An Interim Interview - Charles M. Pulsipher

Shelly - A little change-up this week. DWD asked me to interview a friend, one Mr. Charles M. Pulsipher. Despite his name he's not in the British Parliament. Mr. Pulsipher's a cook and woodworker and zombie survivalist. Now he's expanded his skills to that of science fiction author. I have two requests as we begin, Mr. P. I want to call you Chuck, and will you please tell me the premise of Crystal Bridge includes no spaceships. DWD has burned me out on those.

Charles - You can call me Chuck. I mainly go by Charlie, but all my high school friends still insist on Chuck. I'm used to it. There are no space ships at all. My characters travel to another world, but they do it the old fashioned way, walking...I mean wormholes. These aren't the cheesy 80's wormholes either. I worked very hard to make them cool and slightly terrifying.

S - Mmmm. You had me at worms. I understand there is also a character who can read emotion without using words. Now I'm hungry and jealous. Not having to talk to people...

Chuck - Yep. Kaden opens the wormholes. Aren can see memories and read people's souls just by looking at them. Her gift becomes very important in keeping her alive as she gets lost on the other world. She's pretty tough to begin with, but she must learn to be more than that when she's captured by underground dwelling Dwaros.

S - I know you're talking about the Einstein field equation thing, but all I'm hearing is gooey slimy earthy goodness. Enough about me, though. I'm trying to limit my egocentricity. Speaking of tough, independent women with tough shells, requests from readers of the Eveleth Elle and my physics students in the southwest (see previous posts, everyone) were unanimous. "Read us the last page of Crystal Bridge!" So, how about it?

C - Can't do it. The last page gives away the biggest twist I wove into the novel, a secret that will blow minds. I can give you the last line. I like it, despite being a little passive. "He realized he was hungry." Great, huh?

S - Get out! That's not really the line, Chuck. You just made that up to keep me drooling over freshly-unearthed oligochetes. Okay, so we know one of my influences. What about yours? Who or what made you want to write? Kept you motivated when writing was inconvenient or hard? And if you say post-1989 George Lucas I will bite off your toe so help me the Dagobah swamp monster.

C - I can't say George Lucas pre or post-1989 had much to do with my writing. My writing style and voice have definitely been influenced by Orson Scott Card and Tad Williams. Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams have influenced me a bit. Fringe, Alias, Firefly, Angel, and Veronica Mars have become a part of me. Some older stuff too, E.T., The Dark Crystal, Labrynth, Stargate, even Sliders. I find inspiration anywhere I can get it.

S - HMMmmm. Skeksis help Gelfling! Loved that show! Except the end when the Skeksis are unwillingly forced to abandon their ideals, and their culture gets watered down by those hunchbacked hobos. Oh well. Here's the next thing I want to know. Any parts of The Crystal Bridge you wouldn't want read to kids? And by that I mean what page numbers should I memorize or mark with a sticky note?

C - If you managed to watch The Dark Crystal, then my novel will be no problem for you. That movie has some freaky things in it. My novel has a little scene where a man is mauled by a large cat-goat thing, Kaden almost gets swallowed by a dragon, and Rho, the dark god, has a few creepy moments, but the novel is pretty clean and tame. I wrote it for the 14 year-old in me and I think it appeals to anyone from 13 to 45.

S - Oooh! Mild sci-fi violence warning! That will boost the 14-to-whatever male mammal readership. I'm a bit embarrassed now, though. Now everyone knows I'm into bodice-ripping shell-scratching reptile romance novels. The interviewee is the one whose supposed to slip up with too much info. Speaking of awkward, what was the most embarrassing typo you came across while editing?

C - Unfortunately, that's an easy answer. I switched the names of two characters...twice. I have two scientists working on recreating extinct animals using genetic simulations. Here's a bit of spoiler, one of them dies. I managed to use the wrong character's name in the middle of the emotional scene. Then in another scene I confused two female Sidra who are nothing alike. Sidra are kind of like elves. One was the bad guy's minion and one was fighting against her. So, I had the good elf riding into battle against herself for a moment. I'm so glad I caught those before I finished. That would have been bad.

S - What do you think your therapist would say about that, Chuck?

C - I think most writers would be considered crazy once we start talking about our characters as real people. We're weird and conflicted. That's why we write. It's like you, Shelly. We all know you made up this DWD character. You're writing these books, aren't you, Shelly?

S - I've signed a strictly-worded harshly-penalizing contract which prevents further discussion. Your first comment, though? Crazy, weird, and conflicted applies to non-reptile vertebrates as a whole, so no disagreement here. Which brings up the last question, Chuck. The What If Game. Books sales are up, screenplay written, auditions underway. Who stars in the film Crystal Bridge?

C - Doesn't matter as long as J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon direct it together and it has a cameo from George Wendt. NORM! I love that guy. I also wouldn't mind if Natalie Portman is involved somehow.

S - I'd watch that! Well, Chuck, it has been a pleasure. Especially considering your species. I mean that as a compliment, by the way. So where do I get a copy of Crystal Bridge?

C - I wish I could bundle the print books. I thought about doing it with the ebooks, but they are so different. Maybe I'll think about it some more. Thank you, Shelly. This has been fun, even with your obsession over worms.

S - And hot male terrapins. Wait, what? There's more? I get a free copy of your survival guide, Zombies at the Door if I order in the next ten seconds? Okay - minimize, new tab, Amazon, title by author, spinning circle of boredom... spinning... spinning... And I'm too late. Stupid 1G dial up.

Crystal Bridge, by Charles M. Pulsipher:

  Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NF3SDI Nook: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Crystal-Bridge/Charles-M-Pulsipher/e/2940013379176 Print: http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Bridge-Charles-M-Pulsipher/dp/1466320958/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Houses of Common excerpt. Brought to you by Turtle Wax: that sexy shine ain't just for cars.

I finished some editing for DWD. Not interested in promoting his work, I just wanted everyone to see what I have to put up with. With what I have to put up? With up what I have to put? Also, so you could admire my fantastic editing. The awe of which that last sentence just destroyed. Here it is, a sample selected for it's lack of mammals.


Sckiik was disappointed the courier drone had no viewport, but it would be a giveaway it held a pilot. Unable to see out, she was missing the light-hearted excitement of the launch; the Earth rocketing away beneath her, the familiar Washington, D.C. landmarks collapsing into a point too small to see, the atmosphere darkening to black, and the winking of the stars in an accelerated twilight.

Her courier drone jolted violently as the reactor detonated a small volume of helium-3, the hull creaking as the explosion was contained and directed. Being so small, there had been no room for inertial dampers in the vessel, one of the reasons no human could undertake this mission. Sckiik felt her internal fluids rush from her head and thorax, but flexing the diaphragmatic muscles at her joints and bending the flexible portions of her exoskeleton to reduce volume, she rode comfortably through what would be nearly fatal to the best of human pilots. Achieving a typical drone speed, she took a course close enough to a usual northerly route away from Earth, but cheating toward the moon as much as she dared. Several hundred other courier drones appeared on sensors, all heading far enough out of Earth’s gravity to Bend, delivering messages to some exotic location, or more likely, a homely homestead colony.

Now, she thought, several hours of nothing at all. An assassin won’t try anything until we’re at least halfway to the moon – then is the smallest chance of being seen by orbital surveillance. But why bother with a powerless Ambassador? I’ve sensed no anti-Rildj sentiment in Congress or business or industry. We have no technological or military superiority that would threaten anyone.

So flowed Sckiik’s thoughts for several hours, but she could not come to any satisfying conclusions. Then she saw the speck on her sensors, angling from lunar orbit on a direct course to the Ambassador’s vessel. Zooming in visual display, she could see the new ship was a bulky affair, constructed around a clustered-sphere arrangement of compartments, not of recent design, but one she recognized.

The Kashmir Liberation Front? she wondered. What do they care about Rildj? At least I’m dealing with small-time terrorists instead of a state-sponsored act of war.

Venting nose thrusters, she changed course to come at the vessel from the side, hoping their attention was so riveted on the Ambassador she’d go unnoticed. The grapple claw and hull-welding charges were set, she’d slide up next to the ship, punch a hole in, and do her job before the assassins could do theirs. She checked her pistol, making sure the airtight rounds were loaded, each holding oxygen with the powder so she could still fire when the assassin ship depressurized.

Sckiik closed on the assassin ship long before it could reach the Ambassador’s vessel. The mass of a drone being insignificant compared to the power of the helium reactors, no ship could outrun them in standard flight.

I’ll get there in plenty of time, she decided. As long as they don’t see me.

A metallic clang and then a detonation vibrated the drone, Sckiik’s harness cutting into her from the jolt. Warnings blared as systems reset and diagnostic readouts flashed. Internal temperature rose significantly, and Sckiik tried to get more speed from another reactor detonation.

I only needed nine more seconds!

She was considering the masterful targeting needed to hit such a small object as the drone while moving at an oblique angle at enormous speed, when a second missile scored right on the nose of Sckiik’s craft. She braced for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised.

Sensors still online, she realized, and I’m not being sucked out a gaping hole! Charlotte, you are a hull construction genius!

The braking thrusters on the other hand, were vaporized.

Sckiik tried to flip the drone around and re-ignite the reactor to decelerate, but the guidance thrusters had been disintegrated also.

One more hit like that and I’m dust.

A few moments were hers as a third missile approached. She tried venting some of the compressed cockpit oxygen to alter her course, but the valve wouldn't respond. She hit the emergency fire suppression system in the instrument panel, hoping the argon foam might leak out the damaged nosecone and push her out of the way. Instead, the panel shorted out right in her face with a flash of sparks and smoke. With two seconds to spare, Sckiik set off one more reactor burn to increase speed. Then she punched out, the ejection charge blowing her clear of the drone-turned-missile. The assassins’ shot was on course, but Charlotte’s energy plating held again despite the missile's detonation.

Sckiik had a spectacular view of the collision between her drone and the assassin's ship. The ejection had started the drone in a slow end-over-end rotation. It was perpendicular to the ship when they met, and Sckiik watched as it neatly bisected the assassins’ entire vessel, atmosphere pouring and crystallizing out the halves that now spun in opposite directions. The drone was reduced to metal droplets, melted or vaporized on impact and creating a cone of sparkles along what would have been its path.

“Beautiful. This is my art. Wish I had a brush to sign it.”

Sckiik looked as long as she could before the destructive beauty of high-speed collision shrank into the distance. Her victory would have to be fully celebrated later. Her next concern was traveling bodily through space at nearly a hundred kilometers per second, with only a thin vacsuit and her exoskeleton protecting her. Glancing to the equipment at her belt, she grabbed for her vectoring gun, but realized its uselessness. Its emission of compressed air could alter her direction or double as an emergency respiration supply, but it would not be enough to stop her. A few silent blue explosions erupted from the assassin’s vessel, but it all shrank into the distance before she could find the Ambassador's ship. Glancing over her shoulder, she was grateful for the initial heading she’d taken, as she would be more likely to orbit the moon than to collide with it or shoot past.

Has anyone ever made a lunar orbit in a vacsuit? she wondered. I’m making history. Except that this is a classified mission and I was never here.

The novelty of her accomplishment wore off as the seriousness of her predicament sunk in. If the Ambassador's ship didn't come for her, her only hope was to be detected in lunar orbit. That wasn't likely. She was in a higher orbit than the satellites, and their sensors would be pointed at the surface. The few facing out to track incoming ships were probably not calibrated for an object as small and cold and non-metallic as a female Rildj flailing through the void.

Dave Farland - a coming interview with Yours Rudely

I've progressed from subtle subjugation of a holiday with my Valentine's greeting cards to full-blown consumer marketing. It seems next I'll be lactating and maintaining a stable body temperature. I can still sleep at night, or anytime, as it's for someone else and not for monetary gain.

Hmm. Have to get my pedicure funding somewhere else.

There is a gentleman by the name of Dave Farland, apparently of some status in the literary world. I've agreed, and DWD states it is a privilege, to interview him on October 15th. I believe he's from the East coast time zone, as there is some mention of New York Times in association with his designation as a bestselling author.

DWD has instructed I conceptualize him as a monitor lizard, or perhaps an Ituri chameleon, to help mask my condescension toward mammals. I don't think it will be a problem. Mr. Dalton is just projecting his sensitivity. Nonetheless, I will not create a mental image of Mr. Farland as a snake, as this apparently has some negative connotation among humans.

In addition to my questions, Dave Farland will be available answer those of my readership, which has doubled since my interview with the Eveleth Elle. Thanks for that, girls. And for the complimentary subscription.

Oops. Another shameless plug. What's happening to me?

Okay, back to Mr. Farland. See how quickly I cut off my diversion of a conversation? Pull it all to me out of habit, but then turn it around again. That's called progress, all you therapists out there.

Okay, really back to Mr. Farland. He has published over fifty science fiction & fantasy novels and anthologies, and is the winner and former judge for L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest. DWD informs me this is a singular accomplishment of some renown and rarity. All I know, as far as I've been able to discern, is winning and judging in no way indicate association with Mr. Hubbard's Scientology prank. Or is it spoof? This human religion stuff is complicated.

Speaking of which, check back about the time your kids are going crazy waiting for Trick or Treating. If you don't have any, check back when you are going crazy. Don't act like it doesn't happen.

Pretty Boy

Shelly's off earning her keep, so here's a little DWD instead.

Recently, and on a multiple occasions, I've been informed I'm a pretty boy (yeah, one occasion was Shelly). I spent some time contemplating the definition, comparing my behaviors and attributes to the designation.
Here's how I earned the moniker in my rural county of residence.

Grooming
As a pretty boy, I use my razor daily unless my wife is away. What's more, I use it on my entire face, no sparing of chin or upper lip. Or both at the same time.


Wardrobe
 First of all, I have a walk-in closet. I can almost open a drawer and a cupboard door simultaneously without jabbing myself in the thigh or taking a door corner in my pretty boy eye.

 The other qualifier is closet content. Everything in there was obtained from clearance sales at Target and Old Navy and Ross. What's more, not one article of attire is from Mossy Oak® or RealTree®.



Logging
I have never been a logger. Pretty boys only fell dead trees and cut them up and load a truck and split them by hand for firewood. A hobby. Not only is logging a job and a career, it's a status symbol.

I also suspect it's a mechanism of sexual selection in certain populations of Homo sapiens. Good thing I'm already married.


Dentition
I'm only missing one tooth. A wisdom tooth. And it's the only one this pretty boy grew. And it was removed with the use of anesthesia.



Triathlons
Pretty boys like me gravitate to these events as we have too much time and energy, have obsessive compulsions about cardiac and non-type two diabetic status.

We spend money on childish bicycles instead of manly four-wheelers.


Employment
Bucking hay and moving irrigation pipe and vaccinating and trimming hooves. On a cattle ranch? Tough guy. On a sheep ranch? Pretty boy.


So what's next for pretty boy? Maybe buying a car less than ten years old. But only if I want to maintain my image. Otherwise, I'll get a truck with big enough tires to show off my silver silhouetted naked chick mudflaps.

Lazy Days of Summer

A long stretch of silence resonates from the ethereal space between my brain and keyboard. I wish I could say I've been distracted by hot beaches and cool ocean breezes. Or a fine sample of hard, dark green, and handsome.

Alas, Mr. Dalton has become an outlier in the statistics of his own productivity. As his gorgeous assistant, I'm swept along in the madness, twined into the manic insanity of inspiration.

The problem though, is the requisite perspiration, which DWD loves, loves to delegate. As such, my acute and cynical observation and heckling skills are left to atrophy. Instead, I wade through semi-final drafts of Sci-fi looking for errors grammatical, typographical, and scatological. My eyes dry out from all the outline analysis, and are starting to resemble my skin.

Who knows when it will end? After you all suffer through my absence, I hope you enjoy the results. By the time you see them I'll be so sick of spaceships I'll want to hibernate for three years and bury myself an extra meter deep. Just be sure to feed the bears instead of DWD's ego. It's much safer.

Hypocrisy Floats

I've made mention in the past of my legendary emotional detachment. So legendary is it, even for a reptile, were I in a comic book and became radioactive, anyone I bit would become a Supreme Court Justice. I also glean from my absolute analytical approach a keen sense of hypocrisy. It bubbles to the top of human organizations like cream on milk. No, that's not the right analogy. Like crude oil on surf. It floats. It always floats. Ooh! I just gave me the chills! Read that again. Can't you hear Tim Curry with a scary voice and clown make-up and a curled upper lip? “You'll float. They all float. Beep Beep, Richie!”

Only in this case it's beep beep Binny. As in Bin Laden. One of those Navy SEALS looked in just the right spot and there was a pile of decadent Western evil straight from the printing press of the Great Satan. The leader of Islam's militant heretics was crotch deep in one of their tenets which justify genocide. As I'm not interested in girls or humans, my only curiosity is whether Osama's porn collection was in keeping with Sharia law from the neck up.

So Mr. Bin Laden was hypocrisy flotsam like so many other leaders. Or was he? Isn't there some clause or loophole for the societal greats? For the hand of higher authority? A man under that much pressure, with so much power, and who accomplishes so much cannot be contained in the same bounds as mortals. Just ask his kidneys. They couldn't contain all he – um – accomplished. I suspect he had so pleased the powers that be his eternal reward was given partially an advance. Of course he deserved it. Look how much pain and suffering he inflicted on the US and UK in the last nine years. All those shoeless airport travelers. The wasted resources of hygiene products separated into 3.4-ounce containers. That alone is grounds for seventy-two virgins in the hereafter. Add to that the enthusiasm of his underlings and unification of the Jihadist world, and there was no choice but to give him the virgins in the herenow.

Problem was, well, let's ask his kidneys again. What's that? Der soldier can't seig heil? Flying at half-mast? Excessive glycosylation along the tunica intima of capillary beds in the corpus cavernosum? Ah. I see. Seventy-two unfulfilled virgins, and poor Al-Qaeda doesn't have a Pfizer drug rep to ask for samples.

Glossy centerfolds it is, then. Well, that's some pretty good problem solving. No sense sending the virgins where they won't be appreciated, especially since Danish political cartoonist Jens Julius suggested they are on backorder anyway. Which reminds me, if I had opposable thumbs, I too would draw a picture of Muhammed, only instead of saying “Stop! Stop! We have run out of virgins!” he'd be handing our man Osama his stack of dirty magazines. “I've got more when you get tired of those, Binny-boy.” Maybe Muhammed dresses like Pennywise the Clown: “Come back anytime! Bring your friends! Kiss me, Fatboy!”

Maybe it's good I can't really ink that out. I'm told such things get Jihadists to undertake great feats of community service. Kind of like inner-city professional sports fans in Detroit and L.A. when their teams win. Or lose.

Seems I have an exception to my hypocrisy floats hypothesis. Sometimes it sinks bullet-blinded to the bottom of the ocean.

Like Froo-its of Dev-eel

Hey all. DWD again. Shelly's taking some sabbatical time per her union's collective bargaining agreement. She thought she'd better jump on that before it's gone. Her recent legal victory restricting my blog topics has helped loosen her grip on the pen, too.

Here I sit fresh off the last page of Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Loved it! Even just the title keeps me riveted, repeating it over and over in my head with various inflection, the consonants like the latching of a creepy door in a horror film: Wicked. Wicked. Wiiiicked. Having found it and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, literary fiction has been saved from the asteroid of extinction, resurrected as if by an arcane priest or faery godmother. (Did you see that? I worked Li-Fi, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy into the same paragraph!)

The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, as it's subtitled, handled the nature-of-evil discussion interestingly and irreverently. In the real world as I pored over the ending, some Navy SEALS in Pakistan gave a good example of one method for assessing and dealing with it. As all this percolated in my early-morning brain, the intertwining themes of evil in fiction and in reality gave me more to chew upon than my usual double-dose of oatmeal.

Mr. Maguire uses political power as one portal to evil in his version of Oz. It's a tool wielded differently by The Wizard in the Emerald City, the Headmistress at the University in Shiz, and even the Wicked Witch of the East, though her path was paved with good intentions. Did the destination make them evil, or being evil at the start, did they search out the position to best use their talent? That's what I wonder of those in politics, the ones for which I vote and avoid voting. I trust none of them, but should I? My evil alarm (which I suspect is a Shelly Deitometer) only works on my own thoughts and intentions, so that doesn't ever go off as a political warning. Are all statesmen evil like the Wizard, or just a combination of naughty, inept, and conspired-against?

Some real-life examples of politicians lots of people hate:

Clinton misunderstood terrorism, and failed to authorize the pulled trigger on Osama years ago. That could have kept his balanced budget in existence much longer, not to mention lives saved. He also had a certain lack of, um, restraint. Great. Now I'm wondering where the line is between mistake and evil, and good and biology.

Dubya knew how terrorists thought, and so he shot first and from the hip and with both barrels. No more attacks on the US. But having a misunderstanding of our neighbors cost us much of their help. Lots of people died unnecessarily. Arrogance can result in evil, but can it make us be that way?

Ideas are good, change is good, but can they be pushed too far? Do people have to take steps that will improve their lives if they don't want to? Should they be forced? Obama irritates and frightens a lot of people with his plans. I'd wonder about him in our study of evil, but anyone who's birth certificate is called into question so often is undoubtedly devil-spawn.

Three hard-thought examples and no pithy absolutisms. Not an interesting story at all. Should have known politics couldn't hold a candle to a picked-on misunderstood green girl or a Kansas kid with a cute dress and a puppy. What I need is maniacal-laughter and world-domination. Soundbite and titillation. A scapegoat upon which to blame failures, national and personal. Discovering the Chief Execs are human and prone to weakness and genius and error and efficiency makes for a boring read. And when it comes to voting time, I have to consider each individual situation and study them, the motives of those involved and the potential for benefit and harm.

Nah, that's too hard. I'll leave analysis of evil and go find another novel. Wait - what if not thinking is another subtle sell-out to evil...