Welcome to WOLF NOTES, where interview questions stray from the rest of the pack. It’s nice to know the usual stuff like where an author gets their inspiration and why they write, but sometimes we need a little fun in our lives.
This week Peter Pollak stopped by for a visit.
Wolf: Welcome to Wolf Notes, Peter. Tell us a little about yourself:
Peter: Born in upstate New York to refugee parents from Nazi Europe, I wanted to write stories from the time as a teenager I finished Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel. That was the first time I realized what writing could accomplish—namely, it could give me a vehicle to reveal who I am, what is important to me, and at the same time give pleasure to others. Not equipped at that point to write anything anyone would want to read I postponed that ambition until I retired from my careers as a journalist, educator, and entrepreneur in 2007 and told myself, “it’s now or never.” Six novels later, I’m not ready to slow down.
Wolf: If you could be any animal in the universe, what would it be and why?
Peter: A lion because I was born under the sign Leo.
Wolf: What is the strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
Peter: Some of my own cooking.
Wolf: That’s funny. If you had to pick a weapon, what would it be and why?
Peter: That depends on the circumstances, but if someone dangerous was about to break down my front door, a double-gauge shotgun would be handy.
Wolf: What is the nicest thing you’ve ever done to your characters?
Peter: Give them a voice. Of course, they’re not real, but they represent reality as I see it. They become real to many of my readers as well.
Wolf: What is the meanest thing you’ve ever done to your characters?
Peter: Put them up against insurmountable odds and really nasty antagonists.
Wolf: You’ve just been turned into a plant. Describe yourself.
Peter: As a plant I lack consciousness and therefore can’t describe what I don’t know.
Wolf: Do you consider yourself a cat person, or a dog person?
Peter: Dog person. Cats are too independent while dogs can lift up one’s spirit by the way they welcome you when you’ve been away or take them out to the park to play.
Wolf: While walking in the woods you come across…
Peter: While walking in the woods, I come across signs of a struggle in a small clearing. There’s fur and blood on the ground and broken branches and matted down grasses. I begin to search the area to find clues to what took place, and at first I come up empty, but then I see it . . . the outline of a body. I’m almost afraid to approach given that the victor might be near by, but I have to know if it’s still alive. The body is partly hidden by a thicket of brush. I move closer one step at a time and start to push open the bush, but prickles grab at my hands and shirt. I pull back. Picking up two branches from the ground, I use them to part the bush. What in the . . .? The body is covered in grey fur, but has legs and arms like a human. It is the size of a child and its head resembles a rodent with a snout rather than a nose. I poke it with one of the sticks. It doesn’t move. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice says. I jump back and turn around. There stands a tall creature with an elephant head—a short trunk and large ears, but the eyes—the eyes are human. I’m not sure how I made it out of the woods alive, but I’m warning you. Stay away from the university’s forest preserve. You may not come back alive.
Wolf: Makes you wonder what they are experimenting on. If you could have a super power, what would it be?
Peter: All of them.
Wolf: So you’d be a super super hero. There is a door at the end of dark, damp corridor. You hear rumbling. What do you do?
Peter: I’ve come to the end of a dark, damp corridor. I entered the corridor in the basement of a university building that is no longer being used while searching for the right office to renew my parking permit. It was out of that ridiculous curiosity that always gets me in trouble. I just had to know where the corridor went. I stand in front of the door debating whether to open it when a sound that I must have been ignoring breaks through my consciousness. It’s a rumbling sound like water rushing through a channel with nothing impeding its progress. The door is my only hope. I reach for it and then . . .
Wolf: The world is about to end. What is the first thing you do?
Peter: Tell the nut-job who keeps telling me that to get a life.
Wolf: Which of your characters is your favorite?
Peter: I like Nick Grocchi, the protagonist in my first novel, The Expendable Man, because he represents an everyman––someone who isn’t in a great place in his life in part because he’s the kind of person who doesn’t think much about the future. He just acts on his instincts and as of late they have failed him. Now all of a sudden he’s in deep do-do and he’s got to change his approach to life if he’s to have any chance of surviving.
Wolf: Describe a meal you would be served while visiting another world.
Peter: I guess I’m supposed to eat what’s on the plate that’s been placed in front of me, but I can’t really describe it because I’m on another world and don’t even know the language. I look around and everyone’s looking at me. No one is eating the food in front of them. I look down at the piles––one looks like head cheese, another like large un-ripened grapes, and the third is a red puddle that resembles blood. Instead I pull out a Snickers bar and take a bit and pass it to the person on my right. “Try it, you’ll like it,” I tell him/her/it.
Wolf: What story are you working on now?
Peter: I’m revising my fantasy novel that I call The Way. It’s a coming of age story involving multiple protagonists which is probably why it has taken me years to finish. At the same time I’d like to make some progress on another thriller—this one featuring a female FBI protagonist who comes from the most unusual background.
Wolf: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Peter: Read, play Words with Friends, watch a very small number of TV shows with my wife—small because I can only find a small number worth watching, play golf and especially take walks when the weather permits.
Wolf: Why do you write—is it to make money or fulfill some void in your life?
Peter: The answer is neither of the above. I’ve nurtured a story telling craft over the course of my life by reading and trying to write stories to the point where I have what I think are some interesting story ideas and I’d like to find out if I can pull them off. Writing to me is like doing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Every morning I can’t wait to get to that day’s puzzle to see if I can find the proper word; in terms of writing I sit down wondering if I can find the proper sentences to make the characters come alive.
Social Media Links:
Website: http://petergpollak.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pgpollak
Twitter: @petergpollak
Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pgpollak/
Picture(s): Attach as separate JPG file(s).
Welcome to WOLF NOTES, where interview questions stray from the rest of the pack. It’s nice to know the usual stuff like where an author gets their inspiration and why they write, but sometimes we need a little fun in our lives.
Cindy Young-Turner has been writing for most of her life. At age twelve, she won her first writing contest, a local contest in her small hometown in Massachusetts calling for stories written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. Thus began her love of stories that are dark and fantastical. She believes genre fiction can be just as well written and valuable as literature. The universal themes of love, hate, revenge, and redemption are present regardless of whether characters live in the distant future, on other planets, or in fantastical realms. By day she is an editor for international development projects. In her free time, she works on inspiring her characters to fight for change and justice in their imaginary worlds. Her published works include the fantasy novel Thief of Hope and a short prequel, Journey to Hope.
Steven Brust was born late in the Cenozoic Era at a place a mere 238,900 miles from the lonely, harsh desolation of the moon. From the moment of his birth, he launched a study of language, facial recognition, and tool using, while simultaneously beginning an intense regime of physical fitness. He fell into a life of crime under the influence of Tuli, the Evil Dog of Evilness, a life which continued for many years. At one point, aided by Captain Blondbeard the Space Pirate Kitty, he nearly succeeded in either taking over the world or destroying the universe, the record is unclear. The plot, which featured a machine (built by a mysterious parrot known only as “Doc”) that could predict the future, failed when the machine turned out to be only able to predict the plot of action movies. This led Brust to abandon his criminal activities and begin writing science fiction and fantasy novels. Only time will tell how much lower he’ll sink.
Born in Moldova in the former Soviet Union, Izolda Trakhtenberg grew up steeped in the rich heritage of Eastern Europe. After her family immigrated to the USA, she graduated from the University of Michigan with an English degree. Izolda followed her love of travel and education and worked for the National Geographic Society’s Educational Media division. She then worked as an environmental educator for NASA. While at NASA she traveled all over the world to conduct environmental education workshops.
Jennifer Della’Zanna is a freelance writer in Woodbine, MD. She has published more than 40 feature articles for magazines and websites on topics as diverse as firearms, movies, and healthcare. She wrote and teaches several online courses in the allied healthcare fields and is the associate editor for Plexus, a trade magazine for the medical transcription industry. She contributed six articles to the Encyclopedia of Sex, Love and Courtship in the Medieval World (Greenwood Publishing Group, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007). Jennifer completed a Master’s of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA. Her agent is currently shopping around her first novel, and she has had her short fiction published at 
A young African American husband and father of 3, Stephen graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from Morgan State University. His mother, an English teacher in Baltimore City for over 30 years, introduced him to literature at an early age. He read a book to his class in kindergarten and has had a passion for reading and writing ever since. Currently, he works for the Federal Government in the IT field and is a personal trainer. He spends his free time lifting heavy objects, listening to good music, watching super hero movies and organizing his sneaker collection.
Kenneth has been living and teaching in Baltimore City since 2010 with his wife, Sarah, and two daughters, Mirus and Amare. In that time he has taught 6-10th grade English in Baltimore, Maryland. Kenneth earned a masters degree in education from Johns Hopkins School of Education, the number one ranked school of education in the country. Since growing up and moving from Peoria, Illinois, he graduated from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 2008 with a dual degree in Political Science and English, he has written and published five novels. Those six novels are: Thoughts in Italics, a book of short stories that range from speculative to science fiction; Writing in the Margins, a novel that intertwines the characters of Jack Mueller and John Rubaker that makes the reader question what is reality and fiction; Sequence, a dystopian science fiction novel telling the story of Andrea Remus and Thomas Charon through each memory they are forced to relive as they are downloaded in a computer known as the Pandora Complex to save the human race; The Diary of Oliver Lee, the first in a young adult trilogy that tells the story of Oliver Lee, his ability to “stream” stories from the minds of those around him, and his search for the first couple he ever “streamed”; Love and Fear, book two in the Liturian trilogy which tells the story of Kevin and his continued search for Oliver Lee and answers to his possible future and fate; Raped Black Male: A Memoir which tells Kenneth’s story of what it means to be a male rape survivor, overcoming stereotypes of what it means to be black, and male, and that men can’t be raped; Heroes, Villains, and Healing: A Guide for Male Survivors Using DC Superheroes and Villains, which uses comic books and back research to help male survivors of child sexual abuse understand and heal from their childhood sexual trauma.
Grady is a science fiction author who is diagnosed with high functioning autism. He is a connoisseur of the science fiction, fantasy, and superhero genres. In addition, he is an autism ambassador, hoping to demonstrate the potential benefits one can gain from being autistic. As a writer, Grady P. Brown utilizes his autism to visualize the story taking place inside of his head like a movie. Also, he has a very strong memory, allowing him to store information about his characters and stories in his brain as though it were a computer hard-drive. He is also a passionate pit bull lover and owns a pair of sweet and loving pit bulls named Wally and Fitch.
Alan Zendell spent more than forty years as a scientist, aerospace engineer, software consultant, database developer, and government analyst, writing really boring stuff like proposals, technical papers, reports, business letters, and policy memoranda. But trapped inside him all that time were stories that needed telling and ideas that needed expression, so with encouragement and cajoling from a loving baby sister he plunged into fiction.
A. L. Sirois is also a developmental editor, graphic artist and a performing musician. He has had fiction published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Fantastic, Amazing Stories, and Thema, and online at Electric Spec, Every Day Fiction and Flash Fiction Online, among other publications. His story In the Conservatory was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Other works include a children’s book, Dinosaur Dress Up (Tambourine Press / William Morrow). His graphic novel, THE ENDLESS INCIDENT, based on a video game, was published in February, 2016. Al has been playing drums for over fifty years in rock and jazz combos. As an artist, he has hundreds of drawings, paintings and illustrations to his credit. Al has contributed comic art for DC, Marvel, and Charlton, and has scripted for Warren Publications. He wrote and drew “Bugs in the System” for witzend #12, the famous comics fanzine started by for MAD artist Wally Wood. He lives in Rockingham County, North Carolina with his wife and occasional collaborator, author Grace Marcus. Together they are writing a Young Adult novel set in ancient Egypt.