Photo Credit: AP/KCBS TV
In February 2011 a young, seemingly healthy Los Angeles
television reporter named Serene Branson uttered approximately 20 seconds of pure
gibberish when she attempted to do a live segment outside the Grammys. Many
viewers worried she was having a stroke, but doctors later diagnosed the
incident as a “complex migraine”. Her story has a happy ending since she was
soon back on the job and continues to work as a reporter for CBS2/KCAL9 to this
day. But the oddity of this brief medical mystery inspired me. My imagination
grabbed hold of this image of a pretty, blonde TV personality losing it on air
and spun it into the start of a worldwide plague that became the main theme of
my debut novel, Storm Orphans.
In my book, the reporter’s malady wasn’t an embarrassing but
one-time loss of coherence. She was patient zero in a bio-engineered government
conspiracy gone awry. Within a couple of years, almost everyone on the planet
was dead or mutated into a murderous zombie as a result of their brains being
turned to mush by chemicals spread via drinking water contamination and
chemtrails.
There’s obviously plenty of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo involved in
that fictional leap, but the story appealed to me based on that real-life
incident jumpstart. The most powerful tales are those built on at least a kernel
of truth. I’m glad Ms. Branson’s reality is a much happier one than what I
imagined, but I’m also thankful I got a chance to see her brief moment of
crisis. She inspired an entire book!
If you’re interested in keeping up with the latest on Ms.
Branson, you can follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/SereneOnScene
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