Lancelot Schaubert — When’s the first time you played pretend, FC Shultz?

FC Shultz — I don’t remember the first time, but I remember the first time I almost stopped playing pretend. This was the mid-90s and I had an awesome metallic blue power ranger where the head flipped to helmet/no helmet. A few bricks in the pillars of our porch were loose, so I took one out to put my power ranger in there so he could go into “hyper-sleep.” Little did I know, that pillar was hollow in the middle. He fell down to the base of that pillar and is still hyper-sleeping there to this day, twenty five plus years later.

LS — Woah. Where is that porch?

Can we rescue him?

FC — My childhood home! Springfield, IL. He’s got to still be there.

LS — Oh yes, we’re going to start a POWER RANGER RUSH with that picture. You’ve seen it, internet. Free copy of Bell Hammers goes to the person who can rescue FC Shultz’s Power Ranger in a legal, safe manner.

Woah, you were a SPRINGFIELD BABY?

Did I know this? About the Illinois connection? I feel like I didn’t.

Or maybe I did and forgot? Makes sense why we share Bradbury, Hemingway, Twain…

FC — Yeah, man. Born and raised! I think that’s why I love Bradbury so much. He’s obviously a great writer. I love his whimsy and wonder. It’s funny, a few years back I was trying to put together an anthology to celebrate what would have been Bradbury’s 100th birthday, and all the stories would be from Bradbury fans and based in his hometown of Waukegan, Il, and I actually found his childhood home on Google maps. There’s definitely some similarities to our childhood homes. Even though the anthology fell through (I had no idea what I was doing) finding his house made me feel even more of a connection with him. Hoping to bring my kids up to Waukegan some day and visit it, ha.

LS — Me too. Honestly the Illinois connection more than anything with him. It’s wild. Tara calls me Stateriotic. It’s not like Texas where you’re part of a militarized blood-and-oil cult like some Mad Max wet dream. It’s more like being a part of Ireland or something.

You should still do that.

I’d happily help.

Is that a duplex? It looks like it.

FC — It feels quaint. The connection. Reading Bradbury reminds me of that Mary Ann Evans line from Mill On The Floss (which actually goes back to being known and loved we were talking about earlier).

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”

— Mary Ann Evans, Mill On The Floss

LS — Whelp, crying. That’s a good one.

Hit me right in the Illinois.

What do you think it is about the state that moves us all towards wonder? Like why were we so damn proud of Sufjan’s COME ON FEEL THE ILLINOISE?

FC — That’s a good question. I wonder if it’s more a result of a certain way of living in a certain period of time? Because Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life captures wonder and childhood so well, and he grew up in Alabama in the 60s.

LS — That may be.

FC — I wonder if my kids will be able to look back at their childhoods with as much wonder as I have. Or if they’ll remember the screens.

LS — I don’t know, there’s something about the place that does something to me that literally only certain novels about Ireland or Englad do.

Looks nervously at chat interface

Yeah.

I think that’s why forest school has helped some kids here in the city

I have buddies, even now, that mostly remember screens and games. That feels so hollow to me.

You do a lot of stars out there in Illinois? I mean Southern Illinois — Bell Hammer territory — was prime eclipse zone the last couple of times. 2017 and this year.

Like did you memorize constellations or do any telescopes? I know you’re basically Birdman now.

FC — I definitely have fond memories of screens. My next door neighbor, Seth, was exactly three years older than me (same birthday). He was an only child, I’m the oldest of five. He would let me watch him play N64 and Sega, AND he would let me eat the crust of his pop tarts. I thought it was amazing. I still love unfrosted pop tarts to this day.

LS — Yeah. I have fond memories of certain games for sure. I can’t imagine having the time to play Morrowwind now, but it was formational for me in the fantasy landscape.

Or man, porting 4 Xboxes together to play Halo with 16 players. Kids don’t do lan parties hardly anymore unless it’s a frigging gaming cafe.

FC — We didn’t do much star stuff. No constellations. My grandma has a bird clock that she’s had for decades that makes bird calls every hour. So the seeds of bird watching were planted early, and are just now coming into bloom.

LS — Or going to lan, professional, as part of some pro APEX team or whatever

That’s awesome, mine had one of those in the kitchen where we all burned candy cane cookies

Every year, not just once.

FC — Yeah man. Those were LAN parties were the best.

LS — It’s a pretty Catholic town too, I recall?

FC — Yeah, lived next to SHG (Sacred Heart Griffin) the huge Catholic high school.

LS — Have a lot more art in town than normal? Or did you visit the churches?

FC — Man, you’re unlocking a ton of memories for me. The library ceiling of my elementary school was painted by Springfield, IL artist Charles Houska.

LS — Oh wild

What else?

That’s pretty cool.

FC — And, I recently found an article in the Springfield Journal Register from the 90s where a local art guild made a big push to encourage the arts in the elementary schools. I’m still reaping the benefits from their work.

https://www.lib.niu.edu/1997/ii971230.html

LS — Yeah there was a huge push for that and gifted programs in Illinois. They’re all gone now, it was a precious, precious time to be a child in the state.

Now it’s much more like what Michigan was when we were growing up. State officials have run a lot of it into the ground.

Visit the cathedrals, or nah?

FC — That’s interesting. I didn’t really know that. But looking back, I remember I did a sign language class for a little bit in 3rd grade. That’s interesting. Never went to cathedrals really.

LS — When did you start reading the stuff and writing the stuff?

FC — You mean just in general?

LS — Yeah, spec fic and the like.

FC — Gotcha. I didn’t grow up reading much. Probably read 10 books for fun total my whole childhood. Didn’t write at all.

LS — Woah.

So this is a very recent thing for you.

FC — It wasn’t until I came to Ozark Christian College that I fell in love with reading. Then I took a fiction writing seminar with Jackina Stark and fell in love with it. That was ten years ago.

Very much so recent.

LS — Man, I wish she would have taught me fiction while I was there. I picked it up second hand but sort of one-on-one after she’d left.

Jackina is the greatest writing instructor and possibly teacher of all time.

And I will fight anyone to the death who says otherwise. with spoons.

I mean other than like Socrates. He was the real OG Teach.

But still.

FC — It was so good. I don’t remember specifics, but it was definitely the catalyst for me starting to write fiction.

I wrote the first chapter of my first book in that seminar (which was later edited out). But foundational.

LS — Tolkien for instance? Brilliant philologist. Wrote for the Oxford English Dictionary. Transformative piece on Beowulf, etymology, Lord of the Rings.

Dogwater as a teacher. We know because Ursula K. Le Guin was his pupil.

What did you write for OGAG?

FC — I’m really interested in small stories. I think regular life is filled with plenty of drama. But, I also think giant space worms and explosions are fun. I wanted to write a small story in the corner of a very large on-going story, because that’s what our lives are for the most part. We think we’re the main characters, but there’s a lot going on. We’re in a lot of other people’s stories, for better or for worse.

So, my story “Mazzaroth Falls” is about a small crew sent to an outer planet with one mission: purge all political paraphernalia of the recently defeated dictator. They plan to blow up a few statues and head home, but what they don’t realize is they’ll be lucky to make it off-planet in one piece.

LS — Depends on the day, but yeah.

What was the inspiration?

FC — I thought the influence was subtle, but a few advanced readers have already mentioned the religious aspect of it. I didn’t think it was particularly religious, but the idea did come from reading Deuteronomy where the God of Israel tells them to destroy a city, and to leave no one alive, but then the next chapter talks about the fair treatment of captured women. It’s a troubling section on its own, and then when you start to look into it, it just doesn’t add up. Utterly destroy everyone, but treat the prisoners justly? Which one is it? I tried to explore that tension a bit in this story.

LS — Yeah that’s good.

What about the Iraq war?

FC — Not directly, but that was my entire preteen to early adult years, so I’m sure it influenced the story in more ways than I realize.

LS — Man the Saddam statue was thick on my mind

It’s also a bit about humanity too, right?

FC — I’m sure I pulled from the toppling of that statue, too. And yeah, for sure. That’s the tension with those biblical war stories. Destroy everyone? That’s so inhumane. But, then treat the prioners of war with dignity and justice? Which is it? The small crew in this story has to balance those questions, and they each have their own ways to answer them—some including remote detonating mines.

LS — I’m simultaneously interviewing Benjamin in another chat. He’s a Bradbury fan, lives in Slovakia. Have you heard of the story “Green Shadows, White Whale” ?

FC — I haven’t, and that’s hard to do when it comes to Bradbury. Man, that looks like it’s a deep cut. I’ll have to check it out

LS —Why the name Mazzaroth?

FC Shultz — It comes from a Hebrew word that only appears once in the entire Bible (Job 38:32) and means constellations/zodiac. Thought that was a good nod to this story. Also, it sounds awesome.

LS — For sure. I also laughed when I first saw it. As the constellation anthology editor, I was like, “Downfall of the constellations! What’s he playing at?” It’s a really good title.

FC Shultz — Thanks, man. I’m happy with it.

LS — And it’s obviously having a lot of great feedback from complete strangers who reviewed it, so you should be proud. Everyone go get a copy of FC’s story. He needs funding for future experimentation on hyper-sleep with his children’s dolls.

And let me know when you rescue Bobby the metalic blue power ranger from the lost toy abyss at the heart of Springfield, Illinois.

Buy OGAG wherever fine books are sold or order one of the products below to get the best discount here on the site while giving the highest royalties to the authors:

• Bookshop
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• Amazon Kindle (for whatever reason they’re not yet listing the print)
• Barnes and Noble.
• Target
• Wal-Mart
• Dymocks (Australia — though they seem to have gouged the price even though I intentionally made the AU margin razor thin)
• Thalia (Germany)
• Foyles (UK)