Crude Blog Tour
.jpg)
Why We Are Here
Many years ago I woke
from a dream of being in a large place like a supermarket full of people. I met
a young man with long dark hair who looked like me. “Why are we here?” I asked
him.
“To find out
what it is.”
“What what
is?”
“Life.”
I awakened
understanding that this was the task we are all given in life. That in good
years and bad, joys and sorrows, our unerring goal is to understand life, to
seek the meaning of this vast mystery encompassing us. To find out what life is
and spread the word, like scouts returning to the tribe from distant and
dangerous lands.
We are in an
infinite universe of endless infinities. They stretch in all dimensions far
beyond our feeble cognition. Time is forever, and forever unknowable. Even deep
inside ourselves we cannot begin to understand.
We are children
of the void. We go through many joys and sorrows in life, many magical
mysteries we cannot comprehend. Perhaps what we experience feeds a greater
wisdom far beyond our ken; we cannot know.
Like many
people, I have lived through great joys and dangers – atrocious wars and
vicious perils, and deep, long-lasting love, that have all made me believe in
God. And to live deeply, intensely, to love, have children and give them the
magical mystery of life – this is what we are born for.
Nothing else
matters.
Excerpt:
B L O O
D I N
T H E WAT E R
The shark hit so hard he thought it was a ship
keel out of the deep, its gritty hide rasping his thigh and its huge tail
ripping a dive fin off his foot. He yanked a
repellant tube from his divepack, fumbled and lost it, couldn’t see it in his
headlamp, faced the shark but it wasn’t there, was above him, to the left,
below, grinning jaws.
He dove, grabbing for the repellant, watching the
shark. It attacked, feinted and dodged, the biggest tiger shark he’d ever seen.
His hand bumped the repellant, knocking it away. He grasped for it, trying to
circle to face the shark, to stay upright despite the missing fin. Don’t panic.
The shark dove, then rose toward him, teeth
glinting in his head‐ lamp. His wrist grazed the repellant, driving it lower.
He snapped on his Orca torch, looked around frantically for Two, but the other
diver wasn’t there.
Don’t panic.
He sank deeper. His face touched the tube. He
grabbed and squeezed it, repellant blinding his mask. The shark circled once,
slid into the depths.
The repellant faded. He coughed, realized he had
spit out his mouthpiece. He shoved it in, gurgled water, coughed and spit it
out. His legs and feet were still there. The shark had just nicked him, tested
him. Maybe it had smelled blood from when he’d torn his knee climbing out of
the sub.
Or blood from someone else?
Where was Two?
The shark darted beneath him. He wanted to shine
his torch at it, but that might attract it, anger it. He pulled in his legs and
yanked out a second tube. Black repellant spurted out.
Don’t panic.
One tube left. The rebreather thundered with his
panting. Larger and larger, the shark nosed toward him through clouds of
repellant, crunching its jaws.
He ripped off his divepack, the rebreather
hissing, and smashed the shark’s snout. It dove, tail slamming him sideways,
swung round and began to circle him, closer and closer.
Don’t panic.
Faster the shark circled. With only one fin he
couldn’t keep up; it would get him. He fired the last repellant.
It clouded the water and he couldn’t see the
shark, only felt the crush of water as it smashed past, couldn’t hear over his
own frantic gasps. Choking and crying, he shoved his arms back through the
divepack straps, tugged up his legs against his body.
Beyond his torch light the watery darkness
expanded forever. Without Two, how could he finish? Should he return to the
sub? Maybe Two was already there, had abandoned the mission because of the
shark? There’d been no message from the sub.
The water grew colder, darker; he was sinking too
deep. The repellant was gone. With tiger sharks, he remembered, when there’s
one, there’s many.
His watch showed 38 feet. He couldn’t see the
shark. Fish schooled past, fusiliers or jacks.
01:52, the watch said. One hour left. If one
diver didn’t reach the platform, the other had to do it alone. He turned to 347
degrees and began to swim, slowly kicking the one fin.
Above him the black waves glinted with light. He
ached to go up, but the shark would attack if he rose to the top like a dying
fish. He swam toward the light till it brightened the wavetops, then surfaced
quickly to check his approach.
Before him, a wide platform of brilliant lights
towered ten stories into the night, a glittering city on pylons over the waves,
its gas flare blazing across the black sky.
A school of barracuda shot like missiles beneath
him. He checked his watch: 02:03. He sank back into the gloom and swam
northeast toward a huge metal strut descending into the sea. His first position
– the southeast corner pylon.
In the oily rushing darkness there was no sign of
Two. For an instant, he wondered who Two was – on missions like this you never
knew the others’ names, you just had numbers.
Waves roiled round the pylon, greasy and
oil-turbid, slamming him against the barnacles and clams on the steel. Bounced
back and forth, he tried to set his course northwest at 320 degrees and almost
swam into another strut of the pylon, so big it took him half a minute to go
around it.
Fish struck his face – butterflies and angels and
little trash feeders drawn to his headlamp.
The platform’s light dissolved down through the
oily water. 02:19. He sank below it, watching for the shark, for sea snakes and
scorpion fish.
At the platform’s center, a huge cluster of four
pipes descended straight down. They roared with the gas rushing up them toward
the platform above.
Easy part now. He touched a pipe, then yanked
back his hand. That gas comes out of the earth at boiling point. And a burn
attracts sharks just like blood.
He was losing it, too worried about the shark,
about Two. Don’t panic.
Above him, waves lashed the pylons, fell back on
themselves and raveled on. Oil streaked the surface, distorting the light from
the platform’s flare. How strange, he thought, to bore into the earth. Suck
life from the past. And burn it in the sky.
He dove down the pipes to fifty feet, where a
great steel ring clamped the four pipes together. The bolts on each flange were
big as his head. He unslung the divepack and took out a heavy package. It was
solid, malleable, crescent-shaped, as long as his forearm. He pinned it into
place under the lower flange, near one of the four hot pipes.
He placed a second charge against the upper
flange. Unrolling the coil of wire that linked them to two other charges from
his pack, he swam a third of the way around the pipes till the wire grew taut,
and fitted the two other charges above and below the flange.
On the unrolled wire midway between the two pairs
of charges was a water-sealed box like a soap dish that he tucked under the
flange. He ran his finger and thumb along each wire; there were no kinks, no
cuts.
02:47 – ahead of schedule, despite the shark.
Even without Two. When his watch hit 02:55, he pushed a two-inch button on the
right side of the water-sealed box, then swam up to twenty feet below surface
and southward from the platform, rechecking his watch often for depth and
direction. He craved to shine down his torch to check for the shark, but that
would only attract it.
Don’t panic.
You can do this in your sleep. In seven minutes
you’ll be back in the sub. Fuck Two.
Far below, a huge shape crossed the deep. No, he
begged. Please no. He lit the torch. The shape undulated onward, trailing
phosphores‐ cence. A giant squid.
But now he’d turned on his torch.
Writing
Process & Creativity
How
did you research your book?
I
don’t research my books, but write from my own memory of events.
What’s the
hardest scene or character you wrote—and why?
The killings
of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (whom I knew and loved) by the CIA.
Where do
you get your ideas?
From my own
past experiences, or from issues that concern me, like the danger of nuclear
war. Or wars I have been in and I wish to expose how they happened, and who is
responsible for all the deaths, sorrow, and destruction.
What helps
you overcome writer’s block?
Never had it.
Too many things to write about.
What’s
your favorite compliment you’ve received as a writer?
Among many
other critical praises, when BBC called me “The master of the existentialist
thriller.”
Your
Writing Life
Do you
write every day? What’s your schedule?
I write when
I want to.
Behind
the Book
Why did
you choose this setting/topic?
Because
nuclear war will end all life on earth, which is a far more important issue
than anything else.
Which
author(s) most inspired you?
Hemingway – the greatest American writer of
the 20th century. And Tolstoy, Gogol, Zola, Aristotle, Cicero, and
many others.
Fun
& Lighthearted Qs
What’s
your go-to comfort food?
For writing
-- Gin or vodka.
If you
could time-travel, where would you go?
Somewhere in
our Paleolithic past, or among the Cheyenne or Sioux before the coming of
Europeans.
What 3
books would you bring to a desert island?
If I were on
a desert island I would be happy there and wouldn’t bother with books.
Comments
Post a Comment