Coming Wednesday!

The Christmas Stocking Tradition

When I was three years old and my brother one, we lived in Germany where they now how to do Christmas. My mother had special Christmas stockings made for us out of red and white felt with our names and designs embroidered and appliqued on. Mine had an angel. I still have that stocking and every year, i put it out. I love the tradition of stockings, and one of the things I often give my Christmas-loving friends is a gift wrapped in a stocking. You can find gorgeous ones all over the place and in all price ranges.

Here's a whole set of stockings I found on Etsy. They're not cheap--the whole set is $190, but these are not disposable items that get tossed after one use, but something that could become a cherished Christmas tradition, brought out every year as mine is.I also love that they're hand-made. While I embrace the present in many ways, I also value the past when everything was not mass-produced and one-size-fits all. My grandmothers, aunts and mothers all sewed and kitted and crocheted, and I have the afghans and crocheted mufflers to prove it. Not everyone was as lucky and for them, there's Etsy! Find these stockings here.

For more traditional designs of red, green, and white wollen stockings, try Garnet Hill, where they are currently having a sale.  Right now these stockings are half-price, or around $45.  Monogramming is asvailable and if you order by December 16 (Sunday), they guarantee delivery by Christamas.  they also have plaid designs and printed canvas options.

the Unicef catalogue offers a choice of two fabulous stockings created from Neaplese wool. The cuffs feature either an appliqued poinsettia or holly leaves and berries. I bought these stockings for friends last year and they were lovely. They only cost $20 each. And while you're on the website, you might want to check out their full range of holiday ornaments and such. It's getting a little late to order Christmas cards, but their cards are absolutely lovely and each box sold means more money in the Unicef coffers to help children around the world. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving. You can find the stockings here.

And finally, for those whose favorite holiday is actually Halloween, there's a whole new segment of Christmas ornaments and decorations created just for you!  Type in "gothic Christmas" on any Etsy. Because really, what says Christmas better than bats and spiders?
craft/art site and take your pick. This lime green stocking decorated with bats and spiders ($30) caught my eye on

The idea factory

Did yu ever see the movie Night Shift? Michael Keaton's character carries around a tape recorder so he can keep a record of all the ideas he has during the day. (He is definitely an idea man.) I k now a lot of people like that. Once they're on the hunt for an idea, they seem to come at them from all angles and directions. For me, the most reliable source of story ideas is the news. I read a lot of news, and not just on the usual sites. I always consult the Drudge Report because it consistently offers the strangest headlines and wackiest stories this site of Fark.

If you write dark fiction and you're not regularly cheching in with Drudge, you're missing out. Here's just a sampling of today's headlines:

Teen injects flesh-eating drug into vagina!  One of the first things you're taught about writing a news story is that it has to tell the Who, what, where, and when of an incident.  Nowhere is WHY important. But I always want to know the WHY. Here though, my first question is... how does a 17-year-old girl even get her hands on the flesh-eating drug, much less be addicted to it?

Here's another:  Satanic Temple Monument may Include Interactive display for kids. This is a story ABC reported out of Oklahoma that the news aggregator picked up and gave a tabloidish new spin. Turns out there's not actually a monument yet...but the implication of the unholy interactivity is just too evocative to pass up. I see holograms of the devil offering to buy souls in return for Jay-Z tickets or smething.

Man wielding sword steals several tacos.  Now this  is a headline that doesn't even faze someone who lives in Los Angeles, where sword-brandishing nutballs seem to be fairly common.  The story takes place in Texas, so the alleged perp apparently never heard the old saying about "never bring a blade to a gunfight." And also, if he had a sword, why didn't he demand a steak or something?

Three hurt in hatchet attack at Wal-Mart.  Another story from mTexas. Question I had--did the alleged perp bring the hatchet into the store, or was it something he picked up and decided he needed to test out? And wouldn't that make a great story for volume 2 of Discount Noir?

Scientists close to developing the world's first invisibility cloak.  So there's something for science fiction writers as well as noiristas.

All of this great stuff in just one day!!  Call it creative alchemy, spinning news into gold.

Another great place to buy original art...Society6

Photo by "Steelback"

I was searching for images to help kick-start a story I'm writing and I ran across Society6.  I am, as you know, all about the Etsy and I'm also fond of Red Bubble and Zazzle too, but Society6 was new to me. I spent a very happy hour (or so) browsing their selection of photographs and art and by the end of that time I had a dozen (well,, really, a few dozen) items on my wish list. If you're still shopping for Christmas, and you know someone who appreciates art, this is a place to look. The only thing I don't like is that the item listings don't include information on the art beyond the basics. The works are priced to sell.

Free Book! L.A. Nocturne

I'm running a free promotion on my book of urban fantasy short stories--L.A. Nocturne--Tales of the Misbegotten--in advance of the release of the novel set in that universe, Misbegotten.  You can get it free for the next five days. I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, I'd love a review. (Well, I'd love a good review. As my grandmother used to say, "If you can't say something nice, maybe you shouldn't say anything at all.") Find the link here.

Another book for fantasy lovers--The Familiars

If you were a fan of Lloyd Alexander's books about Taran and his oracular pig, or have been looking for something in the vein of Terry Ptratchett's Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (a wonderful book), then you might want to pick up The Familiars. The story of dark magic in a peaceful kingdom, three kidnapped apprentice wizards and the three familiars--a cat, a bluejay, and a tree frog--who go on a quest to save them.

The story is told from the point of view of Aldwyn, the cat and while he's no ordinary cat, he takes a while to grow int his destiny. There's genuine emotion here, and a fair amount of magical action. The writers have done a good job of creating a place that goes beyond the borders of the book, and there's a lot of backstory we don't see and the promise of more adventures. This is a book that young readers will enjoy, but so will their parents.

Olive Oil Pretzels with Ouzo Mustard

courtesy of Olive Oil Times

Sometimes you stumble across yummy recipes without even trying. This one, for olive oil pretzels with ouzo mustard comes from OLIVE OIL TIMES. I cannot wait to make them. I'm up for a job writing for the site, so I look forward to sharing a lot more delicious recipes.

Muppet Christmas Carol

Yes, it's that time of year when the off-network channels are running Christmas movies non-stop. (Somewhere A Christmas Story is playing.)  I like A Christmas Story. I also like Miracle on 34th Street and Shop Around the Corner, which was the inspiration for the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedy You've Got Mail. (And for the record, I absolutely hate It's a Wonderful Life, but that's just me.) I always look forward to How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original, with Boris Karloff narrating) and I'm also a sucker for The Canterville Ghost, which is not strictly a Christmas movie, but somehow gets re-run at this time of year. My absolute favorite Christmas movie, however, has to be the Muppet Christmas Carol with Michael Caine as Scrooge.  It is funny. It's touching. It's creative and easily the very best of the very good Muppet movies. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor, and watch it this year. It will make you very happy.

The next book you read should be...Gil's All-Fright Diner

I am a big fan of A. Lee Martinez' loopy brand of urban fantasy. I really enjoyed his book Monster, but somehow I'd never read Gil's All-Fright Diner (published in 2006).  ASll I can say is that now I've read it I hope you don't wait seven years to read it because it is a treat.

It begins with a vapire named Earl and a werewolf who likes to be called Duke, pulling off a road in the middle of nowhere to grab a bite to eat. the next thing they know, there are zombies crashing down the front door and Earl's met a lonely ghost and the teenage hottie determined to open a portal to the old gods has targeted Earl as someone who would make a dandy supernatural sacrifice. By the time a malevolent soul snarls, "I'll kill you and your little dog too" at Cathy, the aforementioned lonely ghost, the reader will be having a rollicking good time.

Part of the pleasure of reading the book is that Martinez has an eye for the absurd reality of paranormal and normal creatures interacting in the same space. The people in the small town where all hell is about to break loose are familiar iwth weird stuff happening (it's kind of like Haven in the show of the same name), and they roll with the weird.  He's also got a sharp eye for cultural detail and throws out offhand comments about  teenage girls and vampires that toss familiar horror tropes on thier heads.

It's not always easy to pull off a hybrid of horror and humor, but Martinez does it better than anyone since Christopher Moore and Practical Demonkeeping.

Whipping Boy--My Mystery Novella debuts next month

I write short stories.
In fact, I write SHORT short stories.
Up until last month, the longest story I'd ever written was my entry in Paul D. Brazill's Drunk on the Moon compilation of stories set in his Roman Dalton world. I think it topped out at a little ore than 5K. I am in awe of my friends who find it easy to whip out 70 or 80K in a month or two, and think nothing of writing a novel every few months or so.
For me, writing at length is hard. (Well, I suppose if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.)
But Whipping Boy is a story that's been percolating for a long time. The protagonist is an L.A. criminalist named Lark Riordan, whose father Jack is an actor who has recently been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in a "come-back" role. Lark's low-key love interest is a homicide detective named Max Siwek, who is also her stepbrother. Yes, it's complicated, but the book isn't a romance, it's a mystery. It's also a longish novella, coming in around 45K right now as I begin my final edit before handing it over to beta readers. I'm rather pleased with the book, and now that I know I can actually write something that's longer than 1200 words, I am back to working n Misbegotten, my long-in-development novel about paranormal L.A. and the crime reorter who chronicles illegal doings in the city.
i have a few thousand words to go before it's a novel, but it's getting there. the cover is by Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services.

Kattomic Energy Geektastic Holiday Gift Guide--Part Two

 I haven't set foot in a shopping mall--except to go see a movie--in years. I am in walking distance of two excellent bookstores--one an indie, another a Bookstar--and for everything else, there's online. and I do mean EVERYTHING else. Last year I bought almost all my Christmas presents online. This year, the figure is 100 percent. (And don't hate me, but I'm already done.) In addition to picking just the perfect gift for friends, I also usually pick up half a dozen gift cards for stocking stuffers, and last-minute presents. Gift cards have a bad rap, but honestly, I'm always thrilled to get one. (I don't drink coffee, for instance, but a Starbucks gift card will buy a lot of oatmeal cookies and/or hot chocolate.) Amazon gift cards can be redeemed for pretty much anything you can think of. You can even get them in a box if you want to put them under a tree or in a stocking instead of just mailing them.

Practically every supermarket and drug store now has a display of gift cards you can buy for everything from movies to iTunes, but you can also buy gift cards to use on Etsy, eBay,Redbubble, Zazzle, ans SpaFinders. (right bow they're running a deal for two $50 gift cards for $80.) Not feeling the gift cards? Well, here are some other suggestions, arranged by category.

S is for Shakespeare, Science, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Scents

I admit it. When it comes to Shakespeare, I am a fan girl. If you know a like-minded person, there are a lot of terrific presents that celebrate the bard, items that go far beyond the ubiquitous quotation  t-shirts and mugs. (Not that you can't always use another t-shirt or mug.) My favorite Shakespeare-themed gift this season is the Shakespeare flash drive ($25) available on theBroadway Cares site. This fundraising organization now funds  more than 450 groups and has raised $225 million to fight AIDS. So you can give a double gift when you buy anything from their online store.

The Folger Shakespeare Library's "Luminary Shakespeare apps" for Macbeth, Othello and Romeo & Juliet are downloadable from iTunes. From solitary reading to generative thinking, from the classroom to the theater, Folger Luminary Shakespeare apps offer an interactive reading experience to enhance our pleasure and understanding of Shakespeare's extraordinary works. ($11.99)

The Geektastic Holiday Gift Guide

Continuing the tradition born back in my Dark Valentine days, I offer my very unofficial and totally personal gift guide for holiday gift giving. I've divided it up into categories this year and the first one is:  ETSY gifts.

I love Etsy. Now that the items on the site have expanded beyond the home-made and hand-crafted, I love it even more. You can find some of the same things on eBay but you have to go through the whole auction nonsense, and risk paying way over the money for something or losing out at the last minute to a buyer who swoops in and tops your final bid. So along with one-of-a-kind items and products made to order, you can also browse the best of vintage items in dozes of categories. And for those looking for three G gifts--Geek/Goth/Game of Thrones--Etsy is a one-stop shopping portal for everyone on your list.

Winter is coming...and that means Christmas is nearly here!

Are you Team Lannister or Team Stark?  Or are you rooting for Dani to sit on the Iron Throne?  Show your allegiance with one of the hadsome medallions created by Pieces of II. All the great houses of Westeros are represented.

There's actually a lot of GOT swag on offer at the Etsy site, as well as some whimsical items like a button that says, "The Lannisters send their regards" and another that says, "Not today." Both items are available from Quid Pro Quote.
 There is also a beautifully illustrated deck of cards with the sigils of the great houses dividing up the suits of cards and illustrations of the characters on the face cards. (GOT playing cards $25 a deck, available here.)
Phunky Junk Jewels has created some beautiful jewelry inspired by Game of Thrones. I am particularly fond of this "Fire and Blood" bracelet made with lava rock and Czech glass beads. It's just $12.75.
Dozens of people are offering t-shirts with GOT-inspired designs and graphics. The warning, "Winter is Coming" is a popular slogan. Adage Screen Printing offers a fabulous "Dire Wolf" graphic design shirt, for a bargain $15. Better be quick though, there's only one of

this shirt available.
There are some terrific George R. R. Martin goodies available as well. The most whimsical is probably this knitted GRRM doll from Socks Knit Palace. It's $30 but for a hard-core fan, it's priceless.
Anise Press, meanwhile, has produced a broadside with Neil Gaiman's immortal words, "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch."
Find it here, for $32.  and finally, Red Deer Grove gets points for the most inventive Game of Thrones tie-in, the Game of Thrones Perfume collection (Six bottles, $50.75), each scent named in honor of one of the series' female characters. (Not quite sure I want to smell like Arya, much as I love the character, but I love the idea.) The scents are available separately also.

Seriously Steampunk

"Steampunk" is one of those labels that has been over-used and over-exposed of late, but I still love the aesthetic. It's so much more than just slapping a bunch of gears and clock parts onto an object, though.  The artisans displaying their wares on Etsy have taken the term to its artistic limits and the results are often absolutely fabulous.

Pinterest and Me

I'm kind of a late comer to Pinterest. I signed up for it when it launched but never really played around with it until a few weeks ago when I found myself with time on my hands and no real inclination to do any work. The next thing I knew, I had more than 30 boards (divided into topics as diverse as "Machine Dreams" and "All Things Arthurian") and I had more than 1200 images pinned. So I guess you could say I'm hooked. In case you are too, you can see my boards here.

I am finding it really relaxing to look at what other people have collected on their boards and the content they're curating. There are a lot of people "into" mermaids and dinosaurs and women wearing red dresses.  (I'm following a couple of boards where the pinners post gorgeous images every day.) A lot of these images inspire stories. A lot of the images inspire connection.

I love social media. I never expected to be this engaged.

Word of the Day: Diegetic

I like words, the more obscure the better.
In fact, I have been accused of being a "word snoot."
Lately I've been running across a word I've never heard before: DIEGETIC. The first time I saw it in a piece of script coverage written by one of my subcontractors. Then I saw it in an actual script. The first place I looked it up was Wikipedia, where the definition was so obscure I felt like someone was trying (and not for the first time) to explain the meaning of "semiotics" to me. Then I found this, which explains that "diegetic sound" is sound made by something you can see or something you can assume is nearby. That's not a word I would ever have been able to puzzle out.

R.I.P J.J. Harris

Talent manager J.J. Harris has died. She was a class act in a crass town and she'll be missed. Nikki Finke has the story here.

Coming Soon: Destiny Knocks

There's a world I've been playing with for some time, a story about a mother and daughter I call Soul Searchers. The tagline is, "What if destiny knocked and the wrong person answered the door?" The idea came to me as I was watching a Witchblade episode. and I thought--why should hot young woman have all the fun? What if the "chosen one" turned out to be someone unexpected? Like, say, the call to destiny came for Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls but it was her mother, Lauren Graham, who ended up doing the ass-kicking, paranormal stuff?

It's been a really, really (REALLY) slow summer for freelance work so I spent some time re-packaging what had been a television pitch into a novella. The book will be out next month. The cover, as always, is by Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services.

Friday Foto...

Sometimes when I want to relax, I cruise Etsy to see what's new in their photo department. I almost always see something I want, even though my walls are already cluttered with art and photos and even framed ads I pulled out from vintage magazines. I saw this photo by someone who calls him/herself The Jaunty Goose. You can see it and Jaunty Goose's other work here.

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.

a thought for Independence Day by Isaac Asimov

When Life Imitates Art

wine-infused popcorn?

Credit: Crawford/Populence

Why not? I've never been a huge fan of flavored popcorn (and I hated Cracker Jacks) but throw a little garlic salt or maybe some parmesan cheese into the mix and I'm there. But now there's this, wine-infused popcorn. Could be a genius idea, could be as flat as champagne that's been left open overnight.

Blood Orange by Karen Keskinen, a review for Feminist Fiction Friday

Reading BLOOD ORANGE will give you a tingle--that tingle you get when you read a book by an author that's new to you and you realize right away that you are going to love the book and the characters and the writer. Karen Keskinen's debut mystery opens with a horrific crime and then plunges us into the complicated life of Santa Barbara private detective Jamie Zarlin. Jaymie's just barely paying the rent on her office when the formidable Gabi shows up. Her schizophrenic nephew has been arrested for the rape/murder and she is convinced he didn't do it. Jaymie is skeptical, but she's still grieving the death of her own mentally ill brother and she doesn't have the heart to say no to Gabi.

Not that Gabi is giving her the option.

Jaymie's ensuing investigation brings her closer to two men who are both very interested in being closer to her, a sexy cop who's got marriage on his mind and an even sexier attorney who operates just on the right side of sleaze. (And yes, if this reminds you of the love triangle in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, that's probably not an accident although Keskinen's characters seem a bit more real and Jaymie's reasons for holding back her commitment seem to be more solid than Stephanie's.)

The Santa Barbara of the book is at once the lovely beach town beloved of tourists and home to an upscale community and a place of dark alleys and shadowed corners where gangs lurk and violence has a racial edge. The mystery itself is extremely complicated, even convoluted, but it's also setting up a world where race and class permeate everything that takes place.

Keskinen's got a real knack for character and the characters who are going to be "regulars" in the series are definitely people we want to see again. Those who may just be passing through for this one story--like the murdered girl's tough-talking little sister and a wealthy old woman who is sharper than everyone around her and has no problem letting them know it--are vivid and memorable.

The death of a beautiful young woman during a solstice festival is only the beginning of the mysteries here and BLOOD ORANGE is only the first of what I hope will be many mysteries "starring" Jaymie.

Here's an interview with Keskinen.