Peter David's Blog, page 35

Lorna Kelly, RIP

The chances are spectacular that you have not heard of Lorna Kelly. For the vast majority of you, there is no reason that you would have. Lorna was an auctioneer who worked for Sotheby’s for a time–one of the first female fine arts auctioneers in the world–and she recently died of a stroke at the age of 70.

The reason that the David family knew her was because every year for over a decade, she was the auctioneer at the Broadway Bears charity auction sponsored by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Every year she would coax and cajole individuals into bidding ridiculous amounts of money for bears that had been lovingly costumed in exact replicas of Broadway character outfits. But that was hardly the extent of her life. She treated AIDS patients in Calcutta working with Mother Teresa. According to the NY Times, “She also traveled to Senegal, where she vaccinated thousands of children. In Cairo, she ministered to impoverished residents of a vast garbage dump; she likewise served the poor in Jordan, Gaza and the Bronx.” To say she led a well-rounded life is to understate it, and we were privileged to have met her and spent time with her.

PAD

Altered States Of The Union

Hi. Glenn Hauman here, itinerant webmaster, hijacking the blog to tell you that Peter David also has a story in the upcoming Crazy 8 Press anthology, Altered States Of The Union, debuting July 15th at Shore Leave and then available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the like shortly thereafter.

We’re taking pre-orders now, and Peter’s in the excellent company of writers like Russ Colchamiro, Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Brendan DuBois, Malon Edwards, G.D. Falksen • Michael Jan Friedman, David Gerrold, Robert Greenberger, Alisa Kwitney, Gordon Linzner, Sarah McGill, Meredith Peruzzi, Mackenzie Reide, Aaron Rosenberg, David Silverman & Hildy Silverman, Ian Randal Strock, Ramón Terrell, Anne Toole… and me.

To give you a taste of the book, here’s a snippet of Peter’s story…

In the year 1958, when Alaska was being considered for statehood, Texas governor Price Daniel strenuously objected. His reasoning was quite simple: He did not want there to be a state larger than Texas. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became so tired of Daniel’s protests that he threatened him. He told Daniel that if he did not shut up, he would divide Alaska in half, and there would be two states larger than Texas.

Daniel refused to stop complaining, not taking Eisenhower seriously.

He should have done so.

Eisenhower did exactly that and on January 3, 1959, North Alaska and South Alaska were officially declared states of the Union.

They did not get on well. There was peace between them, but an uneasy peace, and it was certainly not helped by the fact that the majority of the populace wielded guns. A frontier mentality gripped the separated regions and it slowly devolved over time. Since the two states were so far removed from the continental United States, no one really cared.

And then a new governor made it a lot worse, and it descended into war.

Want to see more? Go support Altered States Of The Union now!

 

Are You a Book Editor Reading This?

If so, I have written a book that might interest you.

It’s hardly my first. I’ve had over a hundred published, including some NY Times Bestsellers. But this one is different. It’s not SF or fantasy. And I can’t seem to sell it.

Does it have a fantasy element? It might; that’s subjective to the reader.

But apparently that’s confusing to the editors who have read it thus far. SF editors apparently feel it’s not SF enough. Non-SF editors either don’t bother to read it because it’s from Peter David, the SF/fantasy guy. Or they reject it with conflicting responses: one said it was too humorous, a second said it wasn’t humorous enough. Helpful things like that.

I didn’t want to publish it via Crazy 8 Press because I don’t consider it fantasy, but your mileage may vary. If you are interested in reading it, please write to me at padguy@aol.com and I will shoot you a copy. The title is “Spoken Word” and it’s about a comedian whose son never speaks a word…until a very unusual woman enters their lives and changes that.

Here is the first chapter:

FIRST

People make a huge deal about the first word that a baby says. Mothers always remember it; fathers usually do. There’s a kind of unofficial competition between parents, lobbying to see whether “mama” or “papa” are the first syllables the baby’s able to utter in sequence and have it mean what it sounds like it means. If it’s a random word, like “light” or “yes,” then a lot of meaning can get attached to it.

Mickey’s first spoken word was “fart.”

He was however the hell many months old he was, and he was bopping around on the floor, doing the whole baby thing. It was after Thanksgiving dinner, and his Uncle Tommy, he did his usual thing of sitting in an easy chair, his legs splayed to either side (which he also used to do stark naked in steam rooms, to the appeciation of absolutely no one). He undid his belt and the top of his pants, and sighed lustily, scratching his ample belly, and then he uncorked a ripe one that supposedly went on for, like, a year, to hear Mickey’s mother, Tommy’s sister, tell of it. She yelled at him, “Tommy, for the love of God!” and Tommy apologized without really meaning it, and Mickey’s father walked in and said, “Good Christ, who died in here?” and Mickey’s mother started yelling at him, and his dad was saying, “What the hell did I do? I didn’t fart!” and his mother was saying, “You’re treating it like a big joke,” and Uncle Tommy said, “For crying out loud, Brenda, it’s just a damned fart,” and temperatures were blowing through the ceiling all because of gas passing, with this terrific dinner that his mother had produced being completely forgotten in the wake of Tommy’s faux pas.

And Mickey was sitting there, playing with blocks, and he looked up at all the ruckus and growing anger. Mickey tilted his cherubic little face up to the chandelier and cooed, “Fart.”

Everything froze. Every eye was on him. “Did…did he say–?” began his father.

He didn’t have to complete the sentence. “Fart,” Mickey said again.

Tommy started to laugh.

“Shut up!” said Mickey’s mother.

Her brother tried to do so. He really did. He clamped both hands over the lower half of his face, at which point Mickey’s aunt Susan, his wife, walked in from having gone to the bathroom. She stared at her husband, who looked like he was trying to smother himself, and she said, “Tommy, what in God’s name…” Then her noise wrinkled and she said, “Ewww…did you–?”

“Fart,” Mickey piped up. His comedy timing was already solidly in place.

His father immediately said, “I’m getting the video camera…”

“Oh, the hell you are!” His mother was livid.

“It’s Mickey’s first wor–!”

“No way.” His mother shook her head with such determination that it almost toppled off her neck. His dad was a head and a half taller than his mother, but she stomped up to him and practically had to stand on her toes to wave her finger in his face. “There is no way that my son’s first word is going to be—“

“Faaaaaaaaart!” Mickey said, and his voice kind of went up and down in the middle. Mickey was singing it like an aria.

His aunt Susan completely lost it. She had a huge belly laugh and she unleashed it then, and that set off Uncle Tommy who had come close to controlling himself but lost it. He was laughing so hard that he slid off the recliner so that his ass was on the carpet and his torso supported by the chair.
This got Mickey’s father going, and he started laughing. His mother looked around like a trapped tigress, overwhelmed by events that were spiraling completely out of control. Whereupon Mickey crawled over to Uncle Tommy, who was on the floor, remember, and Mickey started thumping on his chest saying, “Fart, fart, fart, fart,” rapid fire, like bullets from a machine gun.

Now naturally Mickey didn’t remember any of it first hand; most of it is what became family legend, repeated at subsequent gatherings.

But Mickey still felt a sense of empowerment, as if an understanding was being engraved in his baby brain that he could control crowds of people by reducing them to hysterics.

Three adults that Thanksgiving were helpless with laughter, putty in his baby hands, and only his mother was keeping it together, scolding, scowling, telling everyone to knock it off which only got them going all the more, because this kind of thing feeds on itself.

And finally she glared at her son, the source of all this chaos, and Mickey paused in the thumping on his uncle’s chest, looked up at her with wide-eyed innocence, and said, “Fart?”

At which point Mickey farted. Nothing remotely as magnificently sustained as what his uncle had unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Just a quick, sharp “poot” that issued from his diapered backside.

And that was it for his mom.

Apparently she’d been suppressing it, but his final little button on the scene pushed her over. She let out a loud bark of laughter, like a hopped up seal, and like her brother had, covered her mouth with both hands as if trying to shove it back down her throat. Then her chest started shaking violently, and if she hadn’t let it out her mouth, it probably would have just torn out of her chest, like in Alien, smashing through her ribcage and running around the living room. So she did, and she was laughing so hard there were tears running down her face. Her legs gave way and she sank to the floor, hysterical with laughter. And whenever the laughing came close to subsiding, he’d declare “fart” and it would start all over again.

This went on for anywhere from five minutes to half an hour, depending upon who you ask and at what point in the family history the question is being posed.

The point of all the above—which we admittedly made right up front, but is worth mentioning again since it was, like, a thousand words ago, is that first words can be important. If you want further proof that they can be relevant in the long term, you should know that Mickey went on to become a comedian. Not an especially good one, or even a full time one, but “comedian” is right there on his resume, along with about nine other different jobs, including “father.” The job title resulted from the birth of his own son, Jordan. This was a compromise name. His wife and Mickey worked out the potential names of their child long before the birth. For some reason they settled on a girl’s name pretty quickly: Catherine. A name for a potential boy, however, prompted far longer debate. His wife wanted to name him Daniel, after her father, and Mickey wanted to name him Jor-El, after Superman’s father. This remained unresolved up until their son’s birth. He wound up becoming “Jordan,” which seemed a fair compromise. In short order his nickname became Jordy, because he seemed more like a Jordy than a Jordan. Plus Mickey felt like he’d got more of his way, because in his head it made his name Jor-D, which is like Jor-El. So, like they say, close enough for jazz.

Jordy’s first word was likewise very important.

He didn’t speak it until he was eight years old. And after he did, it set a whole series of events into motion that wound up with Mickey in jail.
This is how it started, and this is where it went.

Well, it looks like Trump was right

A Muslim sympathizer killed fifty people in Florida. Enough is enough. Time to ban Muslims.

Also, James Wesley Howell of Indiana was arrested for driving to California with the intention of blowing up people celebrating gay pride. Far as I know, he’s Christian. So we’d better ban Christians, too. As a matter of fact, we need to build a wall around Indiana since they’re obviously dangerous.

But don’t ban guns. Mustn’t touch those.

PAD

Dear Bernie Supporters:

I think it’s time that I addressed you as well. I need to make something clear:

I don’t give a damn why you’re not voting for Hillary.

So on this site, on Twitter, on Facebook: You can stop trying to explain it. It’s of no relevance to me. Don’t give me samples from the quarter century’s worth of dirt that the GOP has thrown at her. Don’t howl at me about money she makes from speeches (which she largely gives to charity). Don’t whine at me about how Bernie was screwed out of this, that and the other thing, something that I don’t recall Hillary fans declaring whenever Bernie won something.

Your explanations don’t matter. Your great rebellion doesn’t matter. Senate experience, Judaism and Socialism don’t matter. All that matters is this one simple truth:

Donald Trump must not be elected. Must not.

The simple, irrefutable fact is that Trump’s success is based upon the worst that this country has to offer. He appeals to racists, sexists, misogynists, and fascists. When someone is running for President and both North Korea and Russia endorse him, that alone should make you realize how utterly screwed up he is. Donald Trump may well be the least qualified person to be a major party nominee in the history of this country.

He must be stopped.

If you are not voting for Hillary, you are endorsing Donald Trump. It is just that simple. If you write in Bernie, that’s a vote for Trump. If you sit on your ass at home, that is a vote for Trump.

If you sit there shrouded in obliviousness, unaware of just how much damage Donald Trump can do on a global scale, then you are quite simply an idiot. And yes, I know that Bernie supporters shriek and piss and moan when they’re insulted. That’s fair; on the other hand, calling you idiots isn’t an insult. It’s simply truth.

There’s a very old saying: you are either part of the solution or part of the problem. If you refuse to vote for Hillary, if you endorse Donald Trump, you are part of the problem, and I have zero interest in hearing you explain why.

PAD

Updated 9:30 PM: Read this. It’s what I said but said much better.

Bernie: Enough Already

Dear Senator Sanders:

You’ve lost, okay? By every measure, including the popular vote, you have lost. Clinton got more votes than you did, period, end of story. Your determination to rest your hopes on turning around the Super-delegates makes no sense, because you would be asking them to vote against the wishes of the people…a tactic that, if Clinton were to use it, you would loudly and rightfully deride.

This is no longer an instance of a presidential candidate demanding justice. The last one who did that was Al Gore and that didn’t exactly turn out well. You remember Al Gore, right? The candidate whom many voters were disenchanted with, just as they’re disenchanted with Hillary. So they voted for Ralph Nader or just stayed home (much like your followers are declaring they’ll write in for you or just stay home.) As a result we got George W. Bush, who was demonstrably the worst president in American history. But you know who would be worse? Donald Trump. Far worse. Like, Moving To Canada Wouldn’t be Far Enough worse.

The simple truth is that you have the ability to stop that from occuring. You can rally your voters; they will still listen to you. You can transform them into a Stop Trump At All Costs corp of warriors who can help prevent that from happening. You said it yourself: Hillary Clinton on her worst day is better than Trump on his best day.

Or you can continue to do what you’re doing: Raving against the establishment, declaring you’re going to fight through to the convention, poison your followers against Hillary, and risk giving the White House to a racist maniac that the GOP refuses to stand against.

At some point, this stopped being about becoming President and became more about the attention. You are receiving more focus at this point in your life than you have in the preceding seven decades. Attention is addictive. It’s ego-swelling. You don’t want to be the also ran because the also ran doesn’t get the same love and stoking as the leader. I totally get it.

But now it’s time to grow beyond such needs and think of the future of this country that you will not lead. Okay? You need to come to grips with that: you are not going to lead this country. You are not going to be the nominee. What you need to do now is make sure that Trump is stopped.

Please. We need you to set your ego aside and step up.

PAD

And Now People Are Freaking Out About Star Wars reshoots

So rumor has it that Disney has ordered reshoots on “Star Wars: Rogue One.” And naturally fans are up in arms about this.

I never understand why fans go bug nuts over such announcements. Whenever it’s learned that some film is undergoing reshoots, the declaration is that the film must be in trouble.

All it is is a rewrite, basically. If George R.R. Martin declared he was doing some rewrites on his next “Fire and Ice” book to improve it, would the fans declare, “Oh my God, it must be in trouble!!” (Yeah, probably some would.) But most would simply realize that rewrites and redos are just part of the creative process. It’s honestly no big deal. “But it’s going to be expensive!” headlines declare. Expensive. Hah. The average major motion picture spends more on food for the craft services table than most of you make in a year.

I say this so many times, but it bears repeating: Wait until the damned film comes out before passing judgment.

PAD

Why in Hell is Everyone Bitching About X-Men: Apocalypse?

I have to admit, when we went to see X-M:A yesterday, I was bracing myself for something really lousy. Like Batman vs. Superman lousy. Like Elektra or the Ang Lee Hulk movie or X-Men III lousy.

What I saw instead was a perfectly entertaining X-Men film that once again helped revitalize the series by bringing in new actors to play established characters, bring back some introduced in the previous film, and raise the stakes by introducing a villain who not only wanted to destroy every human being on the face of the Earth, but seemed eminently capable of doing it.

James McAvoy once again leads the cast as a Xavier who seems determined to simply run a school, not train warriors, while Michael Fassbender’s Magneto has a wife and child and is living anonymously in Poland. Naturally it all falls apart when Apocalypse (Oscar Isaacs, unrecognizable beneath several pounds of make-up) returns from thousands of years of imprisonment to wreak havoc upon a world that now knows that mutants exist, but basically seem kind of okay with it. This despite the fact that in at least one case, mutants are forced to battle each other in an electrified steel cage match, which is where we first encounter Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Angel (Ben Hardy), the latter being pretty much the only mutant we encounter who is never addressed by his real name. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who obviously hates the full body make-up because she only appears in it for about thirty seconds of screen time, shows up to rescue them. She’s become something of a heroic legend at this point, particularly to young Storm (Alexandra Shipp) whose Ororo is better than Halle Berry if for no other reason than that she actually has an accent. Throw in a newly empowered Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and a pre-Phoenix Jean Grey (Sansa Stark…sorry, Sophie Turner) and the triumphant return of Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and you have a well-cast, entertaining film with lots of great moments and an overall full blown villain-wants-to-end-the world comic book story.

So why are people complaining? Mostly I see reviews complaining about “repetition.” That they are evoking mutant concerns that have already been thoroughly explored in previous films. Except that worries about mutants were pervasive in the first movie, and that was set decades after this one, so it would make no sense if mutant kind were universally beloved at this point in the continuity. Besides which, mutant phobia is actually a very minor part of the film. Yes, people are terrified of Magneto, but he destroyed the freaking White House on global television, so that makes sense.

Personally, I thought it was thoroughly engaging and not remotely deserving of the negative reviews I’ve seen. Yes, it wasn’t Days of Future Past, but if nothing else, that had Wolverine throughout and also wiped out X-Men 3, so that would be hard to top. And they even make a wonderful inside reference to how third films in trilogies always are the worst. Apparently the movie makers knew what they were up against in terms of public expectations, but they certainly did their best and I thought they did wonderfully.

PAD

No, I’m Not Writing Diet Books

So my ex-wife dropped me a message the other day: she asked if I was writing diet books.

I said, “No. Why?”

And she sent me this link:

The Mediterranean Diet

Much to my astonishment, the author is Peter David and, even more bizarrely, Amazon has my bio attached. Even better, when you click on his name, it sends you to my books.

This guy has written at least half a dozen books on weight loss and fitness. And he’s not me. Yes, I am dieting, but no, I’m not writing books about it. I tried to post about it to one of the comments sections and naturally Amazon bounced it because it believes I’m the author and authors can’t comment.

So please don’t bring these books up to me to sign at conventions, okay?

PAD

Happy 15th wedding anniversary

Fifteen years ago, plus a few months in addition, I proposed to my girlfriend, Kathleen, in the now late, lamented Adventurers Club in Disneyworld. That was, and is, one of the greatest nights of my life.

We were married on May 26th the following year, and I have never regretted it for a single day. The years have flown by. On the latest May 26th, we are heading back down to Orlando where it all started since, as it so happens, Megacon is going on down there. It won’t be the most romantic of days since it’s our travel day, but it doesn’t matter. We will be together, and that’s the only thing that’s important.

Happy anniversary, my love.

PAD