C. So this place, this thing, this universe, what is it to you? Where did it come from?
A. Well, I don't know...all of my ideas...I think people, non-creatives, or even the mildly creative, they want questions like that answered, which I understand, but the answer will never satisfy them because the only true answer is I don't know.
C. I think the mystery for the rest of us is the presumption that "creatives" sit down and think, consciously, about that which they want to write, then the idea, the big idea follows, but that you, the creator, is consciously pursuing, looking for, something like this, that it just takes time to find it.
A. Yeah, I get that. But in my case, no. It doesn't really work that way. At least not in the case of Aeternalis.
C. So you weren't looking for it, you found it.
A. I like to describe it as having discovered it. I tripped over it. I was pursuing, consciously looking for, information that would help me flesh out a book I had begun, the sequel to Pilgrimage, which was about some of the same characters who were debunking, investigating is better, life after death.
C. From which came...
A. Yes. But it came to me whole, the idea of it, the definition of it. I knew exactly what it was when it came to me. So much so I shelved the other book for several years in order to develop it into this thing that it has become.
C. Related to what you've called previously your "obsession with death".
A. Yes, but again, loosely.
C. Would it be safe to say that it was a reaction to, perhaps a determination to explain, life after death?
A. It was, initially, because as an obsession it is, as far as I can see, the thing that we all should be obsessed with. We're all going to be dead far longer than we have been alive. Makes sense to prepare for it, or at least try.
C. But in the universe of your books...
A. In this universe that I write about, yes, it is not just real, but explained, and maybe even provable, which in turn would provide us humans with the answer, the complete answer, the theory of everything.
C. But for now, some of the elements of your books, are explained as a result.
A. Yes. Some things I wrote decades ago but liked, yet couldn't explain, even in a fictional setting, were explained satisfactorily after I discovered Aeternalis.
YOU ARE READING
Conversations with...
General FictionI have voices, in my head, they are talking, known only by letter, about a life I might once have had. I don't want them to stop. Not until they show me the way.
