Hiding in
Theaters
and other Stories
A Story Collection by
Frederick Harrison
Copyright 2017 by
Frederick Harrison
PREFACE
Readers familiar with my Intelligence Community
novels will find, except for one story, a different
experience in this collection. In between writing
and publishing the novels over the span of almost
ten years, I’ve been writing shorter pieces of
fiction about subjects and characters deliberately
different, both as a change-of-pace and because my
interest and attention were caught by a subject or
individual I found intriguing. Katherine Penny, a
principal character in the title novella (for example), is based on the experiences of a plucky
young woman who managed a neighborhood movie
theater I frequent. Although the context,
characters, and events in Hiding In Theaters are
fictional, she refused to speak to me for more than
two years after experiencing the shock of
recognition upon reading an early, partial draft. The good news is that she ultimately won out in real
life, as she does in my story.
An Alford Plea, also a fictionalized version of an
essentially true story, is a cautionary tale. A
college student dubiously accused of a sex crime is
offered probation (no jail time) and other concessions, if he will plead guilty. Avoiding the prospective pitfalls of a trial, however, obscures
the fact that accepting conviction will risk
adversely affecting his future, whether incarcerated
or not, in addition to leaving him at the mercy of
prosecutorial authorities.
At the end of the collection, you will find
The War
at Seven, a story about a young boy in Brooklyn
dealing with the impact on his life of the Pearl
Harbor attack and the country’s sudden descent into
war. Although fictionalized somewhat (necessitated,
among other things, by failing memory), the story is
largely true; the boy was me.
While there is no unifying theme, most of my stories
deal, not always seriously, with people (usually
bright ones) attempting to make their way in
this modern, highly strung,
digitally-connected world. In the Universal Toka-Woka, they are trying to deliver fast food over the
Internet; in The New Rules, an NYPD patrolman faces
New Years Eve duty in Times Square in the presence
of a vague terrorist threat; and, in #TheJesusApp,
three prospective computer science graduates search
for an application that could be the next Facebook
or Twitter, and make them rich. They succeed beyond
their wildest dreams.
Hiding in Theaters
and other Stories
Paperback -
414 Pages
$14.50
Kindle $6.99
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