{"id":521,"date":"2016-12-15T13:06:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T19:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/?p=521"},"modified":"2016-12-15T13:20:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T19:20:56","slug":"chat-with-tom-shepherd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/chat-with-tom-shepherd\/","title":{"rendered":"Chat with Tom Shepherd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, it&#8217;s Mischa. This should have gone out last week, but Aadi has been sick and she didn&#8217;t tell me about it. So, I&#8217;m stepping in to take over and get this done. Tom, here, was gracious enough to come in and chat with me today. He&#8217;s the star of A Shepherd&#8217;s Song by Janice Lane Palko.<\/p>\n<p>[Mischa] Who or what are you? What are your vitals? (age, sex, species)<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] My name is Tom Shepherd, I&#8217;m a senior physics major at Three Rivers University in Pittsburgh.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa] What part do you play in the story?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] I&#8217;m the main character. How about that? I was never the main anything before, and now there&#8217;s a book about my life.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa] How would you describe your book?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] The book describes how I went from being one of life&#8217;s biggest losers to having such a wonderful future, if I hadn&#8217;t read the book, I wouldn&#8217;t have believed it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0Tell me about where you live? Who do you live with?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] I live in the dorms at the university with my roommate, Rob Bubash. He&#8217;s big, loud, and annoying. At 6 feet 4, I describe him as looking like an origami bird, I&#8217;d once made in fourth grade art class. If you overlook all of that, he&#8217;s got a heart of gold and takes care of me when I really mess things up.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 What\u2019s the most important thing in your life right now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] At the beginning of my story, the only thing important to me is surviving. I didn&#8217;t think I had much of a future. But my story is one of hope and redemption.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 What do you hope nobody ever finds out about you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] Now, I don&#8217;t fear anyone finding out about the old me, but when the story begins, I&#8217;m a vulnerable mess of a guy, who lies and connives because I believe no one could ever love the real me.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 What do you like or dislike about the other characters from your book?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] What I like about the other characters in my story is that we are all basically good people who are just trying to cope when life deals you a bad hand.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 In your opinion, what is your best feature?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] The girls in the book tell me it&#8217;s my eyes, but I think my brain is my best feature. I&#8217;m pretty smart, but that is also a bit of a curse as I overthink everything.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 What&#8217;s the worst thing someone ever did to you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] My dad was pretty much not there most of my life until he was forced to care for me. In the book, I describe our relationship like I&#8217;m a houseplant and he just waters me from time to time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0What&#8217;s the worst thing you&#8217;ve done to someone?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] The worst thing is lie&#8211;a big fat lie is at the center of my story.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0Read any good books? What were they?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] Since I&#8217;m in college, most of books are text books. I like Sci Fi because I&#8217;m really into astronomy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0What type of places do you hang out in?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] I&#8217;m pretty shy and don&#8217;t hang out much with anyone but Rob.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 What annoys you more than anything else?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] That&#8217;s easy. Chaz the other guy in my dorm. He thinks he&#8217;s better than everybody, especially me.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 What&#8217;s the most beautiful thing you&#8217;ve ever seen?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] Gloria. I meet her in the beginning of my story, and she&#8217;s so beautiful, at first, I don&#8217;t think she&#8217;s human.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0What time of day is your favorite?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] I love the night because that&#8217;s when the stars out. I love stargazing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0What kind of weather is your favorite?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] Summer. My story takes place in the winter before Christmas, and I&#8217;m dreaming of heading to Martinique for spring break.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 Do you have any pets? Do you want any pets? What kind?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] Me a pet? I&#8217;m afraid of dogs. And, of course, Gloria&#8217;s family has a bulldog named Regina who despises me. (I think she could tell that I was a liar.)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0 Do you have any magical items? Where did you get them?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] I don&#8217;t have anything that&#8217;s really magical, but I do have a really awesome telescope, and it allows me to gaze at the constellations&#8211;so in a way, that&#8217;s really a magical item.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa]\u00a0If you could change anything in your book, what would it be and why?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] My story has a happy ending, but there are some scenes in my book where I&#8217;m such a pathetic loser and I do some incredibly idiotic things, that I cringe just thinking about them. I really didn&#8217;t want to share them in the book because I&#8217;m not proud of them, but then I realized that they were just stepping stones in my life that have brought me to this better place. And if my poor judgement and choices could be transformed, then I thought maybe others might be helped too. If not, they will at least get a laugh at how moronic I could be at times.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Mischa] Last question and I&#8217;ll let you go. Who would play you in the movie?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Tom] My story happened in the 1980s, and in the book, they tell me I look like Tom Cruise (in his younger days).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-524\" src=\"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/fc98aa35e7734bdd7dd5f7a72af20a3a-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/fc98aa35e7734bdd7dd5f7a72af20a3a-194x300.jpg 194w, http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/fc98aa35e7734bdd7dd5f7a72af20a3a.jpg 403w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, it&#8217;s Mischa. This should have gone out last week, but Aadi has been sick and she didn&#8217;t tell me about it. So, I&#8217;m stepping in to take over and get this done. Tom, here, was gracious enough to come in and chat with me today. He&#8217;s the star of A Shepherd&#8217;s Song by Janice [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentarybyaadi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/A_Shepherds_Song_amazon.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7xtYd-8p","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions\/527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}