Ask the Author: Paul E. Creasy
Answered Questions (4)
Paul E. Creasy
Thanks! I am glad you enjoy them. I hope to have the Second Installment of Gospel of Pilate completed next year. Sometimes, the Muse plays hard to get.
Paul E. Creasy
Thanks for commenting on Apocaoops. It was a fun book to write. Normally, my genre is Historical Fiction and I am working on the 2nd book of my "Gospel of Pilate" series, but..., I probably will return to the Fantasy/Comedy realm soon. Probably something to do with a clash of Ancient Greek Gods in modern times. I've always had a soft spot for Greek Mythology.
Paul E. Creasy
Good to hear from a fellow Richmonder and I am pleased to learn you liked my book. I have another book out, Eye Bleach, and am in the final edits on a new book, more of a Fantasy/Comedy that I hope to have published this spring.
Good luck to your daughter on her book. I highly recommend signing up for KDP and running lots of Freebie specials. The secret to getting sales is getting reviews and the best way to do that is to get your book into lots of hands.
I remain amazed at how well Gospel of Pilate has done. After my next book is finished, I'm completing final edits now -- YUCK, I'm returning to the next book in the Gospel of Pilate series.
Good luck to your daughter on her book. I highly recommend signing up for KDP and running lots of Freebie specials. The secret to getting sales is getting reviews and the best way to do that is to get your book into lots of hands.
I remain amazed at how well Gospel of Pilate has done. After my next book is finished, I'm completing final edits now -- YUCK, I'm returning to the next book in the Gospel of Pilate series.
Paul E. Creasy
Sometimes the strangest seeds find a home in the most exotic soil and yield the most unexpected crops. Such is the case of this book, Eye Bleach.
In the summer of 2017, I read a fascinating article in the Atlantic Monthly about the daily life of Content Moderators at YouTube. The psychological toll inflicted on those who must sort through the daily barrage of uploaded filth, just to make the internet palatable to civilized society, is simply incredible. I had no idea. I thought, incorrectly it turns out, algorithms handled these things. They don’t. Thousands of people are employed, to view unimaginable depravity, at no small cost to their psyche, just so we can be entertained by cat videos and other such diversions. We owe them all a great debt.
Another seed of inspiration for this story, completely unrelated to the trials of Content Moderators on the internet, comes from my late Uncle Ralph. He was a hilarious man, and, a Great Uncle, both literally (he was my Grandmother’s baby brother) and figuratively (he was pretty great). Growing up, I spent every summer with he and his wife, my Aunt Gladys, in their Washington DC apartment. I have many fond memories of those times. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gladys never had any children, so, I think I was sort of a surrogate grandchild to them. We all had a blast!
Uncle Ralph was a member of the ‘Greatest’ generation. Sadly, their kind is almost extinct now, and that generation’s final passing will make our nation weaker. Like many of his generation, he was not particularly a ‘man of his feelings’. Leo Buscaglia had not yet donned his trademark sweater and started hugging everyone. I, as a small boy, with an intense interest in history, of course asked him about his military service in World War II.
I knew from my Grandmother, Uncle Ralph fought in the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, so I was pretty relentless in trying to pry any information from him any chance I could get. It was not a subject he wished to discuss. As an aside, he once told me there are two types of veterans — those who never talk about the war and those who won’t ever shut up about it. My Great Uncle was firmly in the first camp.
Uncle Ralph did talk about his army service in generalities, though, but every story he told was a funny one. He told tales of getting lost in France, losing his jeep and having to sleep in a barn. He told lots of stories about various poker games he won as well as his first taste of TRUE vermouth when he passed through Amiens. This led to him becoming a lifelong fan of the apertif. I have never known anyone with such a violent passion about the sublties of a cocktail mixer as him. As my wife can attest, this trait was passed on to me.
But he never told any combat stories. Those were the ones I really wanted to hear. No doubt, the stories of his time in France and Germany, which grew more ribald as I grew older, were all great, but I wanted some real G.I. Joe material. I wanted machine guns and Tiger tanks. I wanted flame throwers and live grenades tossed back into enemy lines. I wanted to hear about him bayonetting some crazed Nazi charging his trench. Whenever I would try and pry out some John Waynesque tale from him, he always just looked bemused and then would tell another joke.
Finally, after years of relentless, but subtle, badgering, I asked Uncle Ralph flat out what it was like during the Battle of the Bulge — no hedging or jokes, just the straight facts. I remember the afternoon vividly. I was seventeen years old. We were sitting in Poor Roberts bar in the Cleveland Park district of DC, a favorite hangout of his. He sighed, put down his scotch (a rare event) and looked me cold in the eye. He said it was so horrific, so terrible and awful, he had chosen to forget about it. He said his rational mind knew he was terrified during the battle, but, beg though I may, he had no more details to provide. He had scrubbed them all from his mind. When I asked him how he could purposefully forget such a traumatic event, he shrugged, picked up his drink, took a long sip and said, “Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do”. He then winked and proceeded to tell me about the time he received some R&R in Paris for a whole weekend, and his buddy gave him fifty cartons of stolen Winstons from the commisary. That tale, X-rated in the extreme, could be the inspiration for an entire library of books!
Years later, and now sadly, several decades after his passing, I have often wondered two things. One, just how is someone capable of willing such a bad memory away? How is it possible? Obviously, the brain can be controlled, and as any trip to your local bookstore will show you, oceans of ink have been spilled detailing strategies for programming your own mind for success. Many books by Tony Robbins come to mind here. But, no doubt, those dark memories still lurk in the subconscious somewhere. For my Uncle Ralph, I am sure the effect of his suppression manifested itself elsewhere. After all, who considers beer a breakfast drink, and has the ironclad rule that all your beverages should darken as the sun goes down? Vodka at noon, brandy at three, scotch at five and, of course, bourbon at nine, right? Doesn’t everyone’s family have such a tradition?
The second thing I have always wondered is this: just what exactly happened to my Uncle Ralph during the war that was so horrible, so terrible, so soul-crushingly awful it would enforce a code of silence on him for fifty years and require a sea of booze to drown? I really would have liked to have known. Now that he has passed, I guess I will just have to wait and ask him when we meet again in the next world.
I hope you enjoy reading this novel as much as I did writing it. It is a strange tale and takes quite a few unexpected and dark twists; but I think you will find the journey interesting and worthwhile.
In the summer of 2017, I read a fascinating article in the Atlantic Monthly about the daily life of Content Moderators at YouTube. The psychological toll inflicted on those who must sort through the daily barrage of uploaded filth, just to make the internet palatable to civilized society, is simply incredible. I had no idea. I thought, incorrectly it turns out, algorithms handled these things. They don’t. Thousands of people are employed, to view unimaginable depravity, at no small cost to their psyche, just so we can be entertained by cat videos and other such diversions. We owe them all a great debt.
Another seed of inspiration for this story, completely unrelated to the trials of Content Moderators on the internet, comes from my late Uncle Ralph. He was a hilarious man, and, a Great Uncle, both literally (he was my Grandmother’s baby brother) and figuratively (he was pretty great). Growing up, I spent every summer with he and his wife, my Aunt Gladys, in their Washington DC apartment. I have many fond memories of those times. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gladys never had any children, so, I think I was sort of a surrogate grandchild to them. We all had a blast!
Uncle Ralph was a member of the ‘Greatest’ generation. Sadly, their kind is almost extinct now, and that generation’s final passing will make our nation weaker. Like many of his generation, he was not particularly a ‘man of his feelings’. Leo Buscaglia had not yet donned his trademark sweater and started hugging everyone. I, as a small boy, with an intense interest in history, of course asked him about his military service in World War II.
I knew from my Grandmother, Uncle Ralph fought in the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, so I was pretty relentless in trying to pry any information from him any chance I could get. It was not a subject he wished to discuss. As an aside, he once told me there are two types of veterans — those who never talk about the war and those who won’t ever shut up about it. My Great Uncle was firmly in the first camp.
Uncle Ralph did talk about his army service in generalities, though, but every story he told was a funny one. He told tales of getting lost in France, losing his jeep and having to sleep in a barn. He told lots of stories about various poker games he won as well as his first taste of TRUE vermouth when he passed through Amiens. This led to him becoming a lifelong fan of the apertif. I have never known anyone with such a violent passion about the sublties of a cocktail mixer as him. As my wife can attest, this trait was passed on to me.
But he never told any combat stories. Those were the ones I really wanted to hear. No doubt, the stories of his time in France and Germany, which grew more ribald as I grew older, were all great, but I wanted some real G.I. Joe material. I wanted machine guns and Tiger tanks. I wanted flame throwers and live grenades tossed back into enemy lines. I wanted to hear about him bayonetting some crazed Nazi charging his trench. Whenever I would try and pry out some John Waynesque tale from him, he always just looked bemused and then would tell another joke.
Finally, after years of relentless, but subtle, badgering, I asked Uncle Ralph flat out what it was like during the Battle of the Bulge — no hedging or jokes, just the straight facts. I remember the afternoon vividly. I was seventeen years old. We were sitting in Poor Roberts bar in the Cleveland Park district of DC, a favorite hangout of his. He sighed, put down his scotch (a rare event) and looked me cold in the eye. He said it was so horrific, so terrible and awful, he had chosen to forget about it. He said his rational mind knew he was terrified during the battle, but, beg though I may, he had no more details to provide. He had scrubbed them all from his mind. When I asked him how he could purposefully forget such a traumatic event, he shrugged, picked up his drink, took a long sip and said, “Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do”. He then winked and proceeded to tell me about the time he received some R&R in Paris for a whole weekend, and his buddy gave him fifty cartons of stolen Winstons from the commisary. That tale, X-rated in the extreme, could be the inspiration for an entire library of books!
Years later, and now sadly, several decades after his passing, I have often wondered two things. One, just how is someone capable of willing such a bad memory away? How is it possible? Obviously, the brain can be controlled, and as any trip to your local bookstore will show you, oceans of ink have been spilled detailing strategies for programming your own mind for success. Many books by Tony Robbins come to mind here. But, no doubt, those dark memories still lurk in the subconscious somewhere. For my Uncle Ralph, I am sure the effect of his suppression manifested itself elsewhere. After all, who considers beer a breakfast drink, and has the ironclad rule that all your beverages should darken as the sun goes down? Vodka at noon, brandy at three, scotch at five and, of course, bourbon at nine, right? Doesn’t everyone’s family have such a tradition?
The second thing I have always wondered is this: just what exactly happened to my Uncle Ralph during the war that was so horrible, so terrible, so soul-crushingly awful it would enforce a code of silence on him for fifty years and require a sea of booze to drown? I really would have liked to have known. Now that he has passed, I guess I will just have to wait and ask him when we meet again in the next world.
I hope you enjoy reading this novel as much as I did writing it. It is a strange tale and takes quite a few unexpected and dark twists; but I think you will find the journey interesting and worthwhile.
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