Up In Smoke Reviews: Author Interview

Tell us about these new books? What’re they about and why did you write them?

First off, all my books began from An Honest Man—the first book of the trilogy: the Donkey and the Wall. That series led to Weigh Anchor—the first of The Curious Voyages of the Anna Virginia Saga. That led to a series of short stories that branched off the established timelines of the previous work. I compiled them, massaged them and gave them a unifying plot and cast of characters; so Just A Curtain was born. Out of that came a character, Tera Elphinstone, who whispered to me and cajoled me into constructing her own expanded place among the rest of the Future Histories. That’s the timeline of their production. The why’s?

This is a topic near and dear to my heart and one for which I think I can offer quite a bit of information. Over the last couple decades I have been part of an on-going experiment: Can an Objective Path to awakening produce in an individual the properties and functions of higher centers (those which are responsible for Objective Self-Knowledge and Objective Reason)?

The path I speak of involves the removing of all non-verifiable data and emotions cluttering one’s being. In other words, scrapping everything acquired through blind belief, old wives’ tales, the plethora of “they say”, snippets to volumes of information un-vetted and unsubstantiated which through laziness or convenience has populated one’s mind and heart. At the same time carefully building up a verifiable structure of mentation, an inner construction which allows for the assimilation of verified data and verifiable information about oneself and the real world in which one finds oneself.

This two-fold endeavor has yielded, for me personally, a far more impartial perspective both of my far less cluttered inner world, as well as clearer perceptions of what is transpiring in our outer world—that place where we all must have our daily existence.

So, with our terminology clarified, how to weave such an understanding into a narrative form accessible to others? I chose the medium of metaphor and allegory—those forms which throughout the history of our species have stood the test of time for conveying the deeper meanings of our existence. I began with a simple premise:

“What if there were lineages of highly conscious individuals from the most ancient of times and emergent into the present day?”

That question, for me, would allow for a presentation both: of what would be the properties and functions of a person with higher consciousness, and also how a regular person could come to such a condition for themselves. It is the latter which, through my protagonists’ interactions with others, could become an accessible path for everyone wishing to gain what they may think they already possess, but clearly do not.

It was the follow-up questions, “What would their world be like?” even more importantly, “What would our world be like—the one which we think we know?” that forced me to begin where I did—in the past—and bring the story through the subtly changed present and into a transformed future. Hence the term coined by J. W. Campbell regarding Mr. Heinlein’s epic works: “Future Histories.”

Future History, then, according the sense in which I am compelled to use it, means the results of the aforementioned premise to have been realized in practice, extrapolated into real-time for a new view of man’s relationship to, and place within the greater world—even up to the Type III Civilization as envisioned by Kardashev. That lofty arena of such an accomplishment is one which we as residents of the present Earth are no where near even the farthest horizons. Understandably.

While our societies, to some extent, and most definitely our technologies have evolved exponentially over the last few millennia, the individual, and resultant collective, evolution of our inner worlds haven’t moved forward even the barest distance by comparison. It is the individual who must perforce begin the personal change. Only then will our collective inner revolution gain the necessary traction to propel us in the directions of the ideals set forth in the allegorical Future Histories as presented in the Donkey and the Wall trilogy and The Curious Voyages of the Anna Virginia Saga.

If you could have a dinner party and invite anyone dead or alive, who would you ask?

Simple: Tesla, Houdini, Tolkien, Lewis (to keep Tolkien company), Lord Byron—Seriously? a party without him? Really?—Oscar Wilde (to keep Byron company), Teddy Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anne Hathaway-Shakespeare (the patient wife?), Elizabeth I, Da Vinci, Fu Xi, Lao Tsu, Joseph Campbell, Katherine Hepburn, Will Rodgers, Samuel Clemens, Dorothy Parker, Ambrose Bierce, Ghengis Kahn (to keep Bierce company), Yogi Berra, George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Gypsie Rose Lee, and whoever came up with: “…And that’s not all!”

When you are not writing, how do you like to relax?

Travel, Fly-fish, Sail. Mostly camping allows us to do all that at the same time… almost.

Do you have an organized process or tips for writing well? Do you have a writing schedule?

I thought I’d tackle these two at the same time; they are similar. Every day, from around seven-thirtyuntil around four. I sit down at my laptop, cover the previous evening’s email, find where I left off the day before and relax. The characters then take over for the next eight hours or so and I chuckle, shed a tear, hold my breath and sigh at everything they attempt to do—and sometimes accomplish. Then I get up go down to the smoking porch, open a beer have a smoke, and start “pre-writing” for the next day. Have dinner, check the weather forecast, go to sleep, get and do it all over again.

The only interruptions to my routine over weeks and months at a time are, holidays, grandchildren’s birthdays, urgent household matters and annual vacation travel. (Wonder when that last is going to resume?)

Sometimes it’s so hard to keep at it – What keeps you going?

I don’t understand the question. Are you suggesting that writing for a living isn’t the best gig in town? I feel like the luckiest man in the world when I sit at my laptop and tell stories. Seriously? What’s not to love?

How often do you write? And when do you write? Do you have an organized process or tips for writing well? Do you have a writing schedule?

I thought I’d tackle these two at the same time; they are similar. Every day, from around seven-thirty until around four. I sit down at my laptop, cover the previous evening’s email, find where I left off the day before and relax. The characters then take over for the next eight hours or so and I chuckle, shed a tear, hold my breath and sigh at everything they attempt to do—and sometimes accomplish. Then I get up go down to the smoking porch, open a beer have a smoke, and start “pre-writing” for the next day. Have dinner, check the weather forecast, go to sleep, get and do it all over again.