Ryne Douglas Pearson's Blog, page 16

'Do you think you're qualified to perform neurosurgery?' LOL

Did Asimov know what he was injecting into the literary world with these brief proposals?

When does a genre die? Or does a genre die, ever? Is it just reinterpreted for a new age? Repackaged?

I was thinking about this in terms of story after reading an article by science fiction author John Scalzi, where he was wondering if Science Fiction is the new Western in terms of film. From the ARTICLE:

'...I don't know that the idea that science fiction is the new Western is all that groundbreaking -- if nothing else, the first  Toy Story  made it explicit that the frontier of space was replacing the Wild West as the locus of the imagination when it had Buzz Lightyear eclipse Woody as the cool toy. And while Westerns aren't 100 percent dead -- a couple a year still pop out -- they've gone to a kind of meta, kind of arty, kind of self-referential place and have been there at least since  Unforgiven , in 1992. When the big Western film of the year is a remake of  True Grit  by the Coen brothers, and the most financially successful Western of the last decade is the one about two gay cowboys, it's pretty clear this isn't your grandfather's Western genre anymore.'

So I asked myself, what genres of story have gone bye bye? I couldn't think of one. In fact, what Scalzi says about 'the locus of the imagination' rings very true as I see it. Elements of Science Fiction can be seen in Fantasy, and vice versa. Romance in outer space? Romance in the old west? Romance on the back of a dragon? Check. Check. And check.

Genres don't die, I've come to believe. They are simply repurposed to serve a more popular genre at any given moment. As writers, we let our imagination derive from what is old to make what is (we hope) new. We freshen the stale now with the fantastic then.

Which means we could someday be reading 'The Girl Who Kicked The Lonesome Dove'.

Yeah, some things you get to do are pretty awesome. This was one of those times. I was researching a script for Lightstorm and Fox in 2002 and got to spend almost a week in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center to watch a launch (canceled due to weather) and to have the run of the place. We visited every hidden corner of the sprawling facility, went ON the unoccupied launch tower, interviewed engineers for two days, and pretty much had my space junkie mind blown again and again.



Below are some videos I shot while on the unoccupied launch tower.











And here is a video from 4am on launch day standing just a few hundred yards from Endeavour.

Following is a transcription of an Instant Message exchange that was released by WikiLeaks regarding me. The names of officials involved have been redacted.

BEGIN CAPTURE -- 1NZZ 76 ORT49 -- BCN TRACE

AMBASSADOR *****: We've seen this before. Usually in the mid-south.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ****: Addiction?

AMBASSADOR *****: Yes.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ****: But this Pearson fellow is west coast.

AMBASSADOR *****: I know. I know. That's likely how he slipped this through our customs checks.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ****: How much are we talking? A pound? Two?

AMBASSADOR *****: Forty seven.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL: (unintelligible)

AMBASSADOR *****: Best we can tell now is he had some connection in a Southeast Asian regime. That's where the shipment originated.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ****: And the whole thing transited through Australia.

AMBASSADOR *****: That's where the real magic happened. This Pearson arranged for it to be cut down there. For easier distribution.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ****: He's not going to deal this stuff. It's all for him.

AMBASSADOR *****: Forty seven pounds of prime Philippine bacon? You're crazy. No one man can handle that.

CONSULAR OFFICIAL ****: And if he can?

AMBASSADOR *****: God help us.

I've had a nice response from the opening snippet posted earlier. So, here's another, from the middle of Chapter Twenty Six, very late in the novel.

 

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Chapter Twenty Six

To Hide No More

***

I never finish what I am saying. The lights go out with a loud POP and a flash from outside. We are left with the soft glow of my laptop illuminating the room with dim blueness.

"That didn't sound good." I instinctively look up. The snow could have snapped a tree limb onto the power lines.

Chris rises as I do. I slip into my coat and boots and go to the kitchen, opening what my mother had always called the 'utility' drawer, populated with screwdrivers, pliers, candles, and a flashlight. The latter rests among the other items. I pick it up and turn it on, the bulb glowing weakly for a second before fading to nothingness. The batteries are shot.

"I might have a flashlight in my trunk," Chris says, and reaches for her purse on the counter. Hand almost to it when a window at the back of the house shatters, something crashing through it and landing hard within.

Chris lets out a fast, startled scream. I instinctively step in front of her, leaning to see down the dark hallway toward the bedrooms.

"What was that?"

"Another branch snapping..." I suggest, but without conviction. I ease down the hallway, past photos arranged meticulously on the wood walls, and peer around the corner into what was my parents' room. A chill rush of air washes past me as I can just make out in the weak, storm-filtered moonlight, a jagged rock on the floor, shards of glass scattered about.

Behind I feel Chris grab my sweatshirt as she looks past and sees what I have. "Michael..."

It is just a few seconds that I stand there, fixed on the rock-turned-projectile first, then out the broken window, darkness beyond curtains billowing in the invading gusts. Just enough time for a few breaths, and for my patience to evaporate.

I turn and push past Chris, moving fast for the front door.

"Michael!"

I look fast back to her. "Stay inside. Lock the door."

Before she can protest or agree I am outside and down the steps. My boots settle deep into the freshly fallen snow, wind whipped flakes scraping my face as I race around the house, high stepping through mounting drifts, stumbling once before finally reaching the electric panel. It has been pried open, the metal end of a hoe wedged against the breakers, shorting them, the box and all within charred and still sparking. I look a few feet away to the outside of my parents' bedroom. The shattered window, crusted with ice, hangs like a scar on the house.

I turn and survey the landscape beyond. The woods stretch out toward the road and the lake. On the ground I scan for a sign of whoever did this, a set of deep impressions prominent, but already being erased by the relentless blizzard. They tread off not toward the road, where I expect, but past Chris' car and into the woods stepping down toward the lake.

Whoever left the tracks has a head start on me. Catching anyone in this blinding weather will be next to impossible. But I recall something, from just after our arrival—the headlights. They swept the water from the far side of Arrow Lake. Only now am I asking myself the obvious question—to whom did that car belong? It is inconceivable that Chris and I are even here, braving the storm. Is it likely that another person or family has decided to visit their summer house in the midst of an off season blizzard?

No.

The answer fires me, and I charge off not following the tracks, but down to the lake directly, turning right and skirting the shore, pushing myself, heart thudding as I run a hundred yards, then two, falling and recovering again and again. But I keep going, faster, reaching the far bend in the lake just as a figure emerges from the trees.

I can make out nothing about them. No feature or face, deep hood obscuring all. They pause briefly and turn my way, seeing me, then take off again. Struggling through the piling drifts, wind whipping them into knee-high icy dunes. It could be that the person I chase is tiring after their slog through the woods, or it could be that I am simply driven by a deeper desire, but whatever the cause they begin to slow. I close the distance. Hearing their labored breathing as I near. Finally reach them and shove them from behind.

The figure tumbles to the snowy ground, slipping on a steep patch of shore and sliding a few feet into the lake, skim ice cracking, the water swallowing them briefly before they bob to the surface, gasping and flailing. I kneel fast and reach toward them, snagging a hand first, then the hood of their coat, and haul them from the freezing water. If they are not hypothermic already they soon will be, but I don't care. I drag them away from the shore and leave them on a flat patch of snow beneath a stand of trees. With force I plant myself on their chest and rip the hood away to see who it is that has stalked me. Threatened me, and those I care for. When I finally see their face I do not understand.

 

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Confessions is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. For just $2.99 you can purchase Confessions at the following places:

Amazon  Barnes & Noble  Smashwords

Below is the first part of the first chapter of my theological mystery, Confessions.

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Chapter One

Calling

I am dreaming when the phone rings.

We are children. My sister and I. Romping along the shore of the lake. Wind waves lapping at our feet. Our parents watching from the porch. Savoring the slice of summer that is no more singular than the next, but no less either.

Ring....

My sister is five. She is chasing me. Kicking tiny splashes at me as she runs. I steal a glance back at her. She is giggling madly. The late day sun painting a glow upon her.

Ring....

I sprint a bit to pull away. To heighten the chase. And I look back to sample that perfect face. To see it once again.

Ring....

But it is not there.

Ring....

She is not there. Just an endless shore stretching out empty from where I have—

Ring...

My head jerks up from the pillow, the fractured remembrance of a time long gone still echoing vividly as I cross the boundary from slumber and wake quickly in the darkness. For a moment I do not reach to the bedside table to stifle phone, and though awake I close my eyes and draw a breath, wanting to hold the remnants of the dream in my thoughts. But the images of my sister from our shared age of innocence begin to flee, as they do each time I stumble up from sleep, watching helplessly as the days at the lake, or the candy trading after Halloween, or silly faces made at the dinner table recede from my waking world. They are gone to me.

As is she.

My eyes snap open and my feet swing over the bed's edge. I sit in the filtered glow of moonlight slanting through the curtains and reach to the phone, silencing it mid ring as I bring it to my ear.

"Hello."

"Father Mike?" All memories scatter to nothingness when I hear the voice. A voice I know. I am instantly awake. I am instantly worried.

"Yes."

"We have an officer shot," Captain Dennis Kerrigan says, and another thing happens instantly—I am on my feet, juggling the phone as I turn on a lamp and begin to dress.

"Where and how bad?"

"District Twenty Four, Rogers Park," Kerrigan explains. A half dozen voices chatter urgently behind his. "I don't have anything on his condition. He was arresting some meth freak when the guy pulled a gun. His backup scooped him up and rushed him to Lakeview Memorial."

I awkwardly button my pants after contorting into them and twist my feet into a pair of sneakers, the phone wedged between my shoulder and cheek as I open my closet in search of a sweater. "What's his name?"

"Luke Benz," Kerrigan answers, and for a moment my quickened dressing slows, and the questions I have directed at him stop. It is enough a reaction that he confirms what I suddenly fear without query from me. "Your dad worked with his."

I remember. Dave Benz. One of my father's first partners until the man traded his patrolman's uniform for a detective's shield and began a steady climb through the ranks, finally retiring as a captain a short time after my father.

One of the last cases he oversaw was the murder of my sister.

I am still stuck in place when a memory of Dave Benz rises. A brief snippet of a fleeting interaction between he and my father. Seven or eight years ago. Talk of his first grandchild. Friendly prodding as to when Katie was going to get busy and give my father and mother one.

"Does he have any kids?" I get moving again, slipping the sweater over my head.

"Two," Kerrigan says, and now it is he who quiets. For an instant that shatters the veneer of toughness all police officers wear—until the talk of children comes. "Boys, four and seven."

"I'm on my way." I hang up and reach into the closet one more time, retrieving a windbreaker from its hanger. It is blue and thin. A coat for brisk summer nights, at best. But I have not chosen it for warmth, and it stays bunched in one hand as I leave my room and move quickly down the hallway. The stairs hardly have time to groan as I bound down, and at the bottom in the foyer the wall clock draws my eye. It is the first I have noticed the time since waking—2:21 a.m.

I am one step from the door when I hesitate. I look behind to the small table close by, bowl still atop it, a collection of sweets skimming the bottom, remnants from the night's rush of costumed kiddies padding up the walkway in search of candy. I reach quickly and take a small mix of treats in hand, pocketing them as I open the door and step out into the chill.

My car is in the rectory's driveway. I jog slowly toward it, my breath jetting as I cross the browning lawn, one arm slipping into my windbreaker, then the other. There are letters of gold stamped across its back, identifying my role this terrible, terrible morning—CPD Chaplain.

 

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Confessions is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. For just $2.99 you can purchase Confessions at the following places:

Amazon  Barnes & Noble  Smashwords

I was unaware.

Before he wrote the famous eighteenth-century novel Candide, Voltaire wrote non-fiction books about Newtonian physics, and fiction about giant aliens visiting Earth from Sirius and Saturn.

Read the full article HERE.

What is interesting is that we can look wayyyyyyy back and find writers who, by just looking forward with imagination or scientific prognostication, will now be seen as forerunners of modern science fiction. I'm not sure that's an accurate representation of their literary lineage and influence.

A better look at the origins of science fiction can be found at the same online source in 'Where Did Science Fiction Come From?' Part One can be found HERE, and Part Two HERE.

For several years now I've been deep frying a turkey for Thanksgiving #2 (Thursday is Thanksgiving #1 with my wife's family, and Friday is Thanksgiving #2 with mine, though her some of her family has found a way to come to Friday's redux as well--I suspect it's the turkey). People who have never had deep fried turkey are usually skeptical, thinking that it will be greasy or charred beyond any recognizable taste.



Then they taste it.



Here's my method. I use a Masterbuilt Electric Turkey Fryer outside on the side of my house. Get the peanut oil in and heated to 400 degrees (takes about an hour from a 60 degree starting point). While the oil is heating I rub and inject a 12-14 lb bird with whatever sounds good. This year it was a thinned out (water added) Carolina BBQ Sauce. And the beauty is you don't have to use an expensive turkey. This 13 pounder that I cooked cost .29 a pound. Yes, the whole bird cost less than $4.



So the bird is ready and the oil is hot. Now comes the fun part. Following all the safety recommendations (it is REALLY hot oil and will burn the heck out of you if you don't follow the simple safety precautions) you then put the turkey into its bath of scalding peanut oil as seen in the video.







After about 45 minutes, you turn off the fryer (it has a timer and shutoff, but I like to be there when the magic ends) and lift the bird out, letting it hang for a few minutes in its basket so that any excess oil in the cavity can drain out.



And this is what you get...







You can reuse the peanut oil several times as long as you store it properly. I usually fry up a few things right after Thanksgiving and then dispose of the oil. By then I'm already dreaming of next year.

Okay, you've purchased a book by an author, or you read a book by them several years ago, and you enjoyed it. Maybe you loved it. And you, being the joyous, giving person that you are, have begun to wonder, 'Hey, that author who rocked, I sure wish I could do something nice for them.'

Well, you can. It's simple, takes just a few minutes, and can do WONDERS to help that favorite author reach a wider audience. And what is this magical act that YOU can perform?

Leave a review of their books that you enjoyed. Give your opinion. Your two cents (there is the post title tie-in in case you missed it).

What does this require? Nothing more than you going to Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or any site where the author's books are sold, and write an honest review. Do you really want to help? Post a review on EVERY website where their book is sold. If you've read and enjoyed more than one, review all that you've read.

Remember, if YOU enjoyed the author's books, it's likely others will as well. Your reviews, coupled with others, will help that author's books rise in rankings and gain notice.

Hey, how convenient. I'm an author! Have you read and enjoyed any of my books? If so, you can go to the AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, or SMASHWORDS pages for my books, click on any you've read and enjoyed, and leave a review and rating.

This truly helps, and will make an author love you. Seriously love you. Like 'bear your children' love you. That's the power of the review.