“Blondie’s” – An Audio Story!

I was trying to get an actor-friend of mine, Paul Neal Rohrer, interested in doing the reading of a couple of my short stories for an upcoming interview (September 1st), when Paul sent me this audio file of one of the stories he was to read. Damn, but how it breathed LIFE into the story! To see a story on paper is one thing…to hear yourself read it aloud…but to hear it performed is quite another! Paul did such an incredible job!

I’d met Paul a couple of years ago when he’d interviewed me for ERO, on his internet radio show, The Roaring Success Radio Hour. He’s a published author (Listen, Feel, Respond An Actor’s Workbook, published by Players Press, Inc., and Acting on Camera: A Workbook and Guide are both available through Amazon), and has been a SAG/AFTRA member since 1986. He’s a veteran actor of film, television, and stage, since 1971, and is the founder of the Roaring Success Workshops (1986). Some of his alumni include Naomi Grossman, Anna Sophia Robb, and Caitlin McCarthy.

Paul has done numerous voice gigs and has studied and worked with some of the most recognized and successful leaders of the film and television industry: Richard Dreyfuss, Chris Cooper, Tony Barr, Lynn Stalmaster, Marvin Paige, Mike Fenton, and Dabney Coleman, to drop a few names….

And as if all this isn’t enough, Paul also trains Law Enforcement in Crisis Intervention.

Anyway, I’d brought Paul in on this at the suggestion of a mutual friend of ours, Jan C J Jones. Paul and I hadn’t heard from each other for a bit (I’d thought he’d been abducted by aliens), so it was great reconnecting. I’d been contacted by Eric Singer, of The Gazette, who’d asked me if I’d be interested in doing a new gig of his, called Take 10. And when Eric mentioned that the readings needed to be dramatic, Paul was the first person that’d come to mind. I’d sent him my Do The Dead Dream? manuscript and mentioned a couple of stories for him to look at, and he said “Blondie’s” really grabbed him, so he did up a promo reading and sent it to me—this is that promo reading.

Hope you are as drawn into this recording as I was! To read some background on “Blondie’s,” see my original posting.

As things currently stand, we’ll be on Eric Singer’s Take 10 segment, Friday, September 1, at noon MT. More on this as it develops!

Paul Neal Rohrer’s Contact Information:

Web Site: www.roaringsuccess.org

Acting Workshop Web Site: http://roaringsuccess.org/rohrering-success-acting-workshop

E-mail: pnr1@mac.com

www.fpdorchak.com

“Broken Windows”

“Broken Windows” Short Story Cover (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner, 2016)

“Broken Windows” is out as an e-short story!

Here’s the link!

I can’t believe I’d originally started this story twenty years ago, in 1997. I’d only written four double-spaced pages. I rediscovered it last year (2016) when I was revisiting all my short stories for my blog. As I read those four pages I was overtaken with emotion—in just in those four pages! That Saturday I’d written the rest of the 22 (I’d actually written 24, but edited it down) double-spaced pages (5,000 words). While I had been working on it…revising it…revising it…I kept getting emotional each time I’d finish reading the story.

Last year I submitted “Broken Windows” to the Longmont Public Library’s anthology, and it was accepted. I decided to not post it for free on my blog like I’d done for a host of my other stories, but to instead publish it as its own KDP Select ebook-only format (like “Clowns“). I went back over it this last year as I got things together…and again…it brought me to tears.

So fine…it’s going to be one of those stories.

Once again, I had Lon Kirschner do my cover. And, once again, he did an incredible job! After working on the story, I felt like it had great potential as a “single” short story. I also had a particular vision for its cover (nothing specific, just some loose ideas)—but I couldn’t even do a cover if it wasn’t its own product! That also led to my decision to release it as a single. But once Lon got hold of the project, he again knocked the cover out of the park!

I love this cover!

Over the past year, I’ve heard more and more about how short stories are making a come back. I’d even read a handful of some really good anthologies last year. Of my own work, I thought “Clowns” was a really fun story, thought it would take off in some fashion…but it hasn’t (yet—I still have hopes for it!). I characterize it as “a fun little scare for the whole family!” Really, you oughta read it! So, now I’m releasing this one, which has more emotional appeal versus horror. Fractured families….ghosts…redemption. And it’s very Twilight Zone. Extremely so. The only “horror” is the emotional horror that some families go through in stories like this—which to some are not stories…but the actual lives they endure. And it’s brutal. Horrendous. Usually there’s little recourse for families that go through problems like this…but in my story I create a different outcome for all involved.

I really love this story…it’s moving, emotional, redemptive.

Powerful.

And it’s got aircraft. Which I love.

But damn it, it brings me to tears every fricking time I read it! So, I hope it will also be one of “those stories” for you! I reread the story for this release and have finally been able to not shed a tear reading it…though I did still well up inside.

Finally, I thought, I could get through it without tearing up!

I’ve also included “Broken Windows” into my 2017 short story collection, Do The Dead Dream? Of the entire collection, this one story has perhaps been poured over more than any other, so, geez, there better not be any errors (thanks, Joyce)!

If you do like “Broken Windows,” and you can swing it, I ask that you also consider purchasing the Longmont anthology, of which “Broken Windows” is also a part, to help support the Longmont Library. This anthology, titled You Belong 2016, Words and Images from Longmont Area Residents, is not available online, but at this time you may contact the Longmont Public Library:

Steve Kenworthy
Head of Technical Services/Systems Administrator
Longmont Public Library
409 4th Street
Longmont, CO 80501
303-651-8614
steve.kenworthy@longmontcolorado.gov

But this version and the one going into my collection are different than the one in the Longmont anthology. It has been heavily reworked and changed in areas…better fleshed out…so if you get both, you won’t be reading exactly the same story! But I hope you enjoy both versions!

Steve Kenworthy  and the rest of the Longmont library staff are great people and they’ve been gracious in allowing us writers to have nonexclusive contracts with our stories to publish elsewhere! Thanks, again, Steve!

Please be on the lookout for my first-ever short story collection, Do The Dead Dream? I am now looking to release it in early October.

And damn it, I hope someone else out there besides me sheds a tear!

A major heartfelt THANK YOU to Jimmie Butler and Joyce Combs! Jimmie pointed out a major “flaw” that was “obvious” to me, but not to readers, and that helped better flesh out the story. Joyce…Joyce has been my indefatigable cheerleader for all of my stories, but she and I have gone over this story more than we can ever count! Thank you both for your indispensable support and critique!

www.fpdorchak.com

Wendy’s Coffeehouse Interview Podcast Link

Articles:

First of Two Wendy’s Coffeehouse Interviews (https://fpdorchak.wordpress.com)

First of Two Wendy’s Coffeehouse Interviews

Had a wonderful and fun interview on Wendy’s Coffeehouse tonight!

Thank you, Wendy, for having me, and thanks to your listeners for listening! Especially Japan’s listeners, who Wendy mentioned, she had just been informed were listing to tonight’s cast!

We talked about the paranormal and weirdness we’ve both had and continue to have in our lives, as well as some of my books and short stories. It was a fun show! Be sure to check out her podcast archive for a recording of this show!

Wendy’s site: https://wendyscoffeehouse.blogspot.com/

My next interview with her will be September 6, 2017, 11 a.m. MT, on KCMO talk radio.

Do The Dead Dream? – First Two Blurbs!

I received my first two blurbs, from Karen Albright Lin and Jan C. J. Jones!

Thank you both so much!

F. P. Dorchak’s short stories take a look at the world in an inside-out, rarely visited way. These are neither happily-ever-after tales nor ghost stories solely meant to creep you out. They are worlds that can be deliciously understated like dreams of dreams, as enigmatic as time warps, and as unexpected as falling in all directions at once. We meet werewolves and undead and people whose past lives bleed through. These tales are nostalgia-meets-a-future with nighttime borders that hint something is not quite right, each one putting the reader in a graying state between sleep and wakefulness.

Karen Albright Lin, WritersLaunchPad

From a dangerously precocious little girl who befriends gargoyles to a conventional guy who discovers (first hand) an invasion of mind-blowing creatures, F. P. Dorchak offers up a collection of horrifying short stories in Do The Dead Dream?, which he delivers with an inimitable, unique voice. The reader accompanies Dorchak’s characters’ bizarre experiences that manifest as rapid-fire flashes of thought-pandemonium…as would naturally occur under such unnatural circumstances. Just when you think the path is headed in an obvious direction, Dorchak jerks the road out from under your beliefs to find yourself suddenly drawn along a most unexpected thoroughfare.

Jan C. J. Jones, Executive Producer/Writer, FOREST ROSE PRODUCTIONS, LLC

A Journey with Strange Bedfellows

www.fpdorchak.com

Words To Write By

“If you master word choice and understand what words really mean, your writing can become tighter.”

Jimmie Butler

Common Problems of Beginning Writers

On Writing That Next Work

Crime writer Lee Child has said that nothing is more exciting than the idea for that next book. You see all the possibilities! They beckon! Schmooze with What-ifs! Then, as we write, all the possibilities get narrowed down into actualities. Quickly, all those possibilities…What-ifs…are no longer what it could be…but are now…simply what is.

I have thought about this a lot…tried to put it into words.

This nails it.