Hello everyone! There is a new author Alex Cochran who is giving out his book The Pollutant Speaks for free on Amazon for an exclusive limited-time giveaway! If you are interested in a book that centers around the topic of pollution (since climate change is such a dooming aspect for all of us), I strongly recommend you check out the book. It’s completely free!
The Pollutant Speaks by Alex Cochran
How The Pollutant Speaks was Made – How The Pollutant Spoke
Up until a few years ago, writing was an occasional itch. I picked it up and wrote screenplays, short stories and essays whenever the compulsion came over me. That all changed with the reading of Howl and seeing in my mind’s eye the story’s protagonist sitting outside a hospital.
When I wrote the first draft of The Pollutant Speaks, I wanted to bring together some critical factors in my life. I was deeply influenced by discovering Howl by Allan Ginsberg and The Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I loved the pathos and dystopian worldview that these poets summoned up. Mixing prose and poetry has never been popular, though—even in Tolkien, it’s the part everyone skips (I’m sure there are the virtuous few).
I wanted to blend this into my lifelong love of science fiction of the type that China Mieville, Ursula Le Guin and Ray Bradbury produce. SF with a tangible flavour, ‘the search for the far metaphor’ as Bradbury once said. I also wanted to provide a ray of hope for all the people I saw suffering from the pressure of work, life and the human condition. It seemed that everywhere I looked, someone was getting broken under the wheel of the world, and this developed into the idea of the “Crush” in The Pollutant Speaks, which has similarities to Moloch, the people-eating bank in Ginsberg’s Howl.
The final goal was to tell an adventure about getting out there, picking ourselves up and getting a good look at what might be out there.
It became clear that just tinkering with the first draft wouldn’t cut it: I’d have to put in some tough slog and a lot of missteps. The itch had become a rash. I took time off and hid in the tower of Cambridge University Library for a few months to make the draft a reality, where the anthropology books and rare dictionaries of exotic languages provided unlimited inspiration. It was in that tower that Evan’s demons were invented.
Having resolved to try and do the initial vision justice, I wanted the book to work on two levels. You can read The Pollutant straight, as an adventure, and let the inner demons just pass by, or enjoy them for poking fun at the poor Evans, or you can play the hidden game within the book and see if you can figure out which of a hundred poets, writers or musicians the demons are pulling their comments from—or are they quoting the eponymous Pollutant Speaks itself? Even the chapter titles themselves were not immune from the demons’ reach.
When I had finished, I was terrified that I’d created a monster (I possibly still am). Now that I have met and talked to total strangers who have read the book and were enthusiastic about the story and the characters, they’ve told me that they felt it drops the reader in at the deep end but pays off big. I’m very grateful to those readers and their honest feedback. Without them, I probably wouldn’t have had the gall to market The Pollutant or to call myself a writer in front of others. As Evans notes, we’ve all got a little bit of the Crush.
About the Author Alex Cochran
Alex Cochran is the pseudonym of Alex Weinle, a writer based in Cambridge, England. He authors short stories, graphic novels, and film scripts. His debut novel is THE POLLUTANT SPEAKS from Bee Orchid Press, with a forthcoming audiobook version.
His works often revolve around possible futures and immersing the reader in the people of those worlds to discover something about themselves. See what he’s up to on Instagram @alexcochran.
At various times, a physicist, a surfer, a code monkey and a journalist, Alex focuses on crafting and conceiving fiction with all the pain and joys involved. He has written screenplays for short films Insider (2018), CopyCats (2020) and McPherson’s Toys (2021) (see IMDB) and short fiction. Alex has an MA in Science Fiction to go with his near-mint-conditon-unused BSc in Astrophysics. He narrates for the Tales To Terrify and other podcasts.
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