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analysis-by-vaylon · 8 years ago

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Double Take #2: “The Other Exchange Student.”

As I mentioned in my last post, I've started a new series of analysis posts that I am calling Double Take. Each of these posts will focus on an episode from the first season of Star vs. the Forces of Evil, usually a less-popular episode, and discuss the surprising complexity that some of those early episodes offer.

The season one episodes that I plan on talking about act, I believe, as a kind of "primer" for the audience -- that is, an instruction book on how to view future episodes; in other words, these episodes subtly introduce complicated ideas in order to prepare the audience for the later return of these ideas in even more complex forms. One such episode that falls into this category is "The Other Exchange Student."

Why This Episode?

Like "Lobster Claws," "The Other Exchange Student" is a lesser-liked episode that many rank near or at the bottom of their list of favorites. I, too, ranked it near the bottom of my favorite episodes. Yet on repeat viewings, I began to realize that there is something very peculiar about this episode -- something that, to my knowledge, no one has really remarked on.

In this Double Take, I'll discuss how Star's paranoia in "The Other Exchange Student" is -- despite being played for laughs -- actually quite reasonable. I'll also connect the lying and conspiracy we see in this episode to later episodes and explain the realizations I think the episode wants us to make.

Starspicious

First things first: Star is absolutely correct to be suspicious of Gustav. Though it's Star's jealousy which prompts her to be skeptical of Gustav in the first place, her belief that something is amiss is eventually confirmed by Gustav himself when he breaks down and reveals that he is, in reality, a boy named Charlie Booth.

Yet there's something peculiar about Gustav's confession: he never explains why he's measuring the Diazes in their sleep.

Gustav's inability to explain his extraordinarily suspicious behavior casts immediate doubt on all of his previous explanations -- raising the possibility that he's simply lying to Star about the rest of his actions.

Now where have we seen someone rattle off plausible explanations in response to a list of suspicious behaviors before?

Oh, right.

Webs of Deceit

I've written extensively about the (quite frankly) pretty incredible number of lies being told in season two (especially in the finale) by Ludo, Glossaryck, Moon, and Star. What's more, many of these lies seem to have fooled most viewers. Yet all the way back in “The Other Exchange Student,” we have in Gustav some early exposure to a practiced liar and social chameleon whose motives are unclear.

The show, I think, wants us to draw a parallel between Gustav's behavior and that of later characters -- particularly Ludo and Toffee. In fact, this might be why "The Other Exchange Student" is paired with "Monster Arm." I firmly believe that each pair of episodes is connected for some reason -- and the reason behind the pairing of "Monster Arm" and "The Other Exchange Student" is that they both in some way precede Toffee and Ludo's relationship. If you are skeptical, consider this: what is Ludo's wand if not a literal monster arm? And what is Toffee if not (quite literally) part of Ludo now?

But remember that Gustav isn't the only one who lies in "The Other Exchange Student"; in order to keep them happy, Star lies to the Diazes about what she's learned. Does that sound familiar? Star admits in "Starcrushed" that she's been lying to herself and to Marco about her feelings for him -- something she did in order to maintain their friendship.

Let's be honest for a moment: Gustav is no anomaly. When you really think about it, Star vs. the Forces of Evil is absolutely chock-full of shady characters:

Star, who is described -- in glowing terms, no less -- as a literal criminal.

Glossaryck, who (I argue) is one of the biggest liars of them all.

Pony Head, who lies and steals constantly.

River, who lies to Moon and sneaks away to fight monsters.

Moon, who teaches Star that the truth is dangerous.

Rhombulus, who makes a deal with Star to hide things from the commission.

Buff Frog, who used to torture people professionally.

Janna, who is just shady as all hell.

Tom, who is a psycho stalker.

StarFan13, who constantly stalks Star.

Sensei, who really shouldn't be running a business.

Oskar, who lives in his car, drops out of school, and has a record.

Roy, who fleeces people for money and sells drugs to kids.

Brigid, who steals hair (for good purposes, granted).

Lydia, who puts up a fake ad about a dog and stalks Star.

... And that list doesn't even include the "bad guys." (Sorry about getting off-track, but it just hit me how incredibly weird it is to have so many shady characters -- in a Disney cartoon, no less.)

But beyond specific comparisons, I think "The Other Exchange Student" wants to covey some broad messages to the audience as well: it wants us, the audience, to start thinking about the things that characters say; it's trying to teach us not to trust characters when they say things, to be skeptical, to make our own judgements, and to remember what really happened instead of letting characters feed us misinformation.

In short -- and this may be a bitter pill to swallow -- "The Other Exchange Student" is just a warm-up. As the series progresses, the lies will get subtler, more complicated, and harder to detect, just as they do in "Starcrushed." If that seems a little paranoid to you -- well, maybe you should be a little paranoid.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Other Conspiracy Theories

When we first see Star's wall of conspiracy in "The Other Exchange Student," it seems fairly obvious that we, the audience, are intended to react as Marco does and think that Star has gone insane. Yet by the end of the episode, we know the truth: that Gustav really isn't who he says he is -- and in fact might be lying about everything altogether.

This, by the way, isn't the last time we see Star's suspicions of someone be dismissed only to later be proven as correct the whole time (see "Trickstar").

But what are the implications of the fact that Star ends up being correct about Gustav?

Well, the meaning seems fairly simple to me: there are odd connections in the show that form a conspiracy -- or plot, if you will -- which points to something bigger. And "The Other Exchange Student" is the show's way of telling us to pursue those connections. How does it tell us that? By revealing that Star isn't wrong.

I truly cannot emphasize this enough: Star isn't wrong in "The Other Exchange Student." We never discover what Gustav is really plotting, and everything that he says to Star may be a lie. For all we know, he might have actually been planning to eat the Diazes the whole time. We simply never learn the real truth behind his origins or motives.

Speaking of conspiracy theories -- many of you scoffed when I brought out some (fairly convincing, in my opinion) evidence that not only was Starbruary's episode release structure based on a sonnet, but that those episodes also reference Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Scoff if you like. Yet, to this day, no one has offered any better explanations as to why, for instance, "The Bounce Lounge" and "The Hard Way" are, almost shot-for-shot, compositionally alike. (Seriously -- play both episodes at the same time. It's uncanny.) I explain the similarity as them being connected through the sonnet's structure; if you have a better explanation, then please, by all means, provide it.

Furthermore, Lekmet -- as noted in my post on the Holy Grail -- is almost certainly based on Baphomet, who is connected to the Knights Templar, and I'd be hard-pressed to name any other group whose mere mention conjures up as many images of shadowy global conspiracies, hidden treasures, and murky, blood-soaked legends as the Knights Templar's does.

And, as you may recall, I finally linked the Holy Grail references to what I believe is a literal Holy Grail in the series -- in the form of Lekmet's horn, no less. If that's not a conspiracy theory, then I don't know what is! Yet I didn't conjure this out of thin air. I watched the series and wrote about it. The evidence is all right there; anyone can see it for themselves -- just as Marco might have seen in “The Other Exchange Student” if he had been willing to hear Star out.

And speaking further of conspiracy theories -- it amuses me to no end to hear people talk about how much time they spent examining the chalkboard in "Mathmagic." Even people with degrees in mathematics couldn't figure out what it means. I think that's just a case of missing the forest for trees -- but I can't blame them for trying. After all, the music in that final scene sounds suspiciously like the opening theme from Gravity Falls (purposely, no doubt).

Yet, as I write about in my post on the Indiana Jones connection, the important thing on the chalk board is, in fact, the last thing written on it: the number seven. It's a conspiracy theory worthy of comparison to The Da Vinci Code -- don't you think?

Look -- if you want to understand what Star vs. the Forces of Evil is trying to tell you, you have to think like the series. Part of the purpose behind "The Other Exchange Student" -- behind many of the early episodes, really -- is to teach the audience how to think about the series. But don't be surprised if sometimes you can't come up with an answer -- after all, maddeningly, we never discover what Gustav is really up to. Some mysteries just go unsolved.

The Sum of Its Parts

Star vs. the Forces of Evil operates on a simple principle: with few exceptions, it forms logically-connected links of meaning through association, and then, as those links accumulate meaning through reuse, the series builds on them to introduce greater and grander concepts. Indeed, the point behind Double Take is to discover those links in the early episodes and suss out where they lead to.

Hopefully, I have convinced you that "The Other Exchange Student" is more important than it first seemed. Maybe I won't be able to convince you that there is some kind of grand conspiracy in the show -- and maybe there isn't one! -- but I think you should certainly take into account the comparison between Gustav's deceptions and the deceptions of other characters.

I believe the series will only get more challenging and complex with the ideas it wants to convey. My goal as someone writing analysis about the show is to shed light on those complex ideas and make them intelligible. And I hope I have served that purpose here for you today.

If you enjoyed this analysis, please let me know, and especially feel free to let me know if there's a particular older episode of the series you'd like to see featured in Double Take. I still have a few more episodes that I'm planning to cover with the series.

#star vs the forces of evil #analysis #the other exchange student #gustav #star butterfly #starbruary

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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Conspiracy theories and the left

Charlie Warzel, BuzzFeed News, Feb. 12, 2017

Just after 3 a.m. last Friday morning, Huffington Post contributor and progressive advocate Alex Mohajer set to work on a brief investigative project on Twitter. Pulling together red marker–circled articles, graphs, and screenshots from numerous financial websites, he rifled off 16 tweets with prosecutorial zeal and one ambitious goal: to build a compelling case linking Donald Trump to Russia’s $11 billion sale of its oil giant, Rosneft.

“It’s getting harder to ignore growing evidence that Trump was involved with Russian oil deal,” Mohajer wrote after compiling his tweets into a longer Twitter Moments thread. “CONCLUSION? Koch-backed front cos financed climate deniers/alt-right, took control of govt while Trump diverts attn for Exxon, Koch, Rosneft,” he wrote. A minute later he offered a hedge: “ALTERNATIVE CONCLUSION: I am bat---t crazy and need some sleep! Good night world. I will be curious to see if others are able to confirm.”

Mohajer wasn’t wrong to assume that others might try to confirm his tweetstorm. Since the election, he’s emerged as one of a number of vigilante investigators dutifully entering evidence into Twitter’s court of public opinion in hope of exposing corruption in Trumpland. Now that Trump is exercising his presidential power, the tweetstorms are intensifying--and growing ever-more conspiratorial. Unlike their more fantastical Infowars analogs, these vigilante investigators steer clear of explicit allegations, hewing instead to grave insinuations. Their evidence is almost exclusively rooted in already-published reporting; they sift through the tea leaves of unconnected media stories, raising questions yet to be answered by the professionals.

Call it the Alex Jonesification of the left or the rise of the Blue Detectives--the pure id of a strand of conspiratorial thought of the left and the anti-Trump movement. It’s intriguing and eyeroll-inspiring all at once, but for the #resistance crowd it’s a mooring force. Most of all, it’s an effective messaging tactic: It’s designed to go viral, to spark outrage--and perhaps even action.

If you spend enough time online, you’ll see Blue Detectives springing up everywhere. Two weeks ago, Google engineer Yonatan Zunger wrote a post on Medium that went viral. In it, he laid out a succession of “raw news reports” suggesting that the haphazard rollout and enforcement of Trump’s refugee ban across the country “was the trial balloon for a coup d’etat against the United States.” But as some, including Slate, have pointed out, Zunger’s post sometimes elides fact in favor of intrigue: His suggestion that the Department of Homeland Security could become a force loyal to the President alone, for example, does not acknowledge that DHS Secretary John Kelly was reportedly unaware of the administration’s immigration order until just moments before Trump signed it.

On Twitter, especially, the Blue Detectives are increasingly active in theorizing that Trump and his associates are involved in a dizzying multidimensional plot--and, crucially, are always 10 steps ahead of the American public. Perhaps the most infamous example comes from technology and business strategist Eric Garland’s “game theory” tweetstorm, which suggests a cunning on the part of the Trump administration and Russia to distract, dodge, and outwit the American public while bolstering its coffers and power.

Meanwhile on Twitter, writers with a flair for what could be true and a good sense for their audience have taken those investigations well past the brink of what they know. The most effective of the bunch is Adam Khan, a former marketing consultant and tech guru turned Twitter investigator. Khan, who goes by the handle @Khanoisseur, is an indefatigable presence on Twitter. Each day he monomaniacally strings together observations, charts, and images into detailed tweetstorms that rack up thousands of retweets. None of them make news, but they raise questions and do attract eyeballs.

The images--mostly screenshots from deeply reported coverage of Russia and the Trump organization--are frequently annotated with red type, arrows, and lines that encourage the reader to follow Khan’s logic.

Khan--who wrote an e-book on how to gain followers and influence on Twitter--uses the social network because he sees it as a direct line to journalists and big thinkers. He views his job as building flow charts of publicly available information to raise the big questions. “I’m not manufacturing anything new,” he told BuzzFeed News. “But I’m taking this piece of reporting from this journalist and showing clearly how it aligns with something else out there. And put together, I think it shows there’s a bigger story. If nothing else, I hope my work leads to more people doing their own investigative journalism.”

Just after the election, Khan quit his freelance consulting job to pursue the Trump investigations full-time. He has so far raised nearly $14,000 on GoFundMe in support of this effort. If he raises enough money, he may write a book.

Recently, Khan riled the tech world with a 23-tweet thread musing about possible ties between Russia, Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and some of the startups in which he’s invested. “The more I dive into Russian-backed/Kushners’ data collection efforts, the more I’m convinced there’s a bigger strategy,” Khan tweeted with a link to a different thread on the Kushner brothers’ investments. “Trump potentially has his own shadow NSA,” he further mused. Left unsaid, a crucial caveat: Kushner investments, made via a venture capital company called Thrive, do not appear to give the Kushners operational control of the companies in which they invest. The thread checks all the boxes of the viral anti-Trump conspiracy: It’s well-researched, endlessly intriguing, and unsupported by evidence.

The internet has historically been a near perfect incubator for conspiracy theories. Not long after the attacks of 9/11 average citizens flocked to Blogspot accounts dedicated to vigilante investigations of the events leading up to that day. The same happened after Hurricane Katrina, with blogs launching serious amateur analysis of the collapse of New Orleans’ levees. A decade ago, conspiracy-minded bloggers made major contributions to reporting around everything from George W. Bush’s National Guard service to intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Once these sorts of efforts were largely confined to obscure message boards, little-known blogs, and occasionally AM talk radio. Their prominent voices tended to be volatile fringe figures who’d rarely appear in public. More recently--particularly with the advent of the Trump era--they’ve attained much greater visibility. Today, the work of the Blue Detectives and those on the far right is amplified and extended by same-minded people sharing what they want to believe--a byproduct of the social media echo chambers that birthed “fake news.” Once peddled by anonymous tinfoil hat��wearers, even utterly unfounded conspiratorial musings are now disseminated by tech employees, opinion journalists--and even some of the left’s well known voices.

Take former United States Labor Secretary Robert Reich--a regular on cable news and a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. Two weeks ago, after a planned visit turned riot by Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, Reich penned a blog post about the event titled “A Yiannopoulos, Bannon, Trump Plot to Control American Universities?”

In their coverage of the riot, far-right outlets including Breitbart News had suggested the Trump administration pull federal funding for the school. Reich’s response took a conspiratorial page from the far right, suggesting that “the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Breitbart were in cahoots with the agitators in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.” While not a tweetstorm, Reich made his case in a familiar bulleted list. “Hmmm. Connect these dots,” he wrote before rattling off six semi-related points connecting Yiannopoulos to Breitbart and then the Trump administration. “I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here,” he concluded.

The post is a textbook example of a Blue Detective conspiracy musing. It’s a bit ridiculous, but not quite out of the realm of possibility. It attempts to use well reported information to “connect the dots” and raise an ultimately unanswerable question. And it ends, like so many Blue Detective theories, with a self-effacing nod to readers: Yes, I know how crazy this sounds.

In person, Reich is more cautious about shifting the political discourse toward conspiracy theories. “That fringe stuff is out there more and more, and that’s dangerous,” he told BuzzFeed News last week. “If we become a conspiracy society, we all carry around a degree of paranoia and that’s not healthy for democracy. And that’s why transparency is so critically important--we now have a responsibility to call a lie a lie.”

This desire for transparency is a key engine of the Blue Detectives. Its emergence is a side-effect of the rise of the Upside Down conservative media, which, along with its “alternative facts,” audience, and interpretation of the truth, has created two opposing political realities. With basic facts in dispute, efforts by the anti-Trump #resistance to monopolize truth have manifested in a peculiar role reversal. While the far right is building a media ecosystem that looks and feels a lot like the mainstream, some on the left are beginning to resemble the more conspiratorial fringes of the far-right.

But the emergence of the Blue Detectives is also a pointed critique of the mainstream press. The message: The media isn’t doing its job, so we’ll do the legwork for them. Adam Khan agrees.

“No question there was a huge failing among the media during this last election,” Khan said. “There’s so much to be chased down in a Woodward and Bernstein manner and so my job is to ask the questions for others to answer. To ask ‘Why? Why isn’t anyone else pursuing this angle?’” Khan believes without the right pressure and grassroots investigations from people like him, Trump will only claim more power. “There’s a need to apply more pressure to the press,” he said. “It’s sad, but if that’s what it’ll take to get the accountability, we’ll do it.”

Members of the Upside Down media are paying attention, too. “It’s even happening to people who have reputations in the media for being pretty normal,” new right blogger and Twitter personality Mike Cernovich told BuzzFeed News. “I saw this great meme the other day that said if there’s ever a terrorist attack in America under Trump the left is going to go full Infowars. And I think that’s totally true.” For Cernovich, the rise of the left’s conspiracy-theory tendencies is an opportunity to appeal to a broader audience.

“They’ve adopted that fringe-level mentality aggressively,” Cernovich said. “People on left are making themselves look ridiculous and so I see it as an opportunity to look reasonable by comparison.”

#conspiracy theories #Alex Mohajer #left and conspiracy theories #Blue Detectives

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mysteryshelf · 7 years ago

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BLOG TOUR - Mind Virus

Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Roger Charlie Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

About the Book

Robin Fox is a peace-loving professor of world religions, trying to atone for his crimes as a U.S. Army interrogator. But at a Washington prayer rally, a suspect is caught trying to disperse a rare encephalitis virus, the same one used in an attack in Iraq that Fox once foiled. A CIA agent, John Adler, asks Fox for help.

Troubled by this request, Fox consults Emily Hart, his colleague at the United States Peace Research Institute and wife of its strongest supporter in Congress. She, however, has her own troubles. Leila Halabi, a Palestinian peace educator, has disappeared on the way to Washington for a lecture tour. Fox accepts Adler’s request, in exchange for the CIA’s help in finding Leila.

Fox works with a joint FBI-CIA interrogation team, and worries that Adler’s prejudice against Muslims is clouding his judgment. The suspect eventually reveals that he is part of an international conspiracy to eradicate religion, “using one virus to cure another”.

Fox deduces that the next attack is planned for Israel during Passover. Meanwhile, Emily learns that Leila has been imprisoned in Israel, and travels there to campaign for her release. Spurred by danger to the woman he loves – although he could never admit it, even to himself – Fox boards a plane that will reach Tel Aviv before her.

By careful observation, Fox catches another suspect at Ben-Gurion Airport. Now a hero to Israel, he persuades the head of Shin Bet to release Leila and let him interrogate the suspect.

He infers that the next attack is planned for Jerusalem on Holy Saturday. Joined by Adler, he sets up surveillance at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but fails to prevent an explosion.

Suspecting that this attack was a diversion, Fox reinterprets his clues and concludes that the real target is the Vatican. He and Adler fly to Rome in time to catch a suspect in the act of planting an aerosol device in the dome of St. Peter’s during Easter Vigil Mass. Fox breaks her silence by intimating that her love for the group’s mastermind has been betrayed. She reveals the name by which she knows him, and gives up enough information to identify the next target: Westminster Abbey, at an Easter service with the Royal Family attending. But at the same time, he receives a menacing message: Emily has been abducted by the mastermind, who threatens to kill her if any cameras catch Fox there.

Fox goes to London, enters the Abbey in disguise, and uncovers the most elaborate strategy yet: a sleeper agent in the Abbey choir planted the virus in a fire extinguisher, and used a time-release flammable agent to make the Archbishop’s vestments spontaneously combust.

After stopping the attack, Fox roughs up the suspect but learns nothing. His escort from the Security Service takes him to question the mastermind’s mentor at Oxford. Shocked to hear how his teachings have been twisted, he gives up a name: Theodore Gottlieb. They go to Gottlieb’s house, to find him calmly awaiting them with high tea and high explosives.

After a standoff, the bombs detonate and set fire to the house. Fox, cut off from the police, has to chase Gottlieb to the room where Emily is being held hostage. Using his military training, he succeeds in seizing Gottlieb’s pistol, but his principles of nonviolence will not allow him to shoot. They struggle, Gottlieb falls, and the firefighters rescue Fox and Emily in time.

They return to Washington. Adler has promised to tell the Saudis about the final target, Mecca during the Hajj, but Fox suspects he is lying and goes to the Saudi embassy himself. A furious phone call from Adler confirms his suspicions: the CIA was planning to let the attack proceed, and use an Army-designed antiserum to blackmail the entire Muslim world.

After launching Leila’s tour, Fox and Emily walk together through the GWU campus. He yearns to tell her that, when he was sure his life was over, his only thought was of her. But discretion trumps valor, and when they say goodnight, his true feelings for her are still a secret.

Interview with the Author

What initially got you interested in writing?

I’d have to go back in time and ask my 6-year-old self; he’s the one who got me hooked on writing stories, and I haven’t been able to stop since. I finished my first novel-length manuscript in high school, and after a slight detour when I was led astray by the siren song suggesting that publishing academic papers in peer-reviewed journals would be a more prudent channel for my literary ambitions, I’m happily back on track with creative writing.

How did you decide to make the move into becoming a published author?

The time was right. I had a story inside me that wouldn’t let me rest until I shared it with the world. Did I tell it well? You can judge for yourself.

What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?

I hope they’ll take away a new perspective. This book has a religious theme, and religion, whether you’re a believer or not, affects everyone and everyone has an opinion about it. And for most people, these opinions are so strongly entrenched that you could hurl arguments at them until doomsday and never move the needle; the only chance you have of getting anyone to see an alternate point of view is through story. Wherever you fall on the scale, from firebrand evangelical to firebrand atheist, you’ll probably find something in this book to challenge you. Judging from the reviews, it will make your heart beat faster – and it might raise your blood pressure, too!

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

I love the way the story takes on a life of its own. I think writing, as an art form, is less like painting or sculpture and more like growing bonsai: you may start with a clear image of the finished product, and you can twist and trim your material into the shape you want, but it’s still a living thing, and it sometimes wants to grow in a different direction from the one you had in mind, so you have to be flexible and acknowledge that it might know better than you. There are times when a character seems to be speaking to me, suggesting something I hadn’t previously thought of. I love those moments, because it feels not so much as though I’m creating the story out of nothing, as that it’s telling itself through me.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

The difficulty of getting Time, Energy and Inspiration in the room together: they all seem to have such crazy schedules and I can rarely get more than two of them to sit down with me. Sometimes I wake up bursting with ideas, but can’t get a moment to write them down until late at night when I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone remember what the muse was whispering in my ear that morning. Other times, I’m well rested and have a rare block of free time, but the well is dry. I often resort to stealing moments throughout the day for writing – and if you piece together enough stolen moments, eventually you have a book.

What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field?

There’s a Japanese saying: “Do the best you can and await orders from heaven.” If you have a story inside you fighting to get out, then write it, and polish it, to the best of your ability. Then, when the time is right, it will find its audience. It took years of pounding the pavement before I found my editor, but in light of world events during that time, I’ve come to feel that perhaps the story was waiting until a time when it would be most relevant. So if you ever have moments when you start to doubt your story will ever see the light of day – and I suppose every aspiring author does – don’t be discouraged. It always seems impossible until it’s done.

Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?

I’ve lived most of my adult life in Japan. How I got there, and what I’ve been doing there, would be the subject for a whole different interview, but in large part, I have my life in Japan to thank for this book. Living in a very secularized society helped give me the inspiration for the story, and the desire to keep some kind of connection with my homeland helped light a fire under me to write it.

What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

You can find out more about Mind Virus and my other works on my website: charleskowalski.com. Looking forward to seeing you there!

About the Author

Charles Kowalski currently divides his time between Japan, where he teaches English at a university, and his family home in Maine.

His previously unpublished debut novel, Mind Virus, won the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold Award and was a finalist for the Adventure Writers’ Competition, the Killer Nashville Claymore Award, and the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association literary award.

Other novels and short stories by Charles Kowalski:

“Let This Cup Pass From Me” (Finalist, American Fiction Short Story Award (New Rivers Press); Honorable Mention, The Maine Review Short Story Competition)

“Arise, My Love”

“The Evil I Do Not Mean To Do”

Charles can be found at his website, and on Facebook and Twitter (@CharlesKowalski).

About the Publisher

About Literary Wanderlust

Literary Wanderlust publishes well-written novels and short story anthologies in the romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and thriller genres, as well as obscure history and research topics. Visit us at www.literarywanderlust.com

BLOG TOUR – Mind Virus was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf

#shannon muir #pulp and mystery shelf

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