Introduction to Pernoste & Dahl

a writing duo on Medium

Hello everybody in Medium-Land, writers, bloggers, poets, artists and creatives extraordinaire. I am Anneliese Dahl, and my writing partner is JD Pernoste. We write poetry, short fiction (of different sorts), whimsical things, and blogs about ourselves or poetry or writing. We’re going to tell you a little bit about ourselves.

[Pernoste] Are you sure about this? I’m not sure people would really want to know much about us.

[Anneliese] Pernoste! Of course they will. Or maybe they will… haha. I don’t have a clue. But I really want to feel more at home here, and right now I feel like a stranger nobody wants to talk to.

[P] I think I’m starting to hear crickets already. Oh, wait… I think I hear my mother calling.

[A] No, sit back down. We’re going to do this, Pernoste. We want people to know us, and we want to know them. Right?

[P] OK. I was kidding. I’ll start.

Most people perceive me as a very serious fellow, though I’m not that serious. Too much of my life has been spent as a scientist, I suppose. I have a PhD in Neuroscience & Immunology with almost 30 years of research experience in academia, the pharmaceutical world, and in the technology industry. I’ve broadened beyond the brain and immune system, though, as my job responsibilities evolved me into a self-proclaimed (in all humility) “Everything-ologist”. Now I do a lot of cancer research with a small team of researchers, but we also study autoimmune disease, diabetes, lupus, arthritis, drug toxicity, and atherosclerosis.

[A] Well, you are a smarty pants (in the good way) I have to say. But I like that you do a lot of other things too.

[P] Yes, I’m a bit of an oddball, but the odder things I don’t tend to share as broadly. I’ve also spent most of my life studying ghosts and reincarnation and spiritual healing. You and I have adopted techniques for remote healing and also for remotely helping people with ghost/demon problems. Probably best to save that for another time, haha.

[A] People don’t respond well when we talk about that stuff, lol. You’re also a writer of books and an artist, and odder yet, haha, you’re a poet.

[P] I have around 60 scientific publications, but I’ve also been writing stories and poetry my whole life, and drawing pictures. My art has evolved into digital art in which I use snippets of dozens of free-use photos that I combine into images to make something completely new. I once published a couple satires of Greek Mythology (that are set on another planet) in epic poem style, complete with illustrations. Below is a new picture I just put together of the characters in one of these books.

[A] These are the epic poetry books with the crazy characters that inspired critics to call you a “lunatic wit?” Haha. I love that. You are a bit of a lunatic. That’s what I love about you.

[P] OK. Enough of me. How about you?

[A] First a question… I’m young enough to be your daughter, so what do you tell people, Dr. Pernoste, about your mid-twenties female writing partner?

[P] Haha. It was not difficult for my wife, once she met you and realized we truly are only writing partners, of course. At work….. very few people in my professional life know much about my writing.

Now, stop delaying. What about you?

[A] Ugh. First tell me you’re not going to use that illustration of me. It’s not from a photo of me (I refuse to have my picture taken), but it’s so close to me. However, I look so serious. Never mind. I know you’ll use it.

[P] Yup. I like that it captures how you see right into people.

[A] Yeah… OK. Whatever. It’s always so terrifying for me in some ways to tell people about me. I share things about my life in our writings, but it feels somehow removed there. To talk directly about myself in complete candor…. scary.

People also see me as very serious, but (as you know) I have a lunatic and whimsical sense of humor, similar to yours. I can thank my childhood, and my first true loves in life, my mother and father. I had them only until I was 5 or 6, but they were so silly and fun with me all the time. I would laugh until I was weak and would collapse on the floor. It has always been my sense of humor that has gotten me through bad times, and I love to make other people laugh.

Life went badly soon after my parents died. I was taken in by an Aunt and Uncle, who were a bit abusive. Then, when they died in a car accident, my “sister” and I went into foster care to eventually end up on the streets. I don’t say this lightly, nor with any feeling that I need sympathy. There will always be Bad People in the world, but there are many, many more Good People in the world. I didn’t deserve what happened to me (and my sister) as a child, and I don’t know that I deserved to escape the life I was trapped in on the street when so many of my fellows did not. I nearly died a few times, and if not for committing to saving my sister, I would have given in to my fate. Sometimes I need to remind myself that I am free. But I am happy and in a different life now. Not a brilliant scientist, but I have work that pays the bills.

[P] I feel so badly that you went through all that, but I’m happy to see that you’re in a much better place now. So where does writing and poetry come in?

[A] I’ve written poetry for as long as I can remember. Of course, as a child I wrote of childish things only for myself, but I grew up quickly in life with all I’ve been through. I have struggled for the past few years to release in words all the hurt and mournful things within me, these poems appreciated by many as beautiful but mostly heart-breaking. [I even wrote two books of these sad poems “In these flowers of Eden” and “Under forgotten skies”, which I recently took off Amazon.] Well, they’re not all sad. Some are quite funny.

In those days, mostly on Twitter, I helped other writers to improve their poetry, and you are one of the ones I helped (though you didn’t need much help.) I’ve learned all I can from crying about the past, so now I use my perspective (and your perspective) to try to write deep and layered stories with some sort of over-reaching message.

[P] You have an incredible instinct for poetry, how to capture depths of feeling with few words. So, anyway, we met on Twitter, complete strangers for a few months but became friends by direct messaging.

[A] Surprisingly we seem to have a lot in common, and our friendship and partnership is very easy. Then we realized we actually lived fairly close to each other. I have since moved even closer, and we’re able to actually sit down together frequently to do our writing. I’ve become almost like a part of your family, though I don’t intrude much. Your wife is beautiful and your son and daughter so smart and nice… beautiful too, of course.

[P] My son will be happy to know he’s beautiful.

[A] Haha… yes, he is. So maybe we should describe the kinds of things we write? We’re fairly eclectic, in a consistent kind of way.

[Pernoste] Our first collaboration was when I illustrated two books of your poetry from that time, that you recently withdrew from Amazon, but then I had the idea to write something together that was almost guaranteed to not be read by anybody… a science-fiction dystopian spiritual verse novel, “In the Minuses”.

[A] There’s a mouthful, “science-fiction dystopian spiritual verse novel”. Haha. And it wasn’t our goal to write something nobody would read, rather to push the boundaries on verse novels… to find our own way to balance poetry and prose in a beautiful way to also effectively tell a serious story. We are thankful that those who have read it think it is profound and beautiful and that it captures terrifying aspects of society today… often comparing it to Orwell’s 1984.

[P] Some have reached out to us saying that if feels prophetic to them. Please know that it actually has a happy ending, unlike many dystopian novels. We don’t believe in turning away from terrible issues, but we also believe that there is always hope.

[A] Yes, that sums us up pretty well. We sometimes write about some dark stuff, but there is always an aspect of hope, or a main character who shows extraordinary strength in an impossible situation.

[P] We write poetry, short fiction (sci-fi, horror, occult, life, humor), and humorous blogs. Check us out here on Medium at Pernoste & Dahl.

More than words

If words could do justice to our beautiful memories and our hopeful inspirations, and could immortalize our loves in libraries of our lives, there could be only love and a world beyond grief.

by Anneliese Dahl from “Under Forgotten Skies” (no longer available on Amazon)

Check out our writing here on Medium.