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We
are pleased to present the following
article from the author of The
Shimmer
The
Shimmer
by David Morrell
Vanguard Press - July
2009
Read
Dr. Dolhenty's Review of this Book
Order
at Amazon
Rising
Above it All: How Rambo's Creator Earned
His Pilot's License
by David Morrell
Author of The
Shimmer
Readers familiar with my fiction know
how much I love doing research. For
Testament, I enrolled in an outdoor
wilderness survival course and lived above
timberline in the Wyoming mountains for 30
days. For The Protector, I spent a
week at the Bill Scott raceway in West
Virginia, learning offensive-defensive
driving maneuvers, such as the 180-degree
spins you see in the movies. I once broke
my collarbone in a two-day knife-fighting
class designed for military and law
enforcement personnel.
Two years ago, I began the longest
research project of my career. I was
preparing to write a novel called The
Shimmer, a fictional dramatization of
the mysterious lights that appear on many
nights outside the small town of Marfa in
west Texas. When the first settlers passed
through that area in the 1800s, they saw
the lights, and people have been drawn to
those lights ever since, including James
Dean who became fascinated by them when he
filmed his final movie Giant near Marfa in
1955.
The lights float, bob, and weave. They
combine and change colors. They seem far
away and yet so close that people think
they can reach out and touch them. In the
1970s, the citizens of Marfa organized
what they called a Ghost Light Hunt and
pursued the lights, using horses,
vehicles, and an airplane, but the lights
had no difficulty eluding them.
Because an airplane was used, I decided
to include one in The Shimmer. I'd
never written about a pilot, and the idea
of trying something new always appeals to
me. The dramatic possibilities were
intriguing. But a minute's thought warned
me about the monumental task I was
planning. As a novelist version of a
Method actor, I couldn't just cram an
airplane into my novel. First, I would
need to learn how airplanes worked so that
real pilots wouldn't be annoyed by
inaccuracies. Real pilots. That's when I
realized that it wouldn't be enough to
learn how airplanes worked. I would need
to take pilot training.
I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our
small airport has a flight school: Sierra
Aviation. I made an appointment with one
of the instructors, Larry Haight, who took
me up in a Cessna 172 on what's called a
"discovery" flight. The idea was to
"discover" whether I enjoyed the sensation
of being in the cockpit and peering
several thousand feet down at the ground.
Flying in a small aircraft is a much more
immediate and visceral experience than
sitting in the cabin of a commercial
airliner. Even in a Cessna, the canopy is
huge compared to the tiny windows on an
airliner. The horizon stretches
forever.
It turned out that I more than enjoyed
the experience. It was exhilarating and
fulfilling. I realized that this was
something I wanted to do not only for
research but also to broaden my life. As a
consequence, I eventually earned my
private pilot's license and bought a 2003
172SP. The plane was based near Dallas,
and my longest cross-country flight to
date (600 miles) involved piloting it from
there to Santa Fe. Truly, nothing can
equal controlling an aircraft, making it
do safely whatever I want while seeing the
world as if I were an eagle.
In The Shimmer, I wanted the
main character's attitude toward flying
("getting above it all") to help develop
the book's theme. The following passage
shows what I mean. You only need to know
that Dan Page is a police officer. When I
started pilot training, I figured that one
day I'd be relaxing in the sky, listening
to an iPod and glancing dreamily around.
As we learn in this section, the actuality
is quite different and more
substantial.
"Non-pilots often assumed that the
appeal of flying involved appreciating the
scenery. But Page had become a pilot
because he enjoyed the sensation of moving
in three dimensions. The truth was that
maintaining altitude and speed while
staying on course, monitoring radio
transmissions, and comparing a sectional
map to actual features on the ground
required so much concentration that a
pilot had little time for sightseeing.
"There was another element to flying,
though. It helped Page not to think about
the terrible pain people inflicted on one
another. He'd seen too many lives
destroyed by guns, knives, beer bottles,
screwdrivers, baseball bats, and even a
nail gun. Six months earlier, he'd been
the first officer to arrive at the scene
of a car accident in which a drunken
driver had hit an oncoming vehicle and
killed five children along with the woman
who was taking them to a birthday party.
There'd been so much blood that Page still
had nightmares about it.
"His friends thought he was joking when
he said that the reward of flying was
'getting above it all,' but he was
serious. The various activities involved
in controlling an aircraft shut out what
he was determined not to remember.
"That helped Page now. His confusion,
his urgency, his need to have answers --
on the ground, these emotions had thrown
him off balance, but once he was in the
air, the discipline of controlling the
Cessna forced him to feel as level as the
aircraft. In the calm sky, amid the
monotonous, muffled drone of the engine,
the plane created a floating sensation. He
welcomed it yet couldn't help dreading
what he might discover on the ground."
At one point a character asks Page, how
high he intends to fly.
"Enough to get above everything," he
answers.
"Sounds like the way to run a
life."
That's an important lesson I learned
from flying.
©
2009 David Morrell. Reprinted with
permission.
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David Morrell, author of
The
Shimmer, is the
award-winning author of numerous
New York Times
bestsellers, including
Creepers and
Scavenger. Co-founder of
the International Thriller
Writers organization and author
of the classic Brotherhood of
the Rose spy trilogy, Morrell
is considered by many to be the
father of the modern action
novel.
For more information please
visit www.davidmorrell.net.
Learn more about The
Shimmer at www.shimmerbook.com.
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