Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 45

Morbidlandia

WisCon was intense.  I was on two panels (Genre Blending and Living into Dying — aka the Death Panel), neither of which went exactly the way I expected.  Both drew nice crowds, though.  In the first instance, I got to mention two books I’ve loved recently:  Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway and Charlie Jane Ander’s All the Birds in the Sky.  In the second case, I got to promote cemetery vacations and model my enormous skull sweater (seen at left).

The best part of the weekend was hanging out with my friend Martha, whose new book Black Light just came out.  We spent a fair amount of time working the Broad Universe table in the Dealers Room, where she took this photo of me.  We even got some outlining done on the story we’re working on together.

The weekend seemed very full.  I got to meet Mart’s friend Paige, which was a treat, as well as several members of the Sci Fi Binders, the Queer Sci Fi group, and more Broad Universe members.  I had a great time Saturday on a local ghost walk.  I even found one of my books in the window at A Room of One’s Own, which is an amazing bookstore in Madison.

Last weekend was the second annual Bay Area Book Festival.  I met up with members of the local chapter of the Horror Writers Association and spent Saturday selling books and talking about writing. I came surprisingly exhausted, but I sold more books than I ever had in person.  This I credit to the mad selling skills of Oz Monroe.  A post on direct bookselling will follow at some point, I hope.

With Roh Morgon, Sumiko Saulson, me, Oz Monroe, Jeff Seeman, and Crystal Romeo with Carlos.

I’ve been working on this story with Mart and trying to write something for the upcoming HWA anthology, so I haven’t been getting the guest posts polished up and out into the world the way I would like.  Still, there have been two happy developments:

An update on my attempt to get 100 rejection letters this year appeared on No Wasted Ink. Wendy also publishes a very helpful round up of links pertaining to the business and craft of writing on Mondays.  Definitely check those out.

In that same vein, Kira Butler put together an amazing list of blogs to inspire Horror Writers. I am so honored to find Cemetery Travel alongside Atlas Obscura, Death Salon, Messy Nessy, Nourishing Death, and the rest: Inspiration for Horror Writers and the Macabrely-Minded.

Kira writes YA horror and you should go explore her blog and her books.  She is an inspiration to me.


Next week, Cemetery Travel is going to publish its 500th post, so I’m trying to pull something special together for that.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Black Light

It is a wonderful thing when a writer gets to see her novel published, and my friend, Martha J. Allard, has done just that. After years of writing and revision, Black Light is now in print or avail…

Source: Black Light

Bay Area Book Festival

Today and tomorrow, the second annual Bay Area Book Festival takes place in Berkeley, California.  Once again, I’ll be hanging out at the HWA booth, selling books and talking about writing.

The book festival is huge and sprawling, taking over streets all over downtown Berkeley. Last year, booths ranged from kids books to travel books to history to every flavor or fiction, from self-published to small presses to local celebrities to the university presses.  I honestly never saw so many books together in one place in my life.

Last year’s festival was the first time I felt like part of the huge vibrant literary community in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It was the first time I’d ever seen all our variety on display in once place.

Joining me at the HWA table today will be local authors Jeff Seeman, Crystal Romero, John Claude Smith, Oz Monroe, Roh Morgan, and Sumiko Saulson.  (Tomorrow’s authors include Gene O’Neill, Samuel Sattin, Martin Reaves, and Luke Hueler.)

We’ll be on Writers Row between Addison and Kittredge from 10 to 6.

I’ll have all my recent books for sale, along with Automatism Press’s newest publication, Black Light.  Whether your tastes run to dark space opera or horror erotica, to historic cemeteries or Morbid Curiosity or to rock-n-roll vampire love stories, I’ll be glad to set you up.

 

My first WisCon

Tomorrow I’ll be going to Madison for my first WisCon. I’ve never been to Wisconsin before, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Here is my schedule. It’s pretty loose, which means there is plenty of time to hang out and meet people.  I also hope to get out to explore Forest Hill Cemetery…and maybe even get some writing done.

THURSDAY:

I get in mid-afternoon Thursday, so I’m hoping to meet some of the Sci-Fi Binders and go over to the Guest of Honor Reception at Room of One’s Own.

FRIDAY:

My morning is free, so it might be a good time for a graveyard.  Just saying.

In the afternoon, I’ll be helping to set up the Broad Universe table in the Dealers Room.  My plan is to hang out there on and off through the convention.

9-10:15 PM

Genre Blending

Moderator: Rebecca Holden

Panelists: Alex Jennings, Justine Larbalestier, Loren Rhoads, Kristine Smith, Brooke Wonders

Whether it’s a steampunk fairytale or an end of the world love story between science and magic or a Hong Kong-style revenge space opera, stories are spilling over the edges of genre. When is it done well? What is left to explore?

SATURDAY

1-2:15 PM

Broad Universe Reading

Participants: Martha Allard, Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Sandra Marie Grayson, Jude McLaughlin, and Loren Rhoads.

Broad Universe is an international organization dedicated to promoting, encouraging, honoring, and celebrating women writers and editors in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other speculative genres. Members of Broad Universe will read from their works to demonstrate the full spectrum of genres we embrace.  I’ll be reading from No More Heroes.

SUNDAY

1-2:15 PM

Living into Dying

Moderator: R. Elena Tabachnick.

Participants: Kate Carey, Loren Rhoads, and Nadia Hutton

Dying happens to everyone. SF aside, none of us are going to escape it, and maybe we shouldn’t want to. Yet many of us will have no experience of dying until we are suddenly thrust into a caretaker role or facing death ourselves. In this panel we will discuss how to live with death: the challenges of dying, the gifts we receive from it, and the stories that get us through.

MONDAY

11:30-1 PM

I’m planning to participate in the Sign Out, unless I sell all my books in the Dealers Room.

Books I’ll have for sale at the Broad Universe table:

1. LOST ANGELS (Automatism Press)

2. THE DANGEROUS TYPE (Night Shade Books)

3. KILL BY NUMBERS (Night Shade Books)

4. NO MORE HEROES (Night Shade Books)

5. MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES (Scribner)

6. WISH YOU WERE HERE: ADVENTURES IN CEMETERY TRAVEL (Western Legends Press)

The Fatal Book

In 2005, the writers club I grew up in invited me to join them for a reading at the Borders Books in Flint, Michigan.  I was thrilled by the invitation.  This was the group to whom I first read my work aloud when I was a junior in high school.  The Flint Area Writers let me hear my own work for the first time, let me feel the words in my vocal cords and vibrating through the air.  I wanted to write something special for them.

And Borders…I fell in love with the original Borders Books on State Street in Ann Arbor.  Reading at a Borders was a professional goal.  I was really excited about the opportunity.

Of course, once I said yes, I discovered there were limitations.  We would read in the cafe, early in the evening, so I couldn’t use adult situations or language.  The group honored me by giving me a featured spot — 20 minutes — and I wanted to be able to tell a whole story.  I wanted to write about Alondra, my 20-something witch, and I wanted to set the story partially in a bookstore.

I don’t remember why I was so angry now, but at the time I wrote the story, I was mad about the limitations on language and sex.  So I wrote an impassioned story about censorship. The story pretty much came out in a fevered rush.  It combines earthquakes in Los Angeles, elemental magic, the drowning of Atlantis, and the finer points of bookbinding techniques.

It’s set in a bookstore that’s a combination of the Iliad Book Shop in North Hollywood and Dawn Treader Books in Ann Arbor.  Dawn Treader was the epitome of a used bookstore:  underground, mazelike, stuffed full of bookshelves that towered overhead.  I was only in the Iliad once, but I remembered the photographs on the counter by the register.  During the Northridge Quake, the bookshelves in the Iliad had toppled like dominoes.  Books sprawled in heaps on the floor.

Alan Beatts at Borderlands Books helped me a great deal as I researched the story.  I wanted to write knowledgeably about the history of printing and bookbinding. Alan gave me invaluable advice.  He even told me that books were once burned on pyres and even their lead type could be destroyed by order of the village hangman.

The character of Elizabeth, proprietor of Prospero’s Books, is a tribute to my friend Martha, who has worked for decades at several Barnes & Nobles.

The resulting story is called “The Fatal Book.”  It asks what you would do if you discovered a book that could unleash earthquakes.  It’s just been published by New Realm magazine.  You can order yourself a copy here.

Martha Allard’s Black Light

Martha Allard and I started writing together decades ago. We’ve collaborated on short stories. I published her essays in Lend the Eye a Terrible Aspect and Death’s Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries. She published a faery tale of mine in Out of the Green. Martha is always my first reader, my sharpest critic and my biggest cheerleader. I dedicated The Dangerous Type to her.

Now she’s returned the favor by dedicating her new novel, Black Light, to me. I can’t tell you how much I love this book. I’ve read it over and over and want to learn it by heart.

Black Light is a rock-n-roll ghost story. It’s got a highly original twist on vampires. The soundtrack is loud, the boys are pretty, and the climax has now brought me to tears three times. You can order a copy from Amazon. And you should.

Her writing has been called “heartbreaking and bitterly romantic,” “tender and cruel as a midnight kiss,” and like the “love child of Charles De Lint and Poppy Z. Brite,” which sums it up perfectly.

I wanted to take the opportunity to ask Martha some questions about the book.

Loren: David Bowie has been a huge influence on your writing.  Was there any particular album (or song) that got you through writing this book?

Martha: You’re right, he has been. There is a little of his music in everything I write. Black Light had its birth in the lyrics on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I have owned that album in every possible format and played it in every place I’ve ever lived. My favorite Bowie album, the album that I love the most, is Hunky Dory. I played it a lot to get through the end of this book.

After Bowie’s death, I had the first two lines of “The Bewlay Brothers” (which is the last cut on the record), tattooed on my left forearm: “And so the story goes they wore the clothes they said the things to make it seem improbable. The whale of a lie like they hope it was.” Only after I’d worn it for a week or so, did I realize that it was really the theme of the book.

Loren: What is your favorite scene in Black Light?

Martha: Y’know, I have to say, this is really one of the few things that I’ve written that — now that everything’s done — I really like. So I will give you two favorite scenes.

The first one is somewhere in the middle. Trace is at the house the rest of the band share, looking for Asia. Instead he finds the place dark, quiet. Only Tommi is there, with a black eye given to him by his boyfriend. It’s not the first time that’s happened. Trace doesn’t demand that Tommi leave the guy, or make him feel guilty by telling him how worried his is. He just gives Tommi what he needs right then.

I like that scene because it’s tender and sweet. It’s Trace doing something entirely for someone else.

I can’t tell you about the second scene, though, because it would spoil the surprise. I will say that I love it because when I wrote it, I had no idea what was coming. Definitely not what I had planned. It was like the character just grabbed control and all I could do was write it. I remember looking down at the page, thinking, wait…. Wait! What did you just do? How do we come back from this? It really was the most fun writing I’ve ever had.

Loren: Queen of Angels Cemetery is one of my favorite settings in the book.  Tell me what inspired it.

Martha: Thanks! I’m glad you liked it, because I know you know your cemeteries.   When I lived in LA, Brian Thomas was one of my housemates. And Brian told amazing stories. One of them that I still remember was about how transitory fame was. He told me about visiting Hollywood Memorial, which is now called Hollywood Forever. He described the overgrown and forgotten graves of former “Kings of Hollywood,” whose names had been obscured from their headstones and scrubbed from history. I imagined that Asia’s horror movie idols would be buried somewhere like that. I borrowed the name from an old hospital that was used as a location for several movies, including The Prophecy. It was rumored to have been haunted.

Loren: I love the bit in the book about the Warhol silkscreens.  It’s obvious, now that you mention it, that Warhol was a vampire.  Are there other historical figures you suspect?

Martha: I love Andy Warhol and it just occurred to me one day, while I was shelving books at work, that he must have been similar to Albrecht. Someday I want to write their story. Oscar Wilde is another obvious choice, because of The Picture of Dorian Gray, but, unlike his character, I don’t think Wilde’s vampirism would have been malicious or intentional. He was talented and flamboyant, and that drew people to him, and in turn their attention fed his talent, pushed him to be more flamboyant. Maybe there’s a bit of him in Trace.

Another, more negative example of someone who could have been a psychic vampire was Malcolm McLaren, the manager of The Sex Pistols. He made his career and lived his life using people until they were used up.

Also, Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager, Rasputin…. I could go on, but it gets weird from here.

Loren: Was there something you had to leave out of the book that was hard to cut?

Martha: Oh, yeah. This book has undergone so many rewrites that I almost can’t remember them all. Originally, there was a chapter where Trace crashes Albrecht Christian’s Jaguar and goes missing for a few days. That was fun, because he nearly ends up starting a new band. Fun and distracting. And there were about thirty pages toward the end of the book that had to go. I was a little sad, because I liked the imagery and the emotion in them, but, as somebody really smart once told me, you can only fit so much into a sentence, right?

Loren: You’ve published one other story in the book’s world.  Are there others you’d like to write?

Martha: I’ve always written side stories, because in my mind, characters have lives before the book begins and after the book is done. I have one that I’m currently sprucing up about Asia and Trace before they formed Black Light. Also I have a story about Albrecht Christian as a young man that I’m slowly poking at. And of course there’s that one about Andy and him… Okay, so I might have a lot of other stories.

Loren: What are you working on next?

Martha: I am muddling my way through a Neo-Victorian romance about an airship captain and the captive/experiment of a mad alchemist. It’s called The Night Was Not. It’s a ton of fun, because it has all my favorite things from the Victorian era: a workhouse, a freak show… and a werewolf. Right now I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Loren: Any advice for new writers?

Martha: I’m totally not used to being asked for advice! I would say is this: don’t bother trying to write what you know. We end up doing that, whether we mean to or not. Write what you feel. Write the scariest secret you have. Make every word the word you wanted to write. And then you’ll be okay.

***

Martha J. Allard is a writer of contemporary and dark fantasy. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines like Talebones and Not One of Us. Her story “Dust” won an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, 19th edition, edited by Gardner Dozois. Her story “Phase” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Award. They are both collected in the chapbook Dust and Other Stories. You can find her on her blog at marthajallard.blogspot.com.

***

The back cover text:

Los Angeles, 1983. Trace Dellon, lead singer, knows exactly what he wants: the white heat of the spotlight. When his band Black Light is offered a record deal, Trace grabs for it. He will do anything to make it.

Asia Heyes, bass player, knows what he wants, too. It’s not fame or the adoration of groupies. It’s Trace. It’s always been Trace.  Though it’s been unspoken between them, Trace’s other lovers—his audience—push Asia aside.

With the contract, Albrecht Christian comes into their lives. He is a man with everything but what he needs to live: the energy that runs just under Trace’s skin. Even Trace isn’t enough, and Albrecht finds himself starving.

When everything crashes with a bullet, they all learn the truth. Rock and roll, like magic, requires both love and sacrifice. Then Black Light’s fragile trajectory to greatness really begins.

 

 

 

Borderlands hosts another Sponsors Open Mic

This Friday, May 20, Borderlands Bookstore celebrates its sponsors with another in its series of Sponsors’ Open Mics at 7:00 pm.

From the Borderlands newsletter:  “Borderlands’ sponsors are an intelligent, talented, and diverse group of people, and many of them are writers!  We’re hosting an Open Mic Night for sponsors, giving them a chance to share short stories, flash fiction, an excerpt from a longer work — almost any type of writing, in any genre.  The really fun thing about open mic nights is that each reader brings fresh surprises and you never know what’s coming up next.  We hope you’ll come by to check out your talented friends and fellow customers!”

The event is open to the general public, but only sponsors will read. Participants include:

1.  MC Greg Roensch, who’ll start the evening off by reading a short piece.

2.  Betsy Streeter – She’s the author of the Silverwood series, time travel YA that’s been described as “The Incredibles meets Doctor Who meets MacGyver,” and the  Neptune Road Rocket Angels series.

3.  Local author Evan Adams

4.  Loren Rhoads  – I’m going to read a snippet from Lost Angels. Something sexy, I think.

5.  Laurel Anne Hill – She’s the author of the award-winning Heroes Arise. Most recently, her work has appeared in the Once Upon a Scream anthology.

6.  Megan E. O’Keefe – She’s the author of Steal the Sky, book one in the Scorched Continent series: “a conman of noble birth pulls off one more heist…”

Borderlands Cafe is located beside the bookstore at 870 Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District. Call for details: (415) 970-6998 or visit www.borderlands-books.com.

Reviewing on Goodreads

Goodreads wrote to tell me that I’m in the Top 1% of reviewers on their site. That seems weird to me. I’ve written fewer than 400 reviews there — 387, to be precise.  That doesn’t really seem like that many, to me.

Goodreads, if you’re not familiar with it, is a site where anyone can review books they’ve read, then suggest them to people who might be interested.  I like to write mini essays on the books I’ve read.  Most people don’t.  They simply leave a star rating: 1 star is “did not like it” and 5 stars is “it was amazing.”

I understand the appeal of star ratings.  No one can argue with stars.  Actually, I’ve had very few people argue with my reviews.  Personally, though, I don’t find the star system very useful.

My hope is to start a conversation about the books I read.  I try to be open with my preconceptions and expectations, so that readers of the review can see if they’re looking for the same things in books as I am, or if our tastes are so divergent that my thoughts aren’t useful to them.

I’m not writing the reviews to be read by the authors.  Once a book has been published, the author has moved on.  Critiquing a book with the expectation that the author will somehow fix it isn’t realistic.

Even so, writing reviews has become somewhat problematic for me.  I did an event in the fall with an author who is much more professional than I am.  I really loved the first half of her book — and told her so at the event — but when I finished it later, it seemed needlessly long and the protagonist wasn’t involved in some of the book’s turning points.  I really debated reviewing on Goodreads the book at all.  What if the author read my review?  What if she held it against me?  She could theoretically get me bounced from events we might share in the future.

In the end, I decided that she is a professional.  The book came out on a big house.  My half glowing/half disappointed 3-star review wasn’t going to damage her career.  It probably wasn’t even going to damage her day.  I went ahead and wrote down my thoughts.

On a later occasion, though, I refrained from leaving a review for a book that I just couldn’t bring myself to finish.  The author had been on Facebook talking about her depression and asking for help — and I didn’t want her to read a 1-star review that said what I honestly thought were the failings of her book.  In the end, my opinion doesn’t matter that much. Her book made some of the award lists this year.  I wish her well and hope she finds the help she needs.

I’m facing another dilemma now.  I started a book that got huge raves as soon as it was published.  It’s already been optioned for a movie.  I found it rough going and may not finish it.  I’m not sure my review would lend anything useful to the conversation about the book.  I may just get it go.

All of this has given me even more respect for real book reviewers and book bloggers.  Before I found myself in these situations, I never considered the complications of saying what you thought about a book.  Now it feels like dissing people I hope to think of as colleagues.  That doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do.

I intend to stay on Goodreads — and I encourage you to friend me, if you’re on it.  I may begin to limit my reviews to classics and inspirations and things outside the fields that I’m writing in now, unless it’s to rave about a book.  But if you see a 5-star review from me about a book, you can be certain that I mean every word.

The full list of interviews

I am always glad to be interviewed.  Please get in touch if you’d like to chat about writing.

Here’s the list of all the interviews I’ve done so far:

Margaret L. Carter interviewed me at length about Dracula and succubi for the May issue of her deliciously dark newsletter. You can subscribe to it here:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/margaretlcartersnewsfromthecrypt

Coreena McBurnie interviewed me on her blog about Lost Angels and writing, May 2, 2016.

Eric Fomley interviewed me about writing and Lost Angels for Deviant Worlds, April 16, 2016.

Carl Slaughter interviewed me about grimdark, violence in space opera, Mary Sues and kick-ass heroines at on SFSignal, February 29, 2016.

Lisa Haselton interviewed me and ran an excerpt of No More Heroes on her Reviews & Interviews blog, November 4, 2015.

Wendy Van Camp interviewed me about No More Heroes on No Wasted Ink, November 4, 2015.

Terri Leigh Relf featured me on her Day in the Life of an Author interviews, October 2015.

Alyx Dellamonica made me face The Heroine Question, September 23, 2015.

Carole Ann Moleti interviewed me about Kill By Numbers on her blog, September 13, 2015.

Fiona McView interviewed me about writing and The Dangerous Type for her extensive series of author interviews, July 21, 2015.

Shells Walter interviewed me about The Dangerous Type on her blog in July 12, 2015.

“Women in Horror: Loren Rhoads” on How to Dismantle Your Life, March 3, 2015.

Awwthentic Magazine interviewed me about my memoir All You Need Is Morbid and the Wattpad HQ award it won, March 2, 2015.

“Contributor Appreciation Month: Loren Rhoads” by Amanda Rose on Scoutie Girl, November 2014.

“The Morbid, The Merrier” interview by Natasha Ewendt on Goodreads, October 28, 2014.

“This is the Life of a Graveyard Tourist” by Cheryl Eddy on io9, October 27, 2014.

“Travel Memories from Loren” on the Travel Tester blog by Nienke Krook, for her Vintage Travel Memories feature, June 8, 2014.

“A Word with Loren Rhoads” interview with Tonia Brown on her Backseat Writer blog, March 27, 2014. This is a silly one.

“She’s Been Everywhere” by Patti Martin Bartsche in American Cemetery magazine, October 2013.

“Ladies of Sins of the Sirens: Interview with Loren Rhoads” by Meli Hooker, Dreadful Tales, February 21, 2012.

“Interview with Editor and Writer Loren Rhoads” in Black Sunday #1, September 11, 2011. Reprinted online May 27, 2012.

“Panel of Experts,” Gothic.Net, February 12, 2011.

“Exploring the Strange and Unusual with Loren Rhoads” by Dylan Madeley, Morbid Outlook, October 2009.

“Loren Rhoads: Life is a Morbid Curiosity” by David Niall Wilson, Macabre Ink, February 16, 2008.

“Tracing the Graves: Inside the Mind of Morbid Curiosity’s Loren Rhoads” by Alex S. Johnson, Vial #3.5, Winter 2002.

The first Alondra fan letter

This is my 300th blog post on LorenRhoads.com, which pretty much blows my mind.  This blog (my fourth) was started in January 2013, when I decided I wanted to blog from my own domain.

I wanted to do something special to commemorate the milestone, so I’m going to do a throwback to my Red Room blog.  It recorded one of the major turning points in my life.

What follows was originally posted in January 2008, but it’s relevant now because the sequel to the story it talks about appears in the Fright Mare anthology, which came out in February — and a new Alondra story, one of my favorites, will appear in New Realm magazine tomorrow.

I usually check my email after my daughter goes to bed, getting ready to settle on the sofa with Mason and unwind from the day. But last night I got an email that entirely fired me up and put a shine on a day that was already good, since my copies of Sins of the Sirens had come in the mail.

With permission, I quote:

“I just wanted to mention to you how much I loved one of your stories. I’m a big fan of “Not One Of Us” magazine, and have read most of their issues. Anyway, I sat down this morning at 6:00am with a big cup of coffee & the latest issue of “Not One Of Us.” I had no expectations, other than their good collections of short horror stories. Well, I could not believe the impact your story “The Fox and the Foreigner” had on me. Yes, it had its light elements of “magic,” but it was the single most beautiful story I have read in years; considering it was only 13 pages long, that really says something. I can’t tell you how moved I was after reading this, but I can tell you your story brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for starting my day in such a beautiful way.”

Wow.

“The Fox and the Foreigner” is one of my favorite stories, so I’m thrilled that someone likes it. But to take the time to look me up and tell me… I am thoroughly jazzed.

Now I want to sit down and write more stories that make people cry, that bring a little magic to their days.

This is still true.