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.