Backstory: In the Time of Man

I’ve always loved the utter predictability of detective stories.  The beginning is generally a cliché’ as the phone rings and someone asks a provocative question.  I thought this was not likely to happen here in the real world until the early 90s when I was deeply involved in being a political correspondent down in Austin.  I got a phone call that made no sense.

“Hey son.” 

The voice on the other end was my editor.  His inclinations and curiosities had much to do with my professional life and how I was to spend my time.

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Sure, boss man.  I generally do that for a paycheck.  What is it?”

“Well, you aren’t going to like this, I’m pretty sure.  But I want you to do it anyway.”

I had never heard him sound conciliatory or compromising.  I was a bit unsettled.

“Ok.  Tell me what you are thinking.”

“I want you to do a series of reports on UFOs for the CBS affiliates around the country.”

I was so dumbfounded I did not speak.  I may have heard breathing by my editor but I can’t really recall.  I pretended to have misunderstood or simply to have been confused.

“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.  “I thought you said UFOs.”

“I did.  UFOs.  For all of the network affiliates.”

These types of moments come up too frequently for many journalists.  Their editors generate off-center ideas and then become enamored with them to the point that they refuse to recognize their absurdity.  I needed my job but I thought my reputation was hard earned and I did not want to surrender it for a ratings ploy.

“Um, yeah, but I’m a political reporter, boss man,” I reminded him.  “I do presidential campaigns, US senate, the legislature.  I realize they are a bit wacky at times but they aren’t like UFOs.”

“You’re the right guy for this,” he insisted.

“No, actually, I’m not.  I hate the idea.  It’s about as far removed from what I do as any idea you have ever come up with.”

“Maybe, but your lack of tolerance for nonsense and inability to accept BS is why I thought of you.  I think you’re ideal.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know.  But I need you to do this.”

There was no point in further argument.  The network was less than 2 months away from running a two-part dramatic series called Intruders, which was based on Budd Hopkin’s popular book Missing Time. Hopkins, a New York City artist, had become an amateur hypnotist and had begun regressing people who claimed to have lost a few hours of their lives while driving, hiking, or even watching television.  The memories they offered under hypnotic recall indicated they were convinced they had been taken by intelligent non-human beings in advanced craft.  Their stories involved them being used for strange procedures against their will.

This began a 30,000 mile odyssey for me as two camera crews and I chased after ephemeral notions like “visitors” and UFOs.  I was the first journalist to interview John Mack, a Harvard psychologist, Pulitzer Prize-winner, and founder of Harvard’s school of psychiatry, who had begun to take seriously the claims of people he hypnotized.  Mack, who endured much professional disdain, wrote an acclaimed book about his findings before he died in a London traffic accident.

I did not think it easy to ignore individuals with his credentials.  As dismissive as I was of my assignment, I pursued it with the same diligence I had applied to previous stories.  My crew and I investigated every connection that we encountered, which led us to horribly mutilated cattle and ended with the sublime folly of us sitting on a Florida beach waiting for a UFO to land.  We saw a few things, heard even more, and often thought our employer had mysteriously been bought out by a grocery store tabloid while we weren’t paying attention.  Our reports drew great ratings in major markets across the country but we finished with no more scientific proof than any other investigator.  The question of intelligent life other than humans seemed nowhere near being answered.

Nonetheless, the pursuit of the great cosmological mysteries is endlessly fascinating.  The material I came across during my research was impossible to put down and it led me to consider ideas and complicated concepts I might have not confronted.  I never stopped my investigation, though I do not find myself any closer to a revelation.

What I did come up with, however, was material for a novel.  My idea (with considerable prompting and intellectual stimulation by my brother) was to try to write a narrative that offered an explanation of existence.  Scientists often refer to this as the Theory of Everything.  Because I’ve always been drawn to these more perturbing mysteries, I started to write a rough story almost 20 years ago.  The first draft was784 pages in long hand on a legal pad and it was dreadful.  My heroes, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Wolf had all written with pens and pencils and I thought it was a better technique for controlling sentence construction and word choice.  I discovered, however, the narrative’s next twists might get away from me if I did not write with more speed.  After 2 more rewrites with a pen, I turned to a computer and word-processing software.  The novel has since been rewritten in its entirety more than 2 dozen times while riding airplanes, staying in hotels, sitting on trains, waiting in departure lounges, or hiding in my office during sleepless late night hours.  I think it is finished.

The reason I share all of this is that I am going to begin publishing the novel on my web site and on Facebook.  Waiting for the publishing industry requires a level of patience I have never possessed.  In any case, I might never find an imprint that will want this book even if I had patience.  Assuming a publisher were to offer me a contract today, I would still be close to two years from having this book on shelves in the big stores.  There is also the matter of how much the novel would be supported by the public relations department and marketing division of the publishing house.  Too many variables determine success and if I have no control or even minor influence over those dynamics I am disinclined to turn over my writing’s fate to total strangers.  I’ve done it in the past with mixed success.  I want to try something new.

That’s why for the next 19 weeks I intend to publish one chapter each week on this web site www.moorethink.com of my novel, In the Time of Man. A new chapter will be posted here every Thursday and then published on Friday at my Facebook page, which will be linked out on Twitter.  I don’t know if anyone will read it or even be marginally interested but I think I have written a new story about an old, old mystery.

And stories are supposed to be shared.

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