Audible Pulp Available

The first Kattomic Energy Podcast is here!

This is Canadian actress Nika Farahani reading my story "Pulp Christmas." It was recorded by Trent Radio CFFF 92.7 in Peterborough, Ontario. It was scheduled for broadcast on Christmas Day but program director James Kerr decided it didn't really fit in with Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales." He is however, planning on recording a companion piece with the story being read in a male voice. It'll be fun to compare.

I'm thrilled because it's always exciting to hear your words come alive off the page. Listen and tell me what you think.

Thanks to G. Wells Taylor who fiddled around with the file for me.

The Sin Eater is Live!

What a fantastic way to start the new decade. I woke up to an email message from the editors of Dark Fire telling me that the new issue was online and that my story "The Sin Eater" was up.

This is a dark story that was inspired by something that really happened. When I was a little girl I was out grocery shopping with my mother. We were in line and a woman behind me just leaned over and blurted out, "My son is gay." My mother, who had gone to art school and known gay men before it was cool, just looked at her and said, "Do you love him?" And the woman nodded and my mother said, "Then that's all right then."

I thought it was weird that a total stranger would just say something like that but my mother said it happened to her all the time. People tell me things.

And here's the weird thing. People tell me things too. They'll confess to things they won't tell thier priest. They'll share secrets they've kept close for years. It's unsettling and can be disturbing. And it's always strangers. My brother has people tell him things too but he's an attorney and they're paying him to listen.
I showed my brother this story and he shook his head and asked me if I ever wrote stories about people who aren't crazy. I think he worries about me.

Astonishing Adventures Magazine #8 is here

The special anniversary double issue of Astonishing Adventures Magazine is now available at Mediafire and issuu. The print version will be available from amazon.com early in January.

The issue is packed with goodies. Cormac Brown, one of the magazine's regular contributors and staunchest supporters offers up an interview with Kelli Stanley as well as a noir nod to Hammett's San Francisco in "The Tsar's Treasure." We have several debut stories--one from brothers V.J. and Justin Boyd and one from my good friend Berkeley Hunt.

The issue is our most international one featuring artists from Greece and writers from the US, the UK, Canada and Tenerife. (Our contributor Tony Thorne, whose wacky "Teething Pains" is a great example of pulp writing, is a Member in The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire so we call him "Sir Tony."

Christine Pope contributed a hilarious take on the vampire world, "High Noon at Hot Topic," illustrated by Jennifer Caro, a talented American artist now living in England.

There's seriously something for everyone in this issue--a dark take on Peter Pan, an even darker take on politics, a couple of fractured fairy tales, adventure stories from Brian Trent, Michael Patrick Sullivan, Mark Caldwell and Peter Mark May, a Black Spectre story from Roger Alford, and so on and so forth.

I am particularly proud of a story I wrote under my 'sudo Kat Parrish. Called "The Unclaimed," it was inspired by a news story about the plight of Detroit's citizens who are too poor to pay for the cremation of their loved ones and are simply abandoning them at the morgue. The news story haunted me.

Please check out the magazine and enjoy.

And Happy New Year to all.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to watch Queen for a Day, that reality show forerunner where four women vied to become "Queen for a Day" by telling their tragic stories. These tales would always make me cry, but the next time it was on, I'd be snuggled in my grandmother's lap watching with her. She never seemed to get upset, but her enjoyment of the show was always tinged with something a little more avid, more personal. It wasn't schadenfreude--it was more like a sense of sisterhood. My grandmother had a hard life, outlived her husband, her siblings, all three of her daughters and all three of her sons-in-law too. And she never complained. Never. Life was hard and well, life was hard. There was no real use whining about it.

I think she got a kick out of knowing that these poor women got something for their troubles. She didn't dwell on her problems but she was happy to discuss anyone else's. My mother (her youngest daughter) used to say that my grandmother enjoyed the role of "Job's comforter." But the point is that when her friends reached out, there was someone there to listen.

Now that I'm older, I'm inclined to think the fix was probably in at QFAD, and the winners were probably pre-determined.

I was thinking about Queen for a Day today as I read about the woman who tweeted as her little boy was dying in a hospital E.R. A lot of the comments are of the "Maybe he wouldn't have drowned if you hadn't been on the Internet" variety. They are what my grandmother would have called "hateful." (And actually, so would I. There's a lot of my grandmother in me.)

Sometimes you read stories online that stop your heart. (I make it a practice not to read news stories about babies on the Internet, they're rarely good news but I couldn't escape this one.) My heart goes out to this woman because I remember the long night of my mother's dying. We were alone in her hospital room and she did not know I was there. I would have given anything to have been able to reach out and connect with someone.

There are those who say that that the Internet has isolated people. I don't agree. No one should go through something as terrible as losing a child alone. I hope that she received some solace from reaching out like that. My grandmother did not believe in vulgar language but she would have summed the whole issue up with "Mean people suck."

Never Drive Anything Taller Than You Are

I'm not a cranky person. The holidays don't stress me out because I like cooking and Christmas shopping. (I do it all online, so I cheat.) But today I found myself getting uncharacteristically annoyed by people driving rhino-sized cars. Who, even if they're driven by people so above the rest of traffic they might as well be in a tank, can't seem to see pedestrians four feet in front of them.

For me, the 10 commandments can be boiled down into three (I am an editor after all):
Don't be mean. Don't be greedy. Don't kill anyone. I think driving big honking cars violates all three...

Winners of NY Magazine Political Fictions Contest

I love a good short story, as I've mentioned before. The New York Magazine political fictions (it's their plural on the fiction) caught my eye, especially since it came with a couple of provocative samples they'd commissioned.

The winners are wonderful. And you can read them here.

I'm about to start reading Elegy Beach, which sounds like my kind of book. It's a sequel to a book I haven't read, Ariel. The genre is post-apocalyptic fantasy.

I don't know the writer either--Steven R. Boyett--but look forward to discovering someone new to me. Here's his website.

Books and Chocolate

One of my ongoing gigs is reviewing books for sites like California Literary Review, where I'm the go-to-gal for genre. We were just asked to pick our favorite book of 2009 and my pick was Thomas Pynchon's hilarious and accessible Inherent Vice. It's going to be a gateway book for readers who've always wanted to check him out but have been intimidated by the length of his work. Set in 70s L.A., it's a neo-noir, Pynchon's version of Chinatown. He provided his own narration for the book trailer and it's hilarious. Watch it to the very end.

I'm also recommending Bent Steeple by my friend Geoff (G. Wells Taylor to you). It is a very different kind of vampire book set in the far north of Canada. If you like King or Dean Koontz' character-driven books, you will love Bent Steeple. Geoff's making it easy for you to check it out, offering sample chapter downloads in a variety of formats. The whole book is only $1.99 in e-book format. Well, well, worth it.

It's raining here in L.A. which means it was a soup and chocolate chip cookie kind of day. Savoring a freshly baked cookie, I suddenly remembered I had to post a new recipe over at BellaOnline.com. If you like making candy and you don't have time to futz with candy thermometers, check out my easy chocolate truffle recipes.