have available to us. The shape of the tree line wasn’t quite right. There were a few disturbing branches and several tall trees sticking too far up above the rest. The trees had to look a little other worldly. This was fixed by pushing the color toward the almost unnatural green. The final element was to enhance the mist coming off the water. These were all relatively simple to do but combined to change a rather ordinary photo into the type of image that can stir up all sorts of emotions and memories as it did with you.

“The final element was the font choice for the title and author. I felt strongly that this had to be extremely simple so it would not compete with the image, the real star of the show. A clean sans serif font solved that problem.

“This publisher had requested to see several concepts. When I did this one I knew the job was done but did the others and submitted all together. To say I was not surprised when the Art Director emailed me with the news that this was the choice is an understatement. One, it made me feel like I really did know what I was doing and two, I knew the Art Director was smart!

“It is actually harder to do a book like this because it is really a mood piece. So much of the work I do is compositing and creating original art that piece together a book in a visual way. This type of cover is much more visceral and relies on pure emotion to get the concept across. Another interesting fact is that you were drawn to the book and wanted to read it but in the end, your enjoyment of it came from the cover and not the text.”

Ha—I like how Lon points out that my enjoyment of the book came from the cover and not the text! This is quite ironic for a writer, because so many authors complain about their covers because they feel the traditional publishing houses have “slapped on” some trite, awful cover to their manuscripts…covers (these authors lament) that have little to do with actual story…or are just plain heinous, with little thought or effort having gone into them….

Thank you, Lon, for your insight! Maybe some later day I’ll again attempt to complete reading this novel…and I’ll definitely check out his other, Time Among The Dead.

Thomas Rayfiel doesn’t appear to have his own website, but here’s his Amazon page.

*******************************************

Lon Kirschner may be contacted at:

Phone: 518/392-3823

E-mail: info@kirschnercaroff.com

Site: http://www.kirschnercaroff.com

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

 

Related Articles:

Kirschner Cover Art: Grace, by Howard Owen (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)

Cover Artist Lon Kirschner Interview (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)