Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 17

Tonight! on Story Hour

I’m reading in an hour and a half on The Story Hour. Tune in to Zoom or Facebook Live for a couple of short stories from my upcoming collection of short stories, Unsafe Words.

Wear your comfy pants (interpret that as you like) and bring a glass of your favorite beverage. It’s free!

Here’s the link: https://www.storyhour2020.com/

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HWA Poetry Showcase

[image error]I’m excited to announce I’ve got a poem in the upcoming Poetry Showcase being put together by the Horror Writers Association.

My vampire poem “Transubstantiation” was written a very long time ago, when I was trying my hand at writing song lyrics. (It’s so much harder than it looks!) It was recorded by Trance and released on the album The Beaten Track in 1989. You can check that whole album out on Bandcamp: https://masonjones.bandcamp.com/album/trance-the-beaten-track

The poem has never appeared in print. I’m thrilled to have “Transubstantiation” appear beside work by Marge Simon, Lisa Morton, Sumiko Saulson, Mercedes M. Yardley, and a whole lot more of my HWA comrades.  The whole table of contents is on editor Stephanie Wytovich’s blog: https://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/2020/07/hwa-poetry-showcase-vol-7-toc.html

I’m not sure when the book itself will be out, but I can’t wait to see it.

Counting Kisses in The Dangerous Type

[image error]I wrote this piece years ago for a romance blog that has since gone away, but I thought I would share it here, for entertainment’s sake.

The Dangerous Type, the first book in my space opera series, centers around two interlocking love triangles, with the same woman at the apex of both. The people in the story are adults. They get themselves into adult situations.  The book has been described as brutal (although I think the violence is actually pretty restrained, more hinted at that gleefully described) and grimdark (although the meek survive).  I was beginning to think that reviews tell more about the reviewer than the book at hand.

And then I got this review:

“The Dangerous Type is the perfect science fiction novel to give to your friend who loves to read hot and heavy romances. It could be a great gateway book to entice your friend who never thought they’d read science fiction. Due to the violence, use of adult language, and holy cow amount of sexual situations, I would recommend it to adults only.” – TheQuillery.com

Yes, there is sex in the book.  Inspired by Emmy Z. Madrigal’s Kiss Counts as a way to rate romance books, I went through The Dangerous Type to see what I could find.

This “adventurous space opera” has 25 kisses in 285 pages.  The kisses range from beautiful and loving to pecks on the top of someone’s head to celebratory kisses to mean, dominating kisses.  Here’s the description of my favorite:

Raena twisted in his arms until she could look up at him.  With a smile, she rose up on tiptoe.  Sloane found himself bending down.  Their lips met so softly Sloane thought he’d imagined it.

Then she pressed against him.  She was shorter than he remembered.  He lifted her feet from the floor without really intending to.  Her small hands held the back of his neck like a vise.  He felt her smile against his lips.

Eventually they separated a fraction, enough to look wonderingly at each other.  Raena made a long exhalation that might have been a sigh.  She stroked his beard with the palm of her hand, traced the lines which creased his face, pushed a lock of dirty blond hair back toward his bald spot.  “I’ve lost so many years.”

Sloane gazed at her.  Tears sparkled in her eyes.  The crystalline shimmer against the black depths of her eyes was possibly the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, in a lifetime of coveting beautiful things.  How could he have ever doubted this was Raena herself?  Then he remembered to put his thoughts into words.  “I can’t believe I’ve found you again.”

So yeah, big romantic kisses, complete with bald spots!

I don’t know that there are “holy cow” number of sex scenes, either, but I counted 10 of them.  They’re not all nice, it’s true.  The villain of the story is power-mad and doesn’t stop at the bedroom door.  Things might get trigger-worthy, if that’s an issue.

On the other hand, one of the love triangles is comprised of a man and two women — and the women had a relationship before they met him, so things glide from straight to lesbian and back over the course of a couple of the intimate scenes.

A different reviewer accused me of arranging the three-way scenes for the male gaze, but that’s another observation that I don’t agree with.  The ménage scenes are told from the male point of view, true, but the emotional tone is frustrated — because the women are so focused on each other that he’s an afterthought.  He wants to be the center of their attention, but their relationship with each other is older and deeper than he’s had with either of them individually. He does the best he can to keep up.

Hot and heavy? I would own that. But there are only 10 sex scenes in the 168 scenes in the novel.

So would romance readers like the book? I honestly don’t know.  It is about sharp-tongued people who are not nice.  When they love each other, they go all in.  When they don’t, the same is true.

From the back of the book:

Set in the wake of a galaxy-wide war and the destruction of a human empire, The Dangerous Type follows the awakening of one of the galaxy’s most dangerous assassins and her quest for vengeance. Entombed for twenty years, Raena Zacari has been found and released.

Thallian has been on the lam for the last fifteen years.  He’s a wanted war criminal whose entire family has been hunted down and murdered for their role in the galaxy-wide genocide of the Templars. His name is the first on Raena’s list, as he’s the one that enslaved her, made her his assassin, and ultimate put her in a tomb. But Thallian is willing to risk everything–including his army of cloned sons–to capture her. Now it’s a race to see who kills whom first.

Alternatively, Gavin has spent the last twenty years trying to forget about Raena, whom he once saved and then lost to Thallian. Raena’s adopted sister, Ariel, has been running from the truth — about Raena, about herself and Gavin — and doesn’t know if she’ll be able to face either of them.

The Dangerous Type is an adventurous space opera that grabs you from the first pages and doesn’t let go. Along with a supporting cast of smugglers, black market doctors, and other ne’er-do-wells sprawled across a galaxy brimming with alien life, The Dangerous Type is a fantastic beginning to Loren Rhoads’s epic trilogy.

You can pick up a paperback copy of The Dangerous Type for half-off on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3dCln4r or check out the audiobook on Audible: https://amzn.to/31l01FW. The whole series is available to binge, if you like it.

Also for entertainment’s sake, I counted the kisses in Lost Angels, the first of my succubus/angel books: https://lorenrhoads.com/2015/03/27/orally-fixated/

5 Questions for Nina Soden

[image error]Nina Soden was kind enough to feature Angelus Rose on her blog earlier in the year, so I offered to return the favor.

Nina has always been creative, be it art, theatre, film. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Military Science from Eastern Michigan University where she spent most of her time either on stage, rappelling down buildings, or working one of three jobs. After college she moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of her dreams, like so many other actors. Nina started writing short stories in 2008. Her first 3 novels Awaken, Beginnings, and Revenge (the Blood Angel Series) were published in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Her new book is The Chosen (SECTOR C book 1):

Set in a futuristic dystopia where society is governed by a council of vampires and lycanthropes, selection students are sheltered and raised in a deceptively utopian world. Strict rules are imposed to control population growth, education, and even personal interactions with other members of the Sector, all in the name of safety. When ‘A’ comes of age, she is forced to endure the rigorous physical and mental testing of Selection Week before choosing her destiny. Those that make it out alive are announced as sector residents, given a position within the society, and allotted all the privileges of their chosen “culture.” However, when your only choices are vampirism, lycanthropy, breeder, blood donor, or banishment to the Wastelands, what choice do you really have?

Did something in the real world inspire The Chosen?

No. Most of my stories start as a dream. I get a glimpse of a scene and that sends my mind on an adventure to find out the rest of the story. I love the discovery aspect of not knowing where the story will take me.

What is your favorite scene in the book?

In Book One of this series, my favorite scene has to be the beginning of chapter 4. It is where we really get to see, for the first time, what the main character ‘A’ is like.

I had the giggles as I knelt there on the ground. Hand-to-hand had always been my favorite part of training. I was good with the book stuff—memorization and tests—but I was great at the physical stuff. I looked around at the others and saw M126 watching from the back row. He was smiling and even from that distance, I got lost in his eyes—again.

“What the heck A? The barrel of my gun is at the back of your head and you’re laughing?”

“You’re right, I should be more serious. Sorry H, I’ll try harder.” I tried to stifle my laughing, unsuccessfully. H107 was a year younger than the rest of our selection class. The leaders had decided to move him up a year because he was excelling in his academic classes and he was able to hold his own in all the physical challenges. That didn’t mean he won every fight or even most of them, but he wasn’t the worst in the class either.

“You’ve either really gone crazy or you just don’t care about losin—”

It took less than a second to throw my weight onto my hands in front of me as I threw my legs out behind me to scissor kick him. My right leg going high sent the tranquilizer gun twenty yards into the clearing and my left leg going low swept his ankles out from under him. He was on the ground, with me straddling his waist, the blade of my knife under his chin, and a stake at his chest before he finished the word ‘losing.’ “Who said anything about losing?”

He didn’t say anything. He just laid there wide-eyed before shoving me off of him and exiting the mat. I could hear some of my classmates giving him grief, but most of them were just laughing and congratulating me.

What was your writing process like as you wrote the book?

I’m a pantster. I just let my characters lead the story. Sure, I plan a little. I have an outline/planning guide for every book I write (So You Want To Write A Book) which helps me remember the small details that can get lost in the weeds. For the most part, it’s like watching a movie. I write down everything I hear and see in my mind and then clean it up in editing.

What was the best thing that happened during your promotion of the book?

Most of my book promotions are either blog tours, self-promotion on social media, or in-person author events. I think for me, the best thing was the day I had a girl come up to me during an author event to tell me that they came just to see me. That was pretty awesome.

What do you have planned next?

My next novel, The Beast Within (a working title) is currently with the editor. I will be submitting it to agents later this year.

Follow her on Facebook.

Find her on Twitter.

Check out all her books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2B4X41s

Or pick up a copy of The Chosen (SECTOR C book 1): https://amzn.to/3ht680D

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Broaden your reading

Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing several Black women writers about their work. Please check out what they have to say and track down their books, if you can.

[image error]Michelle Renee Lane: Invisible Chains

A Creole slave relies on ancestral magic to escape. The book was nominated for a Stoker Award this year.

https://lorenrhoads.com/2019/07/22/5-questions-for-michelle-renee-lane/

 

Sumiko Saulson: Black Magic Women

[image error]From flesh-eating plants to flesh-eating bees; zombies to vampires to vampire-eating vampire hunters; ghosts, revenants, witches and werewolves: this book has it all. Cursed drums, cursed dolls, cursed palms, ancient spirits and goddesses create a nuanced world of Afrocentric and multicultural horror. Seventeen terrifying tales are served up by sisters profiled in Sumiko’s reference guide 100 Black Women in Horror.

https://lorenrhoads.com/2018/02/26/5-questions-for-sumiko-saulson/

Denise Tapscott: Gypsy Kisses and Voodoo Wishes

[image error]This Romeo and Juliet story set in Louisiana’s Carrefour Parish in the 1890s introduces the fascinating Voodoo High-priestess Grandmother Zenobia. The story is impossible to predict and completely addictive. I hope the sequel is coming soon.

https://lorenrhoads.com/2018/03/05/5-questions-for-denise-tapscott/

 

Carole McDonnell: My Life as an Onion

[image error]Denise Higgins, a young Jamaican American college student, accepts an opportunity as a sober companion. Her job is simple: keep Ben Moreau away from drugs and report back to his parents. Not only is he a gorgeous and wealthy French Korean with an ever-so-charming personality, he is willing to befriend her so long as he can have her loyalty.

https://lorenrhoads.com/2019/01/14/5-questions-for-carole-mcdonnell/

Black voices matter.

What will you do?

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I’m not sure what made me think of it this morning, but the last time I went out was February 23, the final day of the Indie Author UnConference at the San Francisco Chinatown Hilton. I had a wonderful Vietnamese lunch at a place beside the TransAmerica Tower, wrote a little in my notebook, then wandered the Jackson Square historical district to clear my head.

After the UnCon broke up that afternoon, E.M. Markoff and L.S. Johnson joined me at Francis Ford Coppola’s Cafe Zoetrope for a glass of wine.  I ordered a heavenly sweet and tart berry crumble. We talked about our plans for the year: FogCon two weeks away, the Oddities & Curiosities market after that, the Bay Area Book Festival, BayCon, the Nebula Weekend, all the local comic cons where we were going to share dealers tables at this year…

I woke up with a bad cold the next morning. Mostly I was congested, but my nose ran like a faucet. I never had much of a fever, but the virus really laid me out. One night I had the shivers. None of that was what they described Covid as like at the time, so I didn’t particularly worry.  I did cancel my plans for FogCon, though, since I wasn’t fully recovered and didn’t want to share my germs.

And then, without much warning, the world stopped.

As of today, it’s been 89 days since I went farther than the post office around the corner.  I seesaw between waking up in the middle of the night for a couple of hours and sleeping through the night to jolt awake at 5 a.m. I’ve been having nightmares about preparing to travel. It shocks me to see people in my dreams who aren’t wearing masks.

The not-sleeping has given me a lot of time to think. I’ve been pondering that Mary Oliver quote. I’ve known since I was hospitalized with skyrocketing blood pressure while pregnant that my life was a gift, that my hourglass was running, that I’ve passed the tipping point. By some unknowable factor, the time I have left is shorter than what I’ve already spent.  And I asked myself: what do I have left that I want to do?

So I’m working on collecting my short stories into a book.  I found a title that I loved, a cover artist who’s brilliant, and started reading through my stories to figure out what belongs with what…

My question to YOU is: what do you want to do with your life?  Are you happy with what you’ve accomplished? Is there something you’ve always wanted to achieve? If you need permission to begin, this is it.

Go do something brilliant and beautiful. Inspire others to do the same. The clock is ticking.

PS.  Thank you, Armand, winner of last week’s Rafflecopter giveaway. He gave me great advice on how to proceed with my story collection. I appreciate the inspiration.

Help me with my new story collection?

[image error]I’m playing around with Rafflecopter as a way to find out what you as a reader like to see in a single-author story collection. Up for grabs is a $15 Amazon gift card.

Click on this link to be taken to the giveaway:

Loren’s Rafflecopter giveaway

The more accounts of mine you follow, the more chances you get to win. If you answer my question about short story collections, you can get 5 more chances in one go.

Rafflecopter will pick a random winner from everyone who enters. I’ll announce the winner of the Amazon gift card here on this blog on Friday, May 22.  Good luck!

If you have any trouble with the Rafflecopter, let me know. I’m still figuring the system out, but I think it can do great things.

 

Angelus Rose wins an Award

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Thanks to all of you who voted, Angelus Rose came in 3rd place in the  cover contest!

I really love this cover image. It’s hard to see online, but the angel (or is she a black-winged devil?) is holding a ripped sheet up in place of her toga.  I like the suggestion that she’s not wearing anything underneath it — kind of suits a book about a succubus perfectly, doesn’t it?

Her pose and the angle of her wings seems to indicate that she’s soaring upward, but she’s surrounded by a storm of loose black feathers. She makes me think of Icarus, with his wings falling apart the higher he climbed.

The competition was stiff — the winner got more than 400 votes — so I’m truly honored that Angelus Rose did as well as it did.

Also, if you are a book reviewer who wants to take a look at Angelus Rose, it’s only available on NetGalley until the end of this month. You need to jump!  Otherwise, you can drop me a note through the contact form above and I’ll set you up.

For everyone else, there are just a few more days to enter the Goodreads contest to win a copy of Angelus Rose.  I’m giving away 100 ebooks and only 100 people have entered so far, so your odds of winning are pretty good.  Just click the link below.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Angelus Rose
by Loren Rhoads

Giveaway ends May 05, 2020.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

 

5 Questions for Jonathan Fortin

[image error]Last October, I interviewed Jonathan Fortin about his novel Requiem in Frost, about a girl in Norway who moves into a house haunted by the ghost of a murdered black metal musician. Since then, he’s had another new book come out.

First, a little about him:

Jonathan Fortin is the author of Lilitu: The Memoirs of a Succubus (Crystal Lake Publishing), Requiem In Frost (Horror Addicts Press), and Nightmarescape (Mocha Memoirs Press). An unabashed lover of spooky Gothic stories, Jonathan was named the “Next Great Horror Writer” in 2017 by HorrorAddicts.net. He attended the Clarion Writing Program in 2012, one year after graduating summa cum laude from San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program. When not writing, Jonathan enjoys voice acting, dressing like a Victorian gentleman, and indulging in all things odd and macabre in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow him online at www.jonathanfortin.com or on Twitter @Jonathan_Fortin.

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England, 1876. Twenty-year-old Maraina Blackwood has always struggled to adhere to the restrictive standards of Victorian society, denying the courage and desire that burn within her soul. But after a terrifying supernatural encounter, Maraina’s instincts compel her to action.

Maraina soon discovers a plot to unleash a new world—one of demonic aristocrats, bloody rituals, and nightmarish monsters. Putting her upbringing aside, Maraina vows to fight the dark forces assuming control of England. But as her world transforms, Maraina finds that she too must transform…and what she becomes will bring out all that she once buried.

Lilitu: The Memoirs of a Succubus is the first chapter in an epic dark fantasy saga, proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

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Did something in the real world inspire Lilitu: The Memoirs of a Succubus?

History, mythology, and current events all played a big role in shaping Lilitu. I was interested in writing a book about succubi and incubi that took their mythology seriously — the dream-diving, the wings, the nature of how they feed, and the psychological impact of all this — rather than just being silly or pornographic.

While planning the book out, I quickly realized that I needed the right setting to get the emotional conflicts I was looking for. I eventually realized that Victorian England was the perfect fit: between its repression, strict gender norms, and elegantly Gothic aestheticism. I was curious to explore how people raised in that culture would react to becoming demons and, in so doing, was able to explore issues like Madonna/Whore complexes, internalized misogyny, body dysmorphia, and other questions of sexuality that are still relevant today. Succubi are the perfect foil many awful Victorian ideologies. Only by becoming a succubus does the protagonist, Maraina Blackwood, realize what was so wrong with the world she grew up with.

The more I researched the era, the more horrifying tidbits I uncovered about the reality of living in Victorian times. These inspired a great deal of little moments in the book.

What is your favorite scene in the book?

There’s a chapter about midway though where Maraina is stalking Salem, a sexy, sadistic incubus lord she’s secretly plotting against. She ends up following him to this creepy castle that starts mutating, warping as a result of a ritual he’s conducting — one that she quickly realizes she’s powerless to stop. I really enjoy the atmosphere of the whole sequence and the nonstop twisted imagery. This is also the part of the book where the action really kicks into gear — the “point of no return” that changes everything.

What was your writing process like as you wrote the book?

Long. The first draft of Lilitu was written while I was studying at San Francisco State University. I completed that draft just as I graduated college in 2011. It was a mess. In the years that followed, I workshopped it with a writing group and edited it until I thought it was ready. Then I tried to get an agent. Nobody wanted it, so I put it aside and focused on other projects.

Cut to 2017. I learned about a competition called The Next Great Horror Writer Contest, the winner of which would be awarded with a book deal with award-winning horror publisher Crystal Lake Publishing. Contestants had to already have a novel ready for publication to be considered. I was found eligible and over the course of the year participated in a series of writing challenges. Long story short, I won the contest and Lilitu had a publisher at long last.

Here was the thing, though: my writing abilities had improved a lot over the years, and I could now see that it needed some serious editing. No wonder agents didn’t want it! Crystal Lake graciously allowed me to edit the book for a bit before turning it in. So I worked hard to keep my vision of the book intact while adjusting things that hadn’t aged well. In the end, the book became shorter, more streamlined, and much stronger overall.

After I turned in my draft, they had one of their own editors take a look. I responded to the editor’s edits, made some fresh changes of my own, and sent the “final” draft back. And then immediately thought of more little things I wanted to adjust! It’s true, what they say about art. It is never finished, only abandoned.

What was the best thing that happened during your promotion of the book?

I’ve been really excited to connect with author friends. It’s nice to feel part of a community. I’m kind of awkward, so that isn’t something I ever thought I’d have. I’m also very excited to finally do live readings/book signing events for the novel after all these years.

What do you have planned next?

I have a few other novel projects in progress, including one where the first draft is already complete. I’ve also started work on the next book in the Lilitu saga.

You can pick up a copy of Lilitu: The Memoirs of a Succubus in paperback or ebook from Amazon: https://amzn.to/358G84Q

You can check out Jonathan’s books at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2QgYYmM.

His homepage on the web is www.jonathanfortin.com

Or check out what he’s reading on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/jonathanfortin 

Win a copy of Angelus Rose

You can win a copy of my new novel, Angelus Rose, on Goodreads. Just click on the link below!

“Kick-ass succubus Lorelei shines as she takes on Heaven and Hell for the angel she loves in this gritty, action-packed tale of forbidden desire.” — E. M. Markoff, author of The Deadbringer

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Angelus Rose
by Loren Rhoads

Giveaway ends May 05, 2020.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway