I’m Jeremy Finley, this is “The Dark Above”.
[JT Ellison] I need to ask you the question. Do you believe in aliens?
[Jeremy] I believe the people, the people that have had these encounters, who have seen things have experienced things, they have nothing to gain right?
Right.
It’s only scrutiny. It’s only hostility in a lot of cases and they are coming forward telling, “this happened to me.” I believe those people.
[JT Ellison] Why do you think speculative science fiction stories are seeing a renaissance?
[Jeremy] I think what happens with the supernatural and speculative fiction is it’s deeply rooted in reality, but then it gives you an explanation of hey! Maybe there’s something more. What scares me JT, and I’ll be completely honest with you is how the events of what I made up in my head are occurring in the real world right now.
Yeah.
[Jeremy] When this book came out, I’d obviously in this book written about hurricanes and wildfires and sudden violence. And the book comes out, and there’s a hurricane in New Orleans, and the rain forest right now is burning. And there’s this horrible violence that has happened in our country in the last couple weeks. And that’s scary to me. Because I wrote that as a way– what I wanted to be like a really scary thing that these characters are encountering to fuel them through this journey. And here we’re dealing with it in our real lives.
And it’s supposed to be inconceivable.
Inconceivable and it’s happening as we go about and I think that is the thing that has been kind of troubling.
[JT Ellison] You’re a journalist in your other day job. How does it impact your fiction writing?
So what journalism has done for me as a novelist is it enables me to be the best thief I possibly can be. I am able to interview people of all kinds of walks of life and study them and get to know them and tell their stories. I can’t help but look at how they cry, where they draw strength from. And I think I can use this in my stories.
[JT Ellison] Given some of the situations you’ve experienced and the horrors that you’ve seen and experienced firsthand, how do you maintain joy in your life?
For me I find joy in kind of the little things now. I really have to look for it. I have to seek it out if that makes sense. I really make an effort now to find it. And when I see it I celebrate it.
Jeremy, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for being here.
Easily the highlight of this whole journey. Thank you JT.
[JT Ellison] And thank you for watching “A Word On Words”. I’m JT Ellison, keep reading.
[Jeremy] What I know in my heart is that I’m not done with this story yet. I know what happens next to these families and I would love to return one day to the story because there’s a final chapter left to tell.
