Steve Stratman Writer

FAQ with Uncle Marty: Aliens on donkeys?

Uncle Marty: I’m looking at your latest cover art. Were you on acid when you drew this?

Steve Stratman: No.

Weed?

It’s just standard creativity. Everyone has it in some form.

I don’t.

You sound like you’re proud of that.

Don’t try and turn the tables here. Besides, that kind of creativity is weird.

That’s pretty much the definition of creativity.

Well, I don’t trust it. Let’s get back to the cover. What’s the little dude supposed to represent? 

He’s nature. In its present form.

He looks like an alien. On a f***ing donkey.

It’s a mule. Remember what I said about swearing in a blog?

Are you mocking me?

The little dude is an amalgam of our fears. He’s nature distilled into an essence and molded into a human form and he’s pretty tired from having to annihilate everything in his path but he has to do it. For his own sake.

Are you sure you’re not on acid? And what’s an amalgam? Sounds like some sort of communist training camp.

An amalgam is a mixture. In this case, of nature and technology, prehistoric life and modern evolution. It represents the stuff in my book called Sub-sea Dark Matter. A research company is pumping it up from under the sea floor. It comes from the same place oil does. It’s basically aggression and survival, and dominance over other living creatures – buried under several miles of silt and distilled into a broth. The corporation refines it, then uses it to make a computer.

Why don’t they just buy a computer? They exist, you know.

This one’s different. It uses ions and light, not binary code.

Uncle Marty is laughing.

Look, I didn’t make it up. Well, except for most of it. I mean, computers that use atoms and light already are on the drawing table. I just have to introduce conflict.

Now you’re talking. Tell me about the conflict part. And dominance over other living creatures.

It’s standard fiction procedure. If you don’t have conflict in your stories, few people will like them.

But science fiction is stupid. 

My book is not science fiction. Well, sort of. Actually, I don’t really know what it is. And science fiction is not stupid.

Tell me about the dominance part. I would definitely read that part. Because what’s scary about a computer? They don’t exactly instill fear. Not like a rabid dog, or a demented clown or something.

The computer part is a bit of a McGuffin.

What the f*** are you talking about?

A McGuffin is pretty much just a fiction device. Something that enhances the action. It catches your attention and drives the logic behind the plot. You don’t have to really know exactly what it is. Hitchcock used it a lot. My McGuffin’s just a little more complicated than most.

Are you saying you’re smarter than other people?

Jesus, Are you serious?

Way to go. Now you’ve pissed off the God people.

Well, I’m sorry but you’re impossible.

What’s the donkey about?

It’s a mule. It represents nature, voodoo and modern technology. Voodoo is mostly misunderstood. Stereotyped by missionaries and Hollywood. The mules in my book are actually elderly men in nursing homes that have spirits of other people trapped in their stomachs. But you don’t really know if they’re real or not. Not until the end, anyway.

So your book’s about a computer. And old men with people in their bellies.

The computer angle is a pretty small part. The story’s mostly about a young woman who gets kidnapped by a drug cartel and a school bus driver helps her out. Then she has to take some bags of random kids toys and Voodoo gris-gris stuff to a pit in Haiti. In the meantime, a whole raft of weird things happen. Eventually, she gets to confront her sister’s killers.

Are you sure you’re not on acid?

Yes.

But really. You don’t even have a book, do you? I mean, who’s ever going to publish a weird story like this?

I’m working on that.