As a kid, did you go through a phase of being obsessed with the paranormal? I did. My early years were spent buried in books about UFOs, Bigfoot, and ghost stories. No tale was too tall, no conclusion too far of a leap. Tabloids and low-budget TV shows reinforced my belief that the world was filled with supernatural shenanigans, and I was stunned that the adults around me could be so oblivious to the peril we were in. Surely the grownups had to be aware. How could they not be?
My parents eventually convinced me that my trusted sources like the National Enquirer were as fake as pro wrestling. That calmed me down a bit, though I was still coming to grips with the realization that the universe remained a big and mysterious place. Even if I was no longer living in fear of imminent demonic possession or alien abduction, that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty left that eluded explanation.
In that vein, last year was a big one for UFO lore (the latest official term is “UAP” but I’m stubborn). Congressional hearings and mostly serious news articles have forced the notion of extraterrestrial visitors back into our cultural consciousness, dredging up some of those same feelings I’d wrestled with as a kid. The whistleblower stories are compelling, and it’s hard to say what’s more frightening: that we’re being visited by aliens, or the lengths our government is supposedly going to in order to conceal it.
Of course, there’s been zero physical evidence produced. Classified, you understand, for our own protection. Need to know and all that.
Riight.
So what’s more likely? That aliens are among us, or that it’s all an info op to cover up some technological breakthroughs the Pentagon would prefer to keep to themselves? I’ll point out that the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes had been flying operationally for years before DoD and CIA fessed up to them.
I’ll confess that I don’t know what to make of these stories, much less the cultural impact they’d have if true. They have the patina of truth, but without evidence I’m inclined to think it’s intentional misdirection. Either way, I’m left believing in a conspiracy theory.
All of this has been on my mind more than usual, because of course I was in the middle of writing about an unsuspecting human who gets swept up into an extraterrestrial civilization at the time:
Being a paramedic is a tough job; it’s tougher when you stumble onto a crashed alien spacecraft.
Melanie Mooney thought she was just doing her job when she came upon an unusual accident in the deep woods late one night. Acting alone, what she found was nothing like she’d expected. What followed was even more unexpected.
Recruited by emissaries of a galaxy-spanning civilization, Melanie is thrust into a world she thought only existed in supermarket tabloids. As the first human in the Galactic Union Medical Corps, she cares for extraterrestrials in desperate need of a medic who can ignore the fact that they’re nothing like any patient she’s ever seen, even on their best days. And in emergency medicine, it’s a given that every patient is having the worst day of their life.
Each run takes her deeper into the galaxy and farther from home, navigating alien cultures that only get weirder with each call. It will take all of Melanie’s experience, instinct, and grit to prove herself—and the rest of humanity—to be worthy of the Union. That’s a lot to put on a woman who’d just like to end the day with a cheeseburger and a cold beer.
Maybe it’s serendipitous that my first novel about space aliens and UFOs comes at a time when people are more aware of their possible existence than ever before. It’s a sharp turn from my usual technothriller/hard SF tales and was a ton of fun to write. If you like fish-out-of-water adventures with a plucky main character and poking fun at some well-worn alien abduction tropes along the way, then I think you’ll enjoy Interstellar Medic.
The first installment, The Long Run, will be out in paperback, ebook, and audio next Tuesday, March 5th.
The Chiles Files 