Fallen Angel Reviews would like to welcome E Michael Fisher and James Bird, the authors of Aliens, The Other White Meat. Thank you for joining us.

Jim and Mike: You’re quite welcome.

Tell your fans something about you they would never guess.

Jim: There were two instances in my life when I subsidized my livelihood by playing cards. The first of these was shortly after I graduated from the University of North Carolina.

I took a job in Northern Delaware and moved into a boarding house not far from my new place of employment. In the evenings, the landlady, her boyfriend, and a couple of boarders would gather in the dining room to play “knock poker” – a game that I believe was unique to them. I no longer remember all the details of the game but it was, in a sense, a form of unlimited draw poker. Rather than the usual deal, bet, draw, bet and call, players continued to draw and bet until someone knocked – that is made a final call.

Pearl, the landlady, had no skill for the game and her boyfriend, Stanley, was usually too inebriated to contend. With this significant reduction in competition, I easily was able to win enough money to pay my rent and consequently lived at Pearl’s rent-free.

The second instance was in 1974. I was working at Expo74 in Spokane, Washington. Expo74 was something like a World’s Fair. Anyhow, playing poker was legal in Washington State and I would go to the card rooms in the evening, but never before 8pm. For some reason, card rooms were always associated with taverns. By that time of the night there would always be players who had been playing and drinking all day. I would try and get a seat at a table where everyone was talking loudly and play until midnight. Once again I was able to win a small but steady subsidy to my income. Not through any great skill but simply by remaining sober.

Mike: I enjoy wearing women’s undergarments while doing needle-point…NOT REALLY! But you have to admit it’s the kind of revelation that would spice up the interview.

Actually, one would hardly guess that during my high school years I was the musical mentor to a group of cloistered nuns in the convent at Holy Spirit Church in New Castle, Delaware.

I used to trespass on convent property daily, for I could shorten my walk home by several blocks by cutting across their lot. I continued until the day when I bumped up against an immovable blockade as I attempted to cross the convent parking lot – the Mother Superior of the order and a pair of her hench-sisters. When asked just what I thought I was doing I lamely replied that I needed to get home as quickly as possible because I was studying classical guitar and needed to practice an hour before dinner (in reality I practiced after dinner when I was supposed to be doing homework).

I was seized by the ear and pulled into the convent itself and told to wait in a sitting room (or was it sit in a waiting room). I assumed she went to call the law, but instead of the police, the Mother Superior returned with a half-dozen sisters bearing guitars and decreed that in atonement for my transgressions, I would give guitar lessons to the sisters. So I gave them guitar lessons. We got along quite well, for they were eager students and more hip than I would have guessed nuns to be. I assumed they were inspired by the singing nun, and, thanks to me, guitar masses became quite frequent in this little church.

Though I was quite alarmed at our first lesson. For I was ignorant not only of Catholicism but all religions, my father being a devout atheist who provided no religious training. And so I was shocked at these rosy cheeked, smiling sisters when they handed me the music to the first song they wanted to learn. The chorus resounded with exhortations to “…eat His body, drink His blood…” and I thought perhaps I’d fallen in with vampires or zombies. The good sisters were amused at my naiveté and gave me my first lesson in Catholic doctrine.

Of all things you have accomplished, is there one accomplishment you are most proud of?

Jim:Many years back, my wife and I were Peace Corps volunteers in a small West African village. One day I saw that the children weren't going to school. When I inquired why, they informed me that there was a snake on the path to the schoolhouse.

I investigated and found the path blocked by a cobra that reared up at me and flared its hood. Using an African hoe, a much shorter device than the hoe we commonly use, I cut it in two. After killing the snake, I realized what a stupid thing I had done. Had I missed, I would have surely been bitten. And being many hours (possibly days) away from modern medical treatment, had I been bitten I almost surely would have died.

But from that point on I was treated like a villager and not the strange white boy from America.

Mike:I was going to say building my own home, but Jim’s episode is so dramatic I felt the need to switch to something a little more colorful: In 1975, I attended a protest by The People’s Bicentennial Commission in opposition to the official observation ceremony of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Concord Bridge (I’m not sure exactly what the group was opposed to but hey, it was a party…bra-less women shouting make love not war). This all took place at the site of the battle in Massachusetts, with the protest on one side of the bridge and the official celebration on the other.

The official observance was to feature President Gerald Ford, with appearances by Carolyn and John Kennedy Jr. So to counter that draw, the protest started the night before in the form of an outdoor concert from a large sound stage with appearances by Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, etc. This was calculated to draw and hold a large group of protesters and assure an impressive turnout for the protest in the morning.

And it worked, but at first light the protesters were cordoned off by secret service men and state police who meant to keep the demonstrators as far as possible from the official celebration. Boats full of secret service personnel cruised up and down the waterway to prevent any crossings.

A friend and I waded through some overgrown swampy areas along the shore until we found a place shallow enough to ford. We made our way into the crowd at the official ceremony and found ourselves next to the podium.

When Gerald himself stepped forward to speak, I cupped my hands about my mouth and called out, “Who elected you?” I didn’t get to see the expression on his face because I was already on my way in a bum’s rush to the perimeter where I was deposited with little or no decorum. In retrospect, I am amazed I was not hauled to an underground room and debriefed on my intentions (as would surely happen now).

And I would gladly tell them why I did it, and why I was proud of it, for President Gerald R. Ford had pardoned that rascally scoundrel, Richard M. Nixon.

(some of you who are younger than a certain age may not remember the days of Watergate and the un-elected presidency of Gerald Ford which followed…)

Since everybody needs a break, even when doing something they love, how do you like to spend your time away from writing?

Jim: I have several hobbies. I like to sculpt in papier-mâché (especially skulls), draw, play computer games, and frolic on the floor with my two cats. I have numerous projects going on – many of which sit idle for months or years like the life size velociraptor I am building that has been sitting in the storage room since August of 2000.

Mike: I garden, and especially like growing weird ornamental grasses…the taller, bushier, and more unruly the better. When the weather is pleasant I spend a lot of time sitting amongst the mini-wilderness I’ve created. I watch trees and clouds, as well as the drama that goes on underfoot in the cryptosphere as various insect and arachnid species struggle for domination of the world.

How has being published changed your life, if at all?

Jim and Mike: Like many people who love to write, but labor in total obscurity, we were beginning to wonder, “What’s the point?” It is not uncommon for us to put in 20 to 30 hours a week on writing, in addition to making a living and having a family. So one is more able to justify one’s expenditure of time and effort if one feels there is a worthwhile return, so being published has given us a sense of credibility and purpose.

The thought that someone felt we had created something worth taking a risk on has inspired us to soldier on. We have expanded the scope of our endeavors beyond science fiction and have been carrying on a search for a literary agent.

How did you two meet each other? What made you decide to collaborate?

Jim and Mike: It was the 1970’s. We were both living the bohemian lifestyle on the same hippie infested street in Newark, a little college town in Delaware. We first collaborated on another project that involved distillation. A number of years afterwards we decided to collaborate again, but this time to pursue a legal endeavor. Between the two events both of us were married, Jim and his wife went to Togo in Africa with the Peace Corps, and Mike stayed here and played music and opened a recording studio. We both have an attraction to the ludicrous, ridiculous, satirical, absurd, and theatrical, and we had each written stuff on our own that we found mutually interesting.

How do you collaborate? Does one do the main ideas and the other the details? Do you email a lot, IM, long distance phone calls?

Jim and Mike: Since we now live so far apart (Mike in Pennsylvania and Jim in Michigan) we collect ideas and bounce them off each other when we rendezvous over the net. The genesis of ideas: one or the other of us will have an observation or character that we find amusing enough to constitute a basis for a story. We then brainstorm approaches and the ideas just flow – some from Mike, some from Jim – and some of these ideas catalyze storylines. Like musicians exchanging riffs, we play off each other.

Main ideas arise from this give and take and it would be difficult to put our fingers on who thought of what…it is a total joint undertaking. Once we get a main idea we like, we spend a few sessions brainstorming treatments, details, and approaches to telling the story that we then use to create a storyboard.

We then write biographies for our characters…frequently our imaginary characters remind us of people we have known.

From the storyboard we create the plot matrix…a spreadsheet with a lettered column for each character and the scenes in numbered rows beneath them. A short description of the scene fills each square of the plot matrix, so each square has a designation such as A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2 etc and we call these squares prose units…or p.u.’s for short.

We brainstorm each p.u. individually and arrange the ideas in outline form, compose prose based on the outlines, then assemble the prose units in order in a Word file and call it a rough draft. Afterwards, we rewrite the whole thing and call it our first draft.

When we’re working, we connect via M.S. NetMeeting. We meet 5 or 6 days per week, as well as exchanging numerous emails everyday. With NetMeeting, we can talk and view the same document as well as have a chat box and white-board at our disposal. We rarely phone…usually only after experiencing a major connectivity issue.

We get together in person about twice a year, on the average, for mega-brainstorming (see the pictures on our site).

Can you please tell us where the idea for Aliens, The Other White Meat came from? Can you give us a blurb about the book?

Jim and Mike:Around seven years ago during a 4th of July party, we were enjoying a copious flow of refreshments and joking about establishing a holy toll shrine, aliens snatching chicken bodies by mistake because they thought them the dominant species, and a phone sex line operated by alien-possessed chickens…then a friend of ours mentioned reading about a priest who ministered to the migrant workers in southern Delaware’s chicken farms and a plot emerged. Over months of brainstorming, the present book began to take shape.

Our back-cover blurb:

Here’s a recipe for cosmic comedy:

• Heat one doomed world with a life-searing double sun
• Remove a spaceship full of refugees
• Add a shipwreck on a small blue planet
• Stir in a family of megalomaniacal chicken farmers trying to harness the alien secret of immortality
• Blend in a crazed Imam, an ex-KGB hit man, and a crooked Pope with an ambitious self-centered Nuncio
• Souse with a drunken prophet who draws pilgrims by his visions of a feathered Madonna in an oil stain
• Shake in a Christian sniper
• Sprinkle with a pinch of romance

And watch the sparks fly at the Holy Toll Shrine.

Why chickens?

Jim and Mike: To date, Delaware has been the common setting for our literary efforts. So one has to appreciate that the chicken is a cultural icon in The First State (as Delaware likes to call itself…having been the first state to ratify the constitution) and the symbol of the state is The Blue Hen (though there is really no such breed of chicken). The football team at the University of Delaware even is called the ‘Fighting Blue Hens’ which is not very macho as team mascots go. In a state where the fighting of game-cocks was very popular until it was outlawed, it is odd the team didn’t name themselves after the male chicken, i.e. the ‘Fighting Blue Cocks.’

I saw that you have a historical novel in the works. Can you tell us about it?

Jim and Mike: Our historical novel is another Delaware story – a romance. It was inspired during the course of a conversation we had revolving about Mike’s derelict Boyertown step-van (it appeared in Aliens, The Other White Meat as a secret genetics lab). The step-van used to be a delivery vehicle for the old Philadelphia Bulletin – a newspaper that each of us read as kids (now defunct).

As our conversation drifted to the Bulletin, we began to peruse the on-line remnants of the Bulletin’s stacks. We came across an article about an Episcopalian reverend, named Hyghcock, who was arrested for performing secret voodoo ceremonies. The actual event took place during the depression, but we decided to set our story in the 17th century. Borrowing from the newspaper story, we started brainstorming around our main character, an Episcopal priest who dabbles in voodoo.

Rather than getting into a detailed synopsis here, anyone who is interested can read a short blurb and two sample episodes from the Hyghcock Chronicles on our website: http://www.thresherpub.comon the “Projects” page.

Do you have anything else in the works at this time?

Jim and Mike: We have a rough draft finished for the sequel to Aliens, The Other White Meat, in which a scrapple heiress is kidnapped and held for nefarious purposes. One day soon, we shall begin our first rewrite on it.

Also…on the same page of our website as the samples for our historical novel, one can find a sample episode of our epic saga, Oedipus Tex. Our protagonist is a porn star who engages in a series of mythic adventures in the course of fulfilling his destiny (anyone who has read Sophocles can guess some of the plot turns).

We also have a story with a character in the vein of James Bond/Dirk Pitt, the scientist/detective Lance Fargo.

There is a story set in medieval times about Friar Tuck after Robin Hood’s death.

And another Delaware-centric murder mystery centered around a roadside freak show with the working title, Death of the Seal Woman.

Would you like to add anything?

Jim and Mike: Yes, thank you. We are pleased for the opportunity to speak to your audience and to extend our heart-felt thanks for the support Fallen Angel Reviews has given us and so many other authors in “new media.” Once again, our website: http://www.thresherpub.com

Thank you both for taking the time to answer our questions. If you'd like to read more about these two gentlemen, please take a look at their website. There are a number of great things on there including some fantastic artwork.

Interviewed by: Serena