It's simple, yet complex. The simplicity lies within the occurrence of what we've almost affectionately labeled, "The Event." It is the appearance of the numbers 111 or 1111 at seemingly random moments, but where there is an accompanying feeling of deja vu, as if there were something going on. When we see those numbers, we catch a faint glimpse of that something... and to quote David Bowman from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it's "Something wonderful." But then again, it might just be some sort of Pavlovian reaction to a certain stimulus, that of recognizing the recurring pattern of numbers. It's sticky business, this phenomena. Is it really something supernatural or are we attributing meaning to happenings based on random chance? When we get to the bottom of the argument, we just don't know. But it's fun to wonder and imagine.

Exactly. We discussed the phenomena and our own reactions to it. None of us felt that there was any exact Truth to explain it all. Instead, we imagined that the Truth might be hidden somewhere in the diversity of The Event's manifestations. We then decided to all work with our own understanding of the phenomena, and to try to discover meanings behind it within our own approaches toward fiction. Perhaps somewhere in the mish-mash of our stories there exists a kernel of Truth.

Well, we all look at it in our own way. I tend to see things as imbued with spiritual energy. I see the world we live in, the people around us, our relationships, all of it connected and moving together in constant motion, with purpose and design behind it all.

Well, even Einstein believed in God, and believed in a grand design that holds it all together. Then there's his famous quote that "God doesn't play dice with the universe." There are others who came after him as well, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking -- celebrity scientists who helped the layman understand this wonderful idea that the Universe is a fantastic ordered entity that grows and evolves and is somehow more beautiful and complex than we can understand at this time. 

Personally, I do believe in God, and my religious tendencies fall along the Christian Mythos. So that influences my thought, and therefore my fiction. But there's a deep curiosity that gnaws at me, that makes me ask questions of God and science and nature. I want to know where I come from and where I'm going, and why along the way does strange phenomena take place, like signposts or a beacon? Life is too wonderful to be chance, too complex and ordered to be accident.

The theory of evolution, for example, to me is a cop out. It tries to explain away the magic and dignity of life, the importance and rarity of consciousness. But no one can pinpoint an observable example of evolution in progress. Why not? Evolution suggests that disorder spontaneously transforms into order, that simplicity moves toward complexity. But that's absolute bollocks, isn't it? Even the Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that a System can only move from a state of complexity to one of simplicity. A System cannot gain energy, or complexity, or order... it can only lose energy to Entropy, it can only move toward simplicity and chaos. 

The entirety of modern American culture seems to be one where Reason and Science supplanted Religion and Spirituality – not only Christianity, but also the beliefs of the indigenous people of the continent. However, even today Science is learning that it's been barking up the wrong tree for the last couple hundred years. Some scientists seem to think that one day they will prove the existence of God, rather than their previous atheistic bent. There’s a new mode of thought emerging called Entanglement Science, the study of the interconnectedness of things. It’s really nothing new, just repackaged and made to appear modern for our progressive sensitivities. In reality, it’s a very old Eastern way of looking at the world.

Yes! That’s the one thing the Eastern world never lost sight of. It’s an idea the Western Christian Mystics celebrated for centuries until it was hidden away by the Church. It's the thread that holds it all together. The unseen world around us supports the visible world. Our senses are tuned to the physical realm. We see a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We hear within a certain frequency range. We have limited senses of taste and smell compared to other living creatures. Our existence is keyed into a small time frame of about 70 years (if we’re lucky) and then we're left to what may or may not exist outside of ourselves. Yet all around us there exists another world, perhaps another state of consciousness. Early Christians believed that the Kingdom of God was all around us. The Essenes and the Gnostics believed the physical world to be the illusion, a diversion from true reality that was in the presence of God.

I really believe that it’s our job to discover as much as possible about who we are, who God is, what our place is in the universe, what is our destiny. We are responsible for our lives and our choices. I suppose I’m big on existentialism.

Well, I’d like to be portrayed as one so deep! (laugh) I suppose on one level I am, but it’s also quite a bit of fun to think about, and to play with on an imaginary level. I’m a big fan of speculative fiction and the idea of alternate realities. I like to toy with the idea that dreams can be real, and reality can be a dream. Shakespeare said that we all players on stage in a guilded cage. If he were alive today, he’d say we were all in our own movie.

I’m a big fan. Everything. Every genre. I drive my friends crazy because we can never agree on a tape at the video store – I’ve seen them all! (laugh) But yes, I like to reference pop culture in my writing. I supposed I stole that idea from [Thomas] Pynchon. I even use on of his characters in one of my tales, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway." Another of the stories in the book, "The Melodies of Life," is intertwined with an old Orson Welles film called The Stranger. There are parallels between the characters, the setting, and the plot. I’d like to think the story makes a strong statement about racism, intolerance, injustice, social inequality… somewhere below the surface where the meaning is illuminated by hidden clues and connections with the film. On the top, it’s a murder mystery of sorts.

"Ashes" appears to be a mystery on the surface, and I think that’s what draws the reader in. But I’d venture to suggest that the surface mystery becomes secondary to the action in the story before too long, and the reader is left slack-jawed and perhaps even shocked by what is revealed as the tale moves on toward its inevitable conclusion.

In more ways than one. The word "apocalypse" comes from a Greek word meaning "revelation." For example, the last book of the Bible is called the Book of Revelation, and it is the final say on the idea of the Christian Apocalypse. Its purpose is to reveal prophecy and secrets about the "end of times." It’s both grim and hopeful, for the believer.

I think it teeters on both. I hope it does. Without giving anything away, I’d venture to say that the choice the protagonist must make at the end of the story seals his fate. If he reveals what he has learned, the guilty are absolved and "get out of jail free." If he keeps quiet, justice prevails, a harsh justice, perhaps even a cruel and unnecessary one. So his choice is to allow himself to be a tool of that justice, or to defy it and to bring salvation to a final few. What is right in that situation? What is wrong? His final decision rests on his nature, who he is. He cannot transcend himself. He makes the only choice he can make.

Absolutely. It’s the power of freewill. It’s part of what makes us human. The Genesis myth says that God was sitting around Heaven with "Others," and it was decided that "We will make man in Our image." I’ve always thought about that statement. In what ways are we like God? As I see it, it’s more than just the dictionary definition of sentience. First, we have the ability to create. We are artists, all of us. In some way we can all reach into that unseen power. It’s all around us. We have to cultivate it. For some people it’s a small shrubbery, for others a forest, but it’s there. 

We also have this wonderful thing called "freewill." We are the masters of our own destinies. We can choose how to behave and how to live. And we have to live with the consequences of our actions. I think many times we simplify it into binary opposites like good and evil, righteousness and sin. But I think that experience proves that such things are not so black and white, not so simple. There’s a lot of gray area there. There’s a lot of room where we have to work hard at determining what’s really right and wrong. If our choices were easy, it wouldn’t really be living.

Only in this story, in many ways, the choices are made for them. This story is about freedom. It’s about privacy, dignity, freedom, truth, justice, the American Way. And it’s about the things that are sometimes done to allow the illusion of the American Dream to endure. It’s gritty, dark and ugly, yet somehow it all seems necessary.

Of sorts. And I think my portrayal of the people who would sacrifice nearly anything to keep secrets secret or to further an agenda they think is for the better of the people is an accurate one. In one way the little civil libertarian and the anarchist in me wants to topple this monstrous mechanism of lies and misinformation that I believe is used to camouflage our country’s secret agendas, both foreign and domestic, that lead to oppression and exploitation of many innocent people worldwide. I want to champion the little guy! However, in another way, I’m stern right-winger when it comes to family values and a bit of a socialist when it comes to social programs. I’m torn between the idea that our government is too big and too secret, and at the same time I realize the security that size and secrecy maintains. 

So, I think in many ways the choices that the characters make in that story are not important at all. They’re all swallowed up by the machinery of a "shadow government" that will grind up and spit out any individual that gets in its way, even those working for the System.

I think so. I think many folk would agree with that assessment. And in the story, I try really hard not to make a value judgment about the loss of freedom in exchange for security. I think the story makes that clear. After the tragic events of 11 September and the subsequent developments on the home front, I find it intriguing that so many people so quickly are ready to give up certain freedoms, even civil rights, in trade for peace of mind. Just a few years back, a large faction of conservative Americans would have been ready to take up arms to protect those same rights. Even many individuals who consider themselves civil libertarians are second-guessing themselves. I believe the way we all view the role of government will change. Perhaps even the way our government works may change. In any case, we are at a turning point in our history.

It really is a sort of tapestry we’ve woven here. The boundaries between the stories are not solid and distinct, but they aren’t exactly part of one another either. There might be similar places, characters, or events shared between different tales, perhaps even common themes are explored in different ways. But it’s not just our stories that share similarities, it’s the real world as well. We’ve borrowed character names, places, films, titles of songs… so there are all these little threads running throughout the book’s text. It’s up to the reader to discover the threads and to determine which ones matter. Some are meaningless, some are integral to what the author might be trying to get across. It’s all part of the way we wanted things to appear connected to one another.

Well, I’d rather not. [he pauses] Well, I can tell you this one… there’s a character in one of Oscar’s stories, "Presence." His name is Johnny Temple, and he’s partially modeled after me.

He’s always late! (laughs)

Exactly. (laughs again). But seriously, all of us have our own ideas about The Event and what those numbers mean. We just tried to have fun with the mystery of it all, and at the same time use it to fuel our fiction. You’ll find nearly every genre in the book, a little something for everyone. And then, between each story you’ll find true life anecdotes about our individual clashes with the numbers 111 and 1111.

In the early Nineties, I was having a discussion with some family members. During that conversation, I learned of a family friend who was experiencing the same phenomena. He never talked about it to me, and I never spoke with him about it until recently. The subject came up in conversation when he noticed me wearing my 11:11 "Are you part of The Event" t-shirt. He asked me how I knew about it. He was floored when I told him I’d been experiencing the phenomenon since the early 80s and that I had met other people who had been a part of it. He nearly fell off his chair when he heard we’d written a book using it as a catalyst for a series of short stories.

Not only in our personal sphere of influence either. There are people all over the globe, from different countries and cultures who experience the same phenomena with the same numbers. There are a number of websites running that attempt to explore the Mystery while serving as a sort of "watering hole" for those of us looking for others who share this experience. Further, there are nearly as many explanations of the phenomenon as there are people who experience it; at different levels and of course influenced by different stimuli, different education and upbringing, different religious traditions.

Well, it’s sort of an anagram constructed by on letter from each of our names. We didn’t want to just put our names on the book and leave it at that. While we were writing, we came to realize that the stories seemed to take on a life of their own. They seemed to piece together like the fragments from a jigsaw puzzle. Our meetings were more than writing critique sessions, more than brainstorming for ideas. It was almost a mystical experience in itself. Our thinking seemed to be aligned. We would come with similar ideas at the same time, completely independent of one another.

The word is very interesting. To be honest, when I first suggested it, I had no idea what the word meant. I just remembered it from that old Door’s song where Jim sings, "Mr. Mojo Risin’…" It was an anagram for his name. If you shuffle the letters around, you’ll get "Jim Morrison." I thought it was a cool idea, and the word MOJO borrowed one letter from each of our names. Then I looked up the word and discovered that it’s usually a term that refers to magic that wards against evil. It’s also a term for drugs or for something that’s "cool."

The idea that our book would somehow be some sort of talisman or some sort of conduit for goodness was something I thought fit my personal objective for the writing, and the others agreed. Also, in many ways some of the stories do investigate other realms of awareness and consciousness, "altered states." That would be almost drug like. And to be honest, we all think the whole project is pretty cool. We hope some of readers agree.