Author Spotlight: John Robinson (aka Cameron Bane)

Cameron Bane (aka John Robinson)

This week’s featured author is John Robinson (aka Cameron Bane). Here is what he told us about the inner world of authors:

Lately I’ve been reading some older paperbacks, and the last one I finished is a corker. It’s a mishmosh of genres—science fiction, horror, comedy, tragedy, suspense, even a spiritual subtext—but somehow the author pulls it all together, and the result is a mindbending roller-coaster ride that’s not for the squeamish.

In his updated afterword the author addresses the topic of where he got his idea for this one. Everyone from his close friends and loved ones to his editor and agent all said essentially the same thing: “Son, for God’s sakes, what dark corner of your mind did you pull this one out of?”

Therein hangs the tale. I think every man-jack (and woman-jill) of us puts some of our “real selves” on the page, whether we set out to or not. The truly scary part comes when strangers read our works and judge not only the writing, but—quite possibly—the fevered brains that produced it.

It’s all of a piece, though, and unless one is writing math textbooks, I don’t see any way of us avoiding a little literary nudity.

And speaking of clothes, I’m a child of the sixties—graduated HS in 1970—but it takes things like looking through my old annual to remind me of how utterly ridiculous the fashion sense was in that benighted decade. I wonder if when I’m eighty I’ll likewise look at pictures of current clothing with equal horror.
I’m going to say yes, but qualify it with the fact that some of what today’s flaming youth is sporting is downright hilarious. To wit, the blue jeans with the shortened legs, hung so low the wearer’s underwear-wrapped bony hinder is paramount.

I see these sideways-hatted lads waddling penguin-like down the street, and two thoughts come to mind. One, I hope these kids never have to suddenly run—say, from a cop—because they wouldn’t get two steps before doing a faceplant on the sidewalk. And two, for all their up yours, tough guy posturing, they look very much like the old “Stringbean” character from Hee Haw.