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.