Withersin’s Damned Interview with:

John B. Rosenman

I’m an English professor at Norfolk State University and have published hundreds of SF/F/H stories in such places as Weird Tales, Galaxy, Starshore, Hot Blood, Dark Arts, Cemetery Dance, you-name-it. My first novel (mainstream), is The Best Laugh Last, and McPherson & Company published it in 1981/2. I later published a collection of stories with Dark Regions Press. Recently, Mundania Press and Drollerie Press published two of my speculative fiction novels, Speaker of the Shakk and Alien Dreams. Another SF novel, Beyond Those Distant Stars, was released by Novel Books, Inc. in 2003. It will be republished this year by Mundania Press. Once a month I write a blog online along with thirty fellow writers. You can find us at www.storytellersunplugged.com.

Two of my favorite (obsessive) themes which you can find in my tales are transformation in all its amazing, possible or impossible forms, and a seemingly ordinary person who finds that he or she has extraordinary abilities and the potential to save others and become a great leader. Stella McMasters in Beyond Those Distant Stars has a radioactive accident, is turned into a superhuman cyborg, and saves the human race from apparently invincible alien invaders.

List published works: I have published over 300 short stories in places such as Galaxy, Starshore, The Age of Wonders, Whitley Strieber’s Aliens, Hot Blood, Cemetery Dance, Dark Arts, and elsewhere. My first novel, The Best Laugh Last (mainstream) was published by McPherson & Co. Dark Regions Press published a collection of short stories, More Stately Mansions, in 1999. In 2003, Novel Books, Inc. published my science-fiction adventure novel, Beyond Those Distant Stars, and it will be re-released this year by Mundania Press. Drollerie Press and Mundania Press recently published two more of my SF novels, Speaker of the Shakk and Alien Dreams.

List website: http://www.johnrosenman.com/

How can we contact you? My e-mail is prof@picusnet.com.

In your own words, define Withersin.

When others say right, Withersin says left. When others say night, Withersin says day – or eternity. Withersin is the salmon that refuses to swim back to its spawning pool and goes wherever the hell it wants to, even if it means, as it so often does, that it swims against the prevailing current of thought and opinion and style and is cursed and damned for so doing.

If you were a sideshow act, what would you be?

I’d probably be someone who controls minds through suggestion. “Get ready now, I’m going to hypnotize you. Imagine you’re sucking on a big, juicy, bitter, bitter lemon . . .” Or (an obsession), I’d be a healer, curing the halt and the blind.

What is your greatest non-literary influence?

My parents. They always taught me to be honest, have integrity, and pursue a life of the mind.

Describe your most irrational fear.

Not living life to the hilt, not getting all I can out of it because of sloth, laziness, fear, or failure of will.

How about your most guilty pleasure?

Aw Gawd, you really expect me to be honest here? Making love to a woman who is completely different from me in every way, a bad, bad, bad girl, sinful beyond belief. SEXUALLY FORBIDDEN FRUIT WHOSE CONSUMPTION WOULD DESTROY MY REPUTATION AND MY LIFE. There’s something terribly seductive about being a moth who flies near a flame. Or, being locked in a vast candy store and eating myself to death. Stuffing myself with every kind of rich exotic chocolate and ice cream ever made. What kind of candy would an alien eat? I’d like to sneak into an alien candy palace and find out.

Name the most disturbing nursery rhyme/fairy tale you can recall.

Well, Hansel and Gretel is pretty bad. Candy and gingerbread houses in which little kiddies are the main course. Yum-Yum. Trample those taboos! Come to think of it, being turned into a frog and losing your identity ain’t no picnic either.

Do you eat meat?

Yes, but I am civilized. If it’s a person, I cook him or her first, preferably medium rare. Seriously, I am a carnivore. I like steak, hamburgers, Subway, mushroom burgers at Hardee’s. But you oughta go easy on red meat.

What were the skies like when you were young?

Blue skies, fleecy white clouds that were anything I wanted them to be. Fair skies, balmy, fragrant, world-wide winds, and freedom from responsibility. Back then, lying on my back in thick soft grass, I could swear I would live forever.

Name your favorite garden tool.

Hell, I <hate> garden work! I got enough of that as a kid. But I do like water sprinklers, the kind that whirl around and spew dazzling rainbow arcs over grass and daffodils.

Name your least favorite color, first job and worst job.

Chartreuse is usually grating, unless it’s a woman’s hair. My first job was washing cars in a gas station for $5 on Saturdays. My worst job was teaching English at a university where my teaching load was six courses, two of them in journalism in which I had no training, and where I only lasted a year because they wanted me OUT. As in gone.

Favorite:  Author, Movie, Music Group, Song, and Quote.

Orson Scott Card, Robert McCammon, plus many others. Movies: Here’s three: The Wizard of Oz, War of the Worlds (1954 version), Cyrano de Bergerac (Jose Ferrer). Song: American Pie, plus others. Quote: “The reward of all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.” (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

If you were a loaf of bread what kind would you be?

Wheat, possibly. Strong and true.

Weirdest news you have read in your local newspaper:

There have to be at least 500 competitors for this slot. Recently, there was the story about the pregnant man who’s married to a woman. Well, technically, he’s a woman because he was born a woman. But he looks like a man and is definitely knocked up. I think it’s great. You should be whatever you want to be, whatever you were designed to be, as long as it doesn’t mean becoming a Republican. C’mon, some things are just going too far.

Why horror?

Why not? Horror, if we’re talking about fiction or movies, is NOT a genre, it’s an emotion. All life is filled with horror. Without it, there’s no value or meaning. Happiness is wonderful because of the fear – no, horror! – it’s about to disappear. Kurtz in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” cried “The horror, the horror!” The totality of our lives is spent trying to achieve success, happiness, and fulfillment, and the horror is that we so often fail. Horror robs our heart and kills our soul.

Here's a photo. (seen on Interview main page)

“INEDIBLE NOT INTENDED FOR HUMAN FOOD”

You have 112 words. Go.

PHOTO: It’s a government plot to turn us into cattle or obedient, subservient zombies. Thousands of trucks like these are left unattended on the nation’s highways with ready access to their contents. They might as well have written “Wet Paint” on the sides. People can’t resist the “INEDIBLE, NOT INTENDED FOR HUMAN FOOD” sign and scarf down the thick gooey, highly tasty and toxic paste inside. All too soon, we become mindless ghouls like those in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and always pay our taxes and support our Government, no matter how stupid and unreasonable their policies are.

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