A touch of flash--Fiction for Thursday--Dead Man's Son

Dead Man’s Son

By

Katherine Tomlinson

Peter hadn't much minded growing up without a father. His mother and grandmother doted on him and his mother's brother, Uncle Henry, was a huge presence in his life, teaching him how to pee standing up, and throw a curve ball and drive a stick shift car, which was way cooler than just being able to drive. Uncle Henry loved him, Peter knew, but sometimes he said things to him that Peter wished he hadn't, like when he told Peter his father was a piece of shit who would have ended up in prison if he hadn't been killed when he was.

"I'm sorry to say that Pete," Uncle Henry had said, "because you're a really good kid. But you've got bad genes."

Peter had thought his uncle was talking about blue jeans and that hadn't made any sense to him at all.

It had been Uncle Henry who'd told Peter how the doctor had extracted sperm from his dead dad and saved it for his mother and how three months after his father was cremated, she'd been injected with the sperm and he'd been conceived. Peter could have lived the rest of his life without knowing that.

But the information did explain a couple of things.

Like how it was that Peter could hear dead people talking whenever he wanted to. And sometimes, even when he didn't.

Kattomic Energy Interview: John Harrison

 John Harrison began his career directing rock videos and working as 1st Ass't Director for famed horror director, George Romero (Night of the Living Dead/ Creepshow). Harrison wrote and directed multiple episodes of Romero's classic TV series, Tales From The Darkside before helming Tales From the Darkside, The Movie for Producer Richard Rubinstein and Paramount Pictures which won Harrison the Grand Prix du Festival at Avoriaz, France.

Harrison has written and directed episodes of Tales From The Crypt (HBO), Earth 2 (NBC), Profiler (NBC), and Leverage (TNT). He has written and directed world premier movies for the USA Network and Starz/Encore.

Harrison’s six-hour miniseries adaptation of Frank Herbert's monumental bestseller, Dune, which he also directed, was an Emmy-winning success in the U.S., then internationally both in its broadcast premieres and subsequently in home video.

Harrison’s children of Dune, another six-hour mini-series encompassing the next two novels of Frank Herbert's mythic adventure series which he wrote and co-produced, was another Emmy winner for the SyFy Channel.

Harrison co-wrote the animated feature, dinosaur for Disney. He also wrote the adaptation of Clive Barker’s fantasy novels, Abarat, also for Disney. In the Fall of ’06, Harrison reunited with mentor George Romero to produce Romero’s film Diary of the Dead. His action suspense thriller, Blank Slate, for producer Dean Devlin, which Harrison wrote and directed, aired as twenty episode micro-series on TNT in the Fall of ’08. Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, which he wrote and directed, was released in 2009.

Between 2010 and 2012, Harrison has continued his relationship with TNT directing episodes of the series Leverage and, most recently, with his adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich story, Rear Window, for Executive Producer Michael Douglas.

Harrison has written screenplays for Robert Zemeckis , Richard Donner, Will Smith and Dean Devlin among others, and he has directed such diverse talent as William Hurt, Julianne Moore, Tim Roth, Annabella Sciorra, Peter Fonda, Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, Eric Stoltz and many others.

He is currently in the U.K. filming the webseries Residue.

Destiny Gardens is his first novel.

KT: You’re a successful television and screenwriter/director/composer--what made you decide to write a novel? Is this a story that’s been percolating for a while?

JH: Like many moments in my career, the decision to embark upon this new endeavor called Destiny Gardens was as much accidental as deliberate. For example, I never intended to write music for movies, but I was the guy with the piano. So when my partners and I needed a score for our first film, that job fell to me. That led to my doing the music for several of George Romero’s films, and some of my own. I never intended to be a screenwriter, but when I came to Hollywood I quickly realized that the only way I might get directing assignments was to write my way into them. So I learned the craft of screenwriting.

Destiny Gardens took an equally circuitous route. It was a story I had been carrying around for a long time. Certainly not as fully developed as the novel is now, but a story with themes and characters and moments that are all there in the novel. I originally tried to develop it as a TV series with two producer friends of mine, Robert Heath (Hot In Cleveland, Mad About You, About Jim) and Mark Waxman (Beakman’s World, Sweet Justice). We never got it off the ground, so I decided to write a screenplay and mount it as a low-budget independent film. That, too, fell by the wayside as other work intruded.

Finally, while directing Leverage episodes for producer Dean Devlin and TNT, I was searching for a new project of my own to start. I kept coming back to DG. Every writer has a story he or she can’t shake, and this one was mine. So I decided to use my time off between Leverage episodes to see if I could finally get the entire story down. I began by writing what I thought was a traditional film treatment but soon realized I was, in fact, novelizing it. So I decided to keep going. Got about a third into it before, once again, other work intruded. Some screenplay assignments and more Leverage episodes. Work on DG was fitful.

During the Summer of 2012, though, I finally hunkered down, and between directing gigs I finished it.

vintage Copper and Enamel Necklace and earrings on eBay

I'm paring down my accessories and getting rid of some things I never wear. That includes this gorgeous Matisse copper and enamel necklace and earrings set. It's on auction now at eBay.  I have the same set in a brown/orange enamel (these belonged to my mother) and although my favorite colors are blue and green, I wear the orange/brown one all the time and hardly ever wear this one. So it's time to find the set a new home.

Kattomic Energy now has a QR code

Not that the blog needed one, but I ran across a free QR code generator here and just couldn't resist.

Christine Pope: The Kattomic Energy Interview

 A native of Southern California, Christine Pope has been writing stories ever since she commandeered her family's Smith-Corona typewriter back in the sixth grade. Her short fiction has appeared in Astonishing Adventures, Luna Station Quarterly, and the journal of dark fiction, Dark Valentine. Two of her short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Christine Pope writes as the mood takes her, and her work encompasses paranormal romance, fantasy, science fiction, and historical romance. She blames this on being easily distracted by bright, shiny objects, which could also account for the size of her shoe collection. After spending many years in the magazine publishing industry, she now works as a freelance editor and graphic designer in addition to writing fiction. She fell in love with Sedona, Arizona, while researching the Sedona Trilogy and now makes her home there, surrounded by the red rocks. No alien sightings, though...not yet, anyway!

KT: Your new book, Angel Fire, rounds out the paranormal/sci-fi romance series you dubbed “The Sedona Trilogy.” Is that the last we’ll see of those characters?

CP: I hope not. I do have another trilogy partway sketched out in my head, but I’m sort of waiting to see how the original trilogy does now that it’s complete before I start into anything new.

              

KT:  Did you know when you wrote the first book in the series (Bad Vibrations) that the story would evolve into a trilogy?

CP: Actually, I didn’t. The original idea had been kicking around in my head for a while, and then it was on a later read-through while I was reformatting the book for print that I realized there was this overarching story going on behind Persephone’s and Paul’s romance that needed to be told. That’s when I decided to expand the book into a trilogy.

KT: Your love for Sedona really comes through in the books and I love that you set so many scenes in real places. When did you first visit Sedona? Did you fall in love with it the moment you set eyes on the red rocks?

CP: Our first visit was at the end of March in 2011. While I was doing research for Bad Vibrations, I came across a lot of references to Sedona in terms of UFO activity and alien abductions, including the theory that there’s actually an alien base built underground somewhere in Boynton Canyon. I’d already heard that the area was beautiful and a New Age center, so we decided to take a road trip and do some research in person.

In a way, my experience kind of mirrors that of Persephone in Bad Vibrations, since we wound our way down through the canyon on 89A and it was dark when we came into town. So it was really the next morning that I got my first glimpse of the red rocks – and yes, it was love at first sight. I can’t even really explain it, because I’m not that much of a “desert” person, but this doesn’t feel like a desert to me because there’s so much that stays green here year-‘round. In fact, it’s very green right now because of the monsoon rains we get in northern Arizona at this time of year.

KT: What’s next for you this year?

CP: Well, the next book out will be another novel in the Gaian Consortium series, The Gaia Gambit. It’s finished and with beta readers as we speak, so I’m hoping it will be out in at least ebook format by the end of August. Toward the end of September I’ll be re-releasing the second of my books that were published by a small press and to which I’m gradually getting back the rights. That one, Playing With Fire, is a paranormal romance novella.  In October I’m planning to put out an omnibus version of the Sedona Trilogy, and then either in later November or early December I’ll be releasing Ashes of Roses, a new novel in my Tales of the Latter Kingdoms series, this one based on the Cinderella fairytale. 

R.I.P. Dennis Farina

The first time I remember seeing Dennis Farina was in CRIME STORY, Michael Mann's stylish rtro cop show. I always enjoyed seeing him--and he popped up in some unexpected places, like in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. First James Gandolfini and now Dennis Farina. Damn.

Cersei Lannister is Clary Fray's mom!

The first time I watched the trailer for Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, I thought somehow Nigella Lawson had been wrangled into a guest appearance. But no, that's an auburn-headed Lena Headey playing the crucial role of Jocelyn Fray.