Ask the Author: F.P. Dorchak
Answered Questions (10)
F.P. Dorchak
That is a very good question!
One event was when I was a kid returning home from swimming at the beach that was in front of our house. Clad in my swim shorts and wrapped in a beach towel, I had just gotten to the road, when this VAN (yeah, VAN) pulls over and asks me for directions (this was actually a common occurrence back in the NYS summers of the 70s, mainly Canadians, since we lived close to the border). There were two twenty-year-old dudes in the front seat, and, I soon discovered, another guy in the back of the van. As I'm talking to these guys--I did not have a good feeling about them--the side door slides open, and inside is this other guy, grinning and now also addressing me! Yeah, I did not get a good vibe from these fellas.
Anyway, just about when this happens, my dad, a strapping Forest Ranger at the time, suddenly comes purposefully striding down our crushed-stone driveway on the other side of this van, and in ONE HAND is carrying a mattock. “Can I help you boys with something?” my dad calls out from across the road.
The dudes suddenly forgot their question and speed off. I do remember that they didn't just get back on the road and "drive away"; they actually SPED OFF.
Years later I asked my dad about that situation and he said he’d asked his State Trooper buddies and they'd told him that they’d found that van down the road a way--abandoned. It had been discovered that the van had been stolen.
So, a good plot would have been that my dad had not been there to save my young ass and I'd been kidnapped. Of course, I'd turn said story into one with a supernatural bent to it...much like the short story I'd written that was partially inspired by just this event, called "What Dreams Are Made Of": https://fpdorchak.wordpress.com/2016/....
My apologies if it's from an already written story, but if it were a book, I'd definitely mix things up a bit more. I really don't have a lot of such events in my life that I can remember, but this one was the big "mystery" in my life. There is another one, but, at this time, I can't go into it because of privacy issues, so this is the one that will have to suffice.
However...
I also wonder what would have happened had I made it through USAF navigator training (see my novel ERO: https://fpdorchak.wordpress.com/2013/...) and also made it into astronaut training. Though ERO is again a "what-if" about a mystery that happened to me, I do wonder how life would have been...had I made it into a flying career. But I believe everything happens for a reason.
Thank you for your question!
One event was when I was a kid returning home from swimming at the beach that was in front of our house. Clad in my swim shorts and wrapped in a beach towel, I had just gotten to the road, when this VAN (yeah, VAN) pulls over and asks me for directions (this was actually a common occurrence back in the NYS summers of the 70s, mainly Canadians, since we lived close to the border). There were two twenty-year-old dudes in the front seat, and, I soon discovered, another guy in the back of the van. As I'm talking to these guys--I did not have a good feeling about them--the side door slides open, and inside is this other guy, grinning and now also addressing me! Yeah, I did not get a good vibe from these fellas.
Anyway, just about when this happens, my dad, a strapping Forest Ranger at the time, suddenly comes purposefully striding down our crushed-stone driveway on the other side of this van, and in ONE HAND is carrying a mattock. “Can I help you boys with something?” my dad calls out from across the road.
The dudes suddenly forgot their question and speed off. I do remember that they didn't just get back on the road and "drive away"; they actually SPED OFF.
Years later I asked my dad about that situation and he said he’d asked his State Trooper buddies and they'd told him that they’d found that van down the road a way--abandoned. It had been discovered that the van had been stolen.
So, a good plot would have been that my dad had not been there to save my young ass and I'd been kidnapped. Of course, I'd turn said story into one with a supernatural bent to it...much like the short story I'd written that was partially inspired by just this event, called "What Dreams Are Made Of": https://fpdorchak.wordpress.com/2016/....
My apologies if it's from an already written story, but if it were a book, I'd definitely mix things up a bit more. I really don't have a lot of such events in my life that I can remember, but this one was the big "mystery" in my life. There is another one, but, at this time, I can't go into it because of privacy issues, so this is the one that will have to suffice.
However...
I also wonder what would have happened had I made it through USAF navigator training (see my novel ERO: https://fpdorchak.wordpress.com/2013/...) and also made it into astronaut training. Though ERO is again a "what-if" about a mystery that happened to me, I do wonder how life would have been...had I made it into a flying career. But I believe everything happens for a reason.
Thank you for your question!
F.P. Dorchak
Ambush and Gone To Darkness, both by Barbara Nickless.
The Best of James Van Pelt, by James Van Pelt.
Night Gallery: The Art of Darkness, by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson.
The Best of James Van Pelt, by James Van Pelt.
Night Gallery: The Art of Darkness, by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson.
F.P. Dorchak
I haven't really gotten it, but have been "stumped" for various reasons. I find it's usually because something isn't right with the story and I have discover what that thing is...or there's something going on with me (mind's focused on other things, like work or problems of some kind). So we're not talking a difficulty with WRITING, per se, but issues that are impacting you to write purposefully and productively. I don't see them as the same thing, since "writer's block" has always been advertised as "the inability to write." I have never had the "inability to write."
That said...when I do have issues I can't seem to get past, I go for long, *brisk* walks and let my thoughts freewheel. If not on the first or second walk, I usually do come away with a resolution! It's amazing how a brisk walk gets the blood flowing and fresh air and a different perspective clear the mind for what needs to fill it! Try it!
That said...when I do have issues I can't seem to get past, I go for long, *brisk* walks and let my thoughts freewheel. If not on the first or second walk, I usually do come away with a resolution! It's amazing how a brisk walk gets the blood flowing and fresh air and a different perspective clear the mind for what needs to fill it! Try it!
F.P. Dorchak
Write. Find a way to...and find YOUR way.
F.P. Dorchak
Everything! But mostly the employment of the imagination! You are GOD when it comes to your stories. Act like S/He/It.
F.P. Dorchak
I'm writing a novel that was inspired two-fold: the Foo Fighters song, “Rosemary,” and the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. novel, Slaughterhouse Five. It'll be, perhaps, a little more "mainstream-y"...in a Stephen King kind of way...in terms of character development, and I hope no one sees it coming (well, you know, except for the needed publisher to take it on)....
F.P. Dorchak
Literally anything. A smell, a sight, a sound. A concept. A look. Philosophy. Usually some version of an IDEA hits me and I mull it around a bit...then I'll sit down and just start writing. Most of the time the idea bears itself out...but not always. Gotta know when to cut bait and move on....
F.P. Dorchak
For the book my agent is currently circulating, I got the basic idea from The Martian Chronicles (TMC), plus some close-to-the-heart philosophy of my own. When I started writing it in 2018 I had one idea for it, but once I got deep into it, it took me in a...slightly...different direction. I really loved the idea of stringing related vignettes together. I am really happy with its outcome! If you liked TMC, I hope you enjoy my new work. I'm quite excited to see it in print!
F.P. Dorchak
Jane Roberts' Oversoul Seven Trilogy. There I could visit different versions of my self and others and be free of physical limitations to have fun seeing all that is "behind the curtain of Life!"
F.P. Dorchak
It came. It killed.
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