Today begins a new irregular feature, Endless Knots Interviews... Here interesting people will respond to (hopefully) interesting questions. Keen readers may have already seen the episodic answers from our first interviewee, best-selling author Eric Van Lustbader, now a valued and frequent poster to this blog. I met Eric in late June, thanks to my high school friend and fine artist, Neelon Crawford. Click here for Eric's site. Here then, Endless Knots (EK) Interview #1, gathered up from Eric's (EVL) responses below, with great thanks to him for playing along.
EK: Aiming for the reasonable, Eric, as the intelligent may be beyond my ken, but here goes. In Agatha Christie's obit (don't remember where), she was quoted as saying she really wanted to be a concert pianist, not a mystery writer. You?
EVL: I always wanted to be in a rock'n'roll band. I spent 10 years in rock doing many other things (writing, producing, A&R, publicity, merchandising). I was even on stage with a couple of bands I went on the road with (Elton John, Mountain -- but that's another story)-- but that's as far as I got.
Anyway, strange to say, it's too public a life for me. My getting up in front of people constantly wpould surely lead to a mental breakdown!
EK: You said you don't hang with writers cuz they're too similar to you. Who then? What varieties?
EVL: Hangin with the homies. Hmm. Well, I do have a couple of writer friends: David Morrell, Steve Berry come immediately to mind, and of course I was friends with Bob Ludlum.
My surrogate son is a writer and I love hanging out with him.
Truth to tell, though, I have a small group of male friends (a larger one than I used to, in fact), I like hanging out with women more than men, coz I think they're more interesting. (sorry, lads!)
I've hooked up with some old pals from Stuyvesant H.S. recently after they contacted me on my Web site. That's been fun.
But the truth is, I'm kind of a restless guy, so I like to find new, interesting people in unusual lines of work because they see the world in different ways, and that fascinates me. Not unlike yourself, Jess!
EK: How are you working OrgScope into your new novel? A character with an OrgScope in her pocket?
EVL: The famous OrgScope. I'm actually contemplating writing a XXX-rated short story with the OrgScope as my lead character. He's a hard-boiled private dick in a near-future world similar to that of "Blade Runner."
Anyway, he's half-man, half-machine. Which is where the OrgScope comes in. In this world, the Puritans have taken over (except for Las Vegas, where the last group of free-thinkers is hiding out in the Bellagio Hotel). In the world outside of LV, sex has become a capital offense. The human-OrgScopes are used to hunt down miscreants and bring them back to Salem, Mass., where they will stand trial and be burned at the stake (what goes around, comes around).
Only our hero rebels, falls in love with Scarlett Johansson (in the film version 'cause maybe then I can meet her) and now they're both being hunted by the dreaded OrgPolice.
However, our hero has the amazing ability to organize the last free-thinkers into a superbly well-oiled rebel army and... well, you can guess the rest. Except that I'll bet you can't guess the identity of the OrgPolice mole inside the band of free-thinkers.
Okay, okay, I'll tell you. It's either Scarlett or Stephen King, depending on who I want to kill off. If I kill Scarlett off, then she can be with me. If I kill Stephen King off, then I don't have to read his blather in "Entertainment Weekly" anymore. Hmm. Hard choice. Votes, anyone?
EVL: I'll answer all reasonable and intelligent questions. Just remember: I get to make those determinations!