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[Father Luke]

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Gary:
The most obvious question would be to ask you why you write, but I tend to steer away from the obvious. I like to dig deeper and find the mysterious instead. So, the starting question, Pete, is why people call you eggo. Are you particularly fond of that brand of frozen breakfast food, or is there some other meaning to that nickname? What makes a man call himself a waffle?

Pete:
A few years back I purchased Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.  The game came with an instruction manual with pages of things that you couldn’t do.

I got really pissed and decided to go to a forum on my son’s advice and post a question asking what the hell was wrong with me.  In order to join the forum, I had to come up with a user name and “Eggo” was the first thing that popped into my head.

I met a group of people there and joined a group called the Spelling Police. For a few years we wrote free roving stories at five different forums that were a compost of at least 10 people taking the story and writing a few paragraphs and letting it go in any direction.

We wrote some poorly written, bizarre stories that were a lot of fun. But as I wrote these stories, they really ignited a love of writing for me. After a couple of more years, I’ve pretty much lost touch with those people, but the writing bug is still with me.  I use the name as a kind of homage to those early days.

Btw the game was so full of glitches the manual was totally wrong.

I can’t ask you how you came up with your moniker, so instead I’ll ask the proverbial question instead;

Your stuck in a Newark, New Jersey airport for a week. Name me the three items you would have to have to make it. (toiletries aside, after all it is Newark)

Gary:

Newark airport, huh? I’ve been there a few times. What I remember about it is standing in line for the security checkpoint for four and a half hours once. The guy in front of me called his wife on the cell phone about every ten minutes, “Hi, honey. Yeah, I’m still in line. I’ve moved up a little. Call you again in a few minutes.” Yes, he really did call her about 25 times during our wait. My son (17 at the time) and I whispered about how we could tackle him and give him a cell phone enema without being shot by the security guards (it was only two months after 9/11). None of that matters for the question, though, does it? Sorry, I run off on tangents all the time.

I assume that the shops, restaurants, and bars would be open too to take care of first and foremost, coffee, then books, then beer, then food – in that order. If not, then I would need about five gallons of coffee – that would probably be a week’s supply. But, going back to the assumption that I could buy over-the-counter medical necessities, like coffee, I would have to have the drugs I take to keep me functioning and to prevent me from exploding from blood pressure. Next, I would have to have my laptop computer. And the third thing I would need is my noise canceling headphones (I have all my music loaded onto my laptop).

Needing the prescription medicine is obvious. I might not literally explode, but I would be so miserable in a couple of days that exploding would be a merciful alternative. The laptop is crucial because I can’t stand to be away from the computer for long stretches. If I didn’t have a book to read, I could write and I can’t do that for very long on paper – it makes me crazy (crazier). I despise writing with a pen on paper. That’s what computers are for. And, I’ve grown to love my noise-canceling headphones. I wear them every day at work, all day long. I am very easily distracted and people talking across the cubicles or phones ringing all over the place can break my train of thought and I have to struggle to get back into what I was working on.

Yes, I’m a coffee addict, but it helped me kick the heroin. Just kidding, it was cocaine. Seriously, I’ve never done any illicit drugs except for that one time I smoked some hash with a couple of Arabs. But, that’s another story (It’s called Ahmed of Aramco and you can find it right here at the book table in the back. Thanks for coming, folks. Don’t forget to turn on your lights and you drive careful now, you hear?)

And, back to you Pete, you said you wrote some bizarre stories. Do you have any story so bizarre that it makes you shake your head in wonder at yourself? Are you afraid to show it to your family because it will confirm their suspicions about your sanity? If so, give us the gory, freaky details – we won’t tell anyone (unless you have a butt-load of money and we want to blackmail you). If not, what is the most bizarre concept you have ever put into a story.

Plus, I promise to be less long-winded in the next reply.

Pete: The thing of it is, most of my stories have a piece of bizarre in them.  From my story where a young boy finds God’s remote control or a Employment worker gets Death (Mister himself)  as a customer  to where Aliens speak in Balloon Animal.

One strange serial story I wrote with a friend of mine involved a magic stick. The magic stick who be passed back and forth bringing the worse luck imaginable to the recipient. We would write alternating chapters trying to destroy each other.  Simplistic, but a lot of fun  that took some absolutely strange angles.

I think the bizarre is really all around us and we condition ourselves not to see it.

Think of the headline I saw in today’s economic section of the news paper,

“Peanut Butter brand tainted with salmonella earlier this year will soon return to the shelves”

Chances are, I am going to avoid the store selling this stuff.

I can see the workers late at night,

“O.K. everybody’s gone, bring the salmonella peanut butter back in.”

I have an ongoing list of bizarre, strange sentences or thoughts and then I write a world where they exist.

How about you?

Where do your ideas for stories come from?

Gary: The deep dark recesses of a twisted psyche. I probably write as much non-fiction as I do fiction. The non-fiction usually takes an incident from the time I lived in Saudi Arabia. I think that’s because I feel like that is the part of my life that others might find interesting. I live a fairly sedate life now.

The fiction comes from all different directions. I have been entering competitions not necessarily to compete (although I admit winning a few is good for the ego), but because they set them up with requirements – like a starting or ending phrase and a word limit. That gives me a challenge and gives me the basis for an idea. My stories usually take a twist away from the obvious and incorporate the required phrase in a way the judges weren’t expecting.

Much of my writing also comes from curiosity. What would it be like to talk like a mobster? How would a paranoid schizophrenic write this? What about a three year old child? A twelve year old? Can I be arrogant? Annoying? Endearing? I try to put myself into character while I am writing those things and I feel like I learn things about those types of people by what I end up writing.

I’ve been working on more subtlety and not going for the Oh My God factor so much any more. In earlier writing I wanted to make people cry, laugh out loud, at the end of the story blow their breath out and say, “Wow”. Take it to other people and say, “You have to read this”. Now, I just try to write a good story.

The poetry is something a little different. If you had told me two years ago I would write poetry, I would have laughed in your face. Almost all the poetry I write is about me. What I do, what I feel, and how I think about something. Kind of narcissistic, isn’t it? Even things where I am not the subject of the poem are flavored by how I perceive it.

BTW – I’d like to read that story about the boy finding God’s remote control. Sounds interesting.

Pete: More comical, I’ll post it in fiction.

Gary: What type of writing really annoys the shit out of you? Not necessarily bad writing – that annoys everyone, but what style, author, genre, subject – something that you don’t like to read and you would flagellate yourself with a steel barbed scourge if you wrote it?

Pete: Very  few books have made “the Launch”. (The “Launch” is when I get so pissed at a book I throw it across the room and leave it there until it rots.)

Neal Stephenson’s first book of the baroque cycle was a pretentious pile of crap. He spent five pages on how they vivisect dogs. What an asshole. It got the launch and has been sitting on the floor of my shed for a year and a half. I occasionally step on it.

I think writing that takes itself so seriously or is more interested in acknowledging the brilliance of the writer instead of making sure the story works is the thing that grates me the most.

Another thing that bothers me is writing where nothing happens, just wandering about. “Fellowship of the Ring” syndrome.

I read the first line of “The Reality Dysfunction” by Peter F Hamilton, (a book I launched)

“Space outside the attack cruiser Beezling tore open in five places.”

Huh? The cruiser either tore open space or the space tore open the cruiser. Perhaps the cruiser was driving by and space ripped open (in five places, not three or seven. Apparently space can only tear in odd numbered integers) Perhaps it wasn’t outer space, but some other space. Like a rental space or that show Trading Spaces, where people come over and screw up your house.

 The next two pages are info dump on how this happened. It did this a few times and then that was enough.

I remember your stories about Saudi Arabia. Was there ever a time when you said, “Screw this get me on a plane to Cincinnati!”

Side question, I noticed the map in your sig. Fan of Notre Dame.

Gary: I have to pretend to be a fan of Notre Dame. I think they still tar and feather people who live here who aren’t fans. Sure, they tar and feather the visitors, but only after they drop obscene amounts of money here on ND game weekends (like $700 per night for a room at the Marriott hotel – three night minimum).

There was more than one time I said screw this in Saudi and was ready to go on vacation and never go back there. I even had the car packed up with survival supplies and had my disguise ready when we were putting plans together to drive in a convoy to sneak across the border into Abu Dhabi early in Desert Storm. I put up with their shit, though, collected a healthy stack of money when I completed my contract, and laughed at them all the way home.

You don’t simply come and go as you please into and out of Saudi Arabia. As soon as you arrive there, you have to surrender your passport to your employer. They have to arrange for an exit visa – which means it is up to them to decide when you can leave the country or not. You can’t leave the country without that passport with an exit visa in it.

As an interesting side note, the guy that worked in the passport office at the steel company I worked for couldn’t read. He didn’t speak English either. I would go to that office, say “Amryki” (Arabic for American) and he would go pull out the box of American passports. He would open them up one by one, hold them up, and compare the picture to my face. When I grew a beard, he had to bring in someone who could read to help him find mine.

There were times that were tolerable in Saudi. Not when it hit 135 degrees or all those times I had machine guns pointed at me for one thing or another. Then there was the whole being in a war zone with the borders closed while Saddam shot scuds at us. You would think that would be fun, but surprisingly, it wasn’t. But taking an ATV across the sand dunes with my 14 year old son was a blast. The beaches were empty because Saudis don’t use them, and we had some fantastic times with an entire pristine beach to ourselves. I also learned the art of making beer in a bucket.

Early after arrival, one of the other Americans said, “We’re all proctologists here. We work all day with assholes and have to put up with shit.” Think about the worst asshole you know. Boil him down, distill him, and you’re left with 190 proof assholism. That’s the typical Saudi. If there are any Saudis reading this, go away – your goat is horny.

Pete: A friend of mine works with Saudi Arabians and say's the same thing.

Gary: So, what do people do in Cape Cod? I have to admit that’s one area I have never been. All I can think of is clam chowder. What are some of your likes and dislikes, favorite foods, and oddities from that neck of the woods?

Pete: Mostly go the beach. We have miles and miles of some of the nicest (Coast Guard Beach in Eastham is in the top ten in the states) beaches around.  This also makes for some of the best Surf casting fishing in the world.

There’s one spot where you can cast out 50 feet and you are into 200 feet in depth. The whales come in and chase fish right into the shore.  

Course, here is pronounced hea ,  chowder is chowda and tough things are wicked haad.  I think people here still harbor all the friendliness of the pilgrims. “Throw another tourist on the stake will ya?”


Enough of the blatant tourism promotion!

My tastes in music are eclectic. Right now I have Duke Ellington, The Dead Kennedy’s, Portis Head and Dave Brubeck on my ipod. Makes for a hell of mix.

What kind of music do you listen to Gary?

Gary: You might use eclectic to describe my taste in music too. You might also use the word random. I’ve been listening to Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell III” quite a bit lately. I mix that with some Styx, Queen, a collection of Hymns, Enya, Barbershop, Beethoven, Mozart, Southern Gospel, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Blink 182, and Josh Groban.

There are certain elements of music that make me like it. I like definable melodies, good tight harmony, love a mixture of orchestration behind rock, and I am a sucker for key changes and a rousing finish. Techno has an appeal of its own.

What I listen to depends on my mood, or what I want my mood to be. Sometimes I want to be moved, sometimes soothed, at others escape into heavy beat, mind numbing, play the drums with my hands on the steering wheel, loud, loud music.

I’ve been doing this online writing forum thing on a few different sites for about a year and a half now. What attracts you to this and what parts of it might repel you?

Pete: Man, that is a hellava mix.

I started to on the sites about the time you did.  Before I started submitting and critiquing work on forums, I was really a bad writer. At least technically anyways.

I collected straight D’s in English through high school, doing just enough to get by and never really tried writing for thirty years after. I like sharing on the forums because it gives you a huge, diverse audience to share your work with and get honest, relevant feedback.

I can’t tell you how many times a first-time poster gets thoroughly trounced in a crit and says ,”Thanks! The only feedback I could get was from my friends and they all thought it was the best thing they ever read.”

On the obverse,

The thing that repels me the most is the people who decided to write a novel. They haven’t written flash or short stories or novellas yet, but they are going to dive right in and write that life changing book.

So they post the first “chapter”. You read it and it is a fucking train wreck. You name it, it’s wrong.

Then you have to gently steer them in the best way to improve their writing, like starting off with flash, short stories or novellas and they proceed to tell you that the book is already written and they don’t really want to change much because its all done.

But I can’t think of a better venue to improve your writing skills.

The worst story I ever wrote was probably the one about a guy who finds himself in a war with ants. It was a good story idea that I rushed and screwed up.

What was the worse story you’ve ever written?

Gary: I went through a romance phase a few years back and that was some god-awful stuff. Thank God I didn’t get involved with any online writing forums until I got that out of my system. Egad, I had things like, “heaving bosom”, “throbbing heart”, and, I kid you not - “swooning soul”.

I understand what you’re saying about some young writers diving right into a full length novel. They say that everybody has a novel in them. Everybody has a liver in them too, so not everything in a person should come out.  I call that the difference between could and should. It’s like with young men whose beard is starting to come in. So many of them will grow their sideburns long. Kind of a status symbol – look at me, I’m post pubescent now. They haven’t yet learned the difference between could and should.

Then, you have the self-deprecators. “I know I can’t write and this is really crap, but I thought I’d post it anyway so if you think its crap too, that’s all right.” I usually don’t even read anything with a preface like that because it usually really is crap and since they already knew that, no need for me to confirm it. They usually get what they want, though, and someone replies, “No, this isn’t crap at all. You have a good start here.” What they want to say, but don’t is: just change every word, find a plot, check your spelling, proofread, learn how to use punctuation, don’t make every other paragraph a flashback, try to avoid flash forwards, and get rid of all those flash sideways. They end with, “Do some proofreading and you’ll have a good story. Keep writing.”

That brings us to a logical progression in topics, television and movies. The only thing I will watch on network television now is, House. I have a DVR so I record it and watch it after it airs so I can skip commercials. I DVR everything now. If something comes on that I want to watch, I hit record and go watch something I already recorded.

I’m addicted to the Food Network. That and The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and the History Channel. I don’t watch much sports but will put an occasional football game on.

In movies, my all time favorite movie is Empire of the Sun. In a close second is, O Brother Where Art Thou. Other movies at the top are Amadeus, Armageddon, The Fifth Element, and The Ten Commandments. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that a couple of my favorite movies are, The Princess Bride and The Never Ending Story.

And, now since they want to get this to the newsletter editor, I’ll bring this month’s ping-pong to a close. Its  been interesting chatting with you, Pete. Sorry if I rambled on with my replies, but when I get to typing, I don’t know when to stop.