Macromere Press

Macromere: We’re just about done with these interviews illuminating He Who Shall Remain Shameless, aren’t we?

David: That we are. We’ve almost run out of spirits.

M: So “Kordula”, the twelfth episode in HWSRS, starts off with the sentence “I was hiding out somewhere in the Czech Republic”. We take it you spent time in the Czech Republic…

D: I did. Winters were just as cold as what’s described in “Kordula”. And there is a Lake Prigl in Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic, where the story takes place. Much of what David sees I also saw to an extent.

M: You’re a believer in writing from experience.

D: I believe you have to. Even if you’re writing strictly genre fiction, pure sci-fi or fantasy, I think for the work to succeed the writer has to have at least some of her- or himself wrapped up in it. The personalization may be well-masked, but it’s gotta be there for the work to resonate.

M: Tell us about the title character.

D: By this time in the narrative David has encountered all sorts of ghosts, from the somewhat well-known like Harriet Quimby and Leo Ryan and Christine Chubbuck to the lesser known like Christopher Coe and Linda Gary, and finally to the very little known like Alice Scribner and the infant David Michael Ewald from Gladwin, Michigan. Kordula falls into that last category, the category of those who have pretty much nothing going for them on the Internet. Kordula in fact may be the lowest-ranked of them all, as she has not even a sentence about her on the Internet. She’s representative of the spirits who are most in danger from the Meritocrat’s decisions—those spirits who are most susceptible to being erased, forgotten. 

M: We find it interesting that Kordula does not want to be remembered.

D: She really doesn’t. She rejects the nature and purpose of David’s missions. And she puts our hero and narrator in grave danger.

M: The stakes are certainly high in this one.

D: The stakes are high in all the episodes, really, but in “Kordula” David has his sights set on the Meritocrat, and that ultimate confrontation is right around the corner….

M: If the Czech’s Saint Mikulos were to visit you today with an angel on one side and a devil on the other, which would side with you, the angel or the devil?

D: Let’s wait until we get to the conclusion of He Who Shall Remain Shameless before I answer that one.