Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 47

Need books?

Hey, did you know you can buy my books directly from me?  I set up a Bookshop right here at my humble website.  Here’s the link: http://lorenrhoads.com/bookshop/

I just signed myself up for a podcasting class that starts next week, so I have to scramble together the money to pay the tuition.  Need the next book of Raena’s story?  Need a notebook in which to record your cemetery travels?  Looking for a scary collection of ghost stories?

I’d be glad to set you up!

Or maybe you’re morbidly curious?  Check this out:

You can have your own copy autographed and I’ll pick up the postage in the US.

In fact, if you’re in the US, I’ll comp you the postage on any of my books.

Thanks for your help with this new adventure!

http://lorenrhoads.com/bookshop/

Why I dedicated Kill By Numbers to Brian

Brian Thomas and I met when I was still in high school, at a meeting of the Flint Area Writers Club. Brian was a storyteller, full of adventure and fun. I was – and continue to be – in awe of his energy.

I think Brian only asked me out once. We went to the video arcade. I liked Tempest and Ms. Pac-Man, but the only game I was good at was Galaxian. Brian played all the rudimentary Star Wars games. He was fun to watch.

All these years later, I don’t remember many of the details of our date, beyond the automobile tour of Grand Blanc, where Brian grew up. At some point, the cops started following Brian’s car. I’m not sure what he had done, although I’m sure it was something. Rather than pull over, Brian raced through a subdivision, taking turns at speed, and ducked into some stranger’s driveway. He turned the car’s engine off. We hid in the front seat, lying flat against the leather upholstery, until Brian was sure the police car had gone away.

That was the first and only time I’ve run from the authorities.

I don’t remember exactly why we didn’t date again. Brian always seemed to have lots of girls fluttering around him. I didn’t want to be one of many. At some point, he moved to East Lansing to go to film school. I moved to Ann Arbor to finish my journalism degree.

We kept in touch through Martha Allard and our mutual love of Star Wars. When Mart proposed writing a Star Wars shared world zine, Brian and I collaborated for the first time. Our story “A Contest of Wills” was the first time his character Sano Tocneppil met my character Ariel Shaad. Luckily, neither of them killed the other. It was published in Tales of a New Republic in 1996. You can read that on Wattpad.

Together with Mart, Brian and I wrote “Just Another Day in Paradise,” which was published in 1997. You can read it on Wattpad, too.

Time passed. I got married. Brian moved to LA. I moved to San Francisco. Brian got married. They visited us in San Francisco. We visited them in LA. I don’t remember what got me and Brian writing again, but we started many Ariel/Sano stories. One, raw erotica, was finished but has never been published.

Then I started writing about Lorelei. I’ve written elsewhere about , but that was about all I knew about the story when I started it. I wrote the story one scene at a time, in order. That’s unusual for me. Every day, I emailed another installment of the story to Brian.

They were rough first drafts. It was terrifying, showing my daily work to someone else. I didn’t know who the characters were. I didn’t know where the story was going. I just sat down every day, asked myself what happened next, and pressed send.

Brian loved it. In fact, he loved it enough that when I finished “The Angel’s Lair,” he jumped in with both feet and extended the story. Brian surprised me with the harpies and Ashleigh Johnson, the mortal soul who is used to possess Lorelei. Whoever heard of a mortal possessing a succubus before?

Brian wrote, I wrote, we wrote separately and together. The book ballooned up to 700 manuscript pages. Eventually, I broke the manuscript in half. It had a natural climax halfway through and that made the story a manageable, readable length. The first half was published two years ago as As Above, So Below. After a little tinkering and some updating, it is available now on Amazon as Lost Angels.

The second half of the story will be published for the first time in November. It will be called Angelus Rose.

I learned so much from writing with Brian: how to throw your characters into an action scene, how to handle the relationship between a gunslinger and her weapon, how to send your characters into situations that you can’t imagine they’ll survive. Brian taught me to take risks.

He also taught me how to crack a bullwhip, something for which I’ll always be grateful. And he roamed around 20th Century Fox with me, getting me researcher privileges in their library. He snuck me onto the set of The X Files movie. We spied on Arnold Schwarzenegger smoking a cigar. I got the faintest taste of the entertainment industry.

Most of all, though, Brian taught me how point of view shapes a story. In the As Above, So Below books, Lorelei and Azaziel look at exactly the same events from diametrically opposed viewpoints. That tension is what makes the story crackle.

I took what I’d learned writing the draft of the original massive Lorelei book as the guiding inspiration for Kill By Numbers. I wanted to explore the gulf between what Raena wants out of her life and what Gavin wants for her. I wanted to see how people who had shared so much could still completely misunderstand – and completely underestimate – each other.

The book couldn’t have been written without the decades of friendship I’ve shared with Brian, the years of inspiration he’s given me. When it came time to dedicate Kill By Numbers to someone, I never considered anyone else.

Cover Reveal for Lost Angels

We’re closing in on the revised edition of the first As Above, So Below novel, which will be out next month.  I am very, very excited.  This version corrects some errors in the text of the earlier version. It also contains a sample taste of Angelus Rose, the sequel which will be out in November.

This was the first time I’ve had a direct choice in the cover of one of my novels. It was much more complicated than I expected.  Getting to our lovely lady above was a journey, but I’m thrilled by the result.  I’d like to thank Emerian Rich for recommending the cover artist and Carmen Masloski for her amazing work.  Also, heaps of thanks to John Everson for his lovely blurb.  And, as always, thanks to Mason Jones, for assembling it all.

The book isn’t available for preorder yet, but it should be very soon.  I’ll keep this space updated.

FogCon and Perspective

I had a great couple of days at FogCon.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but as I left the house Friday afternoon, I had a realization.  I was walking alone to BART, to take the train across the Bay, to walk through a city I’m only vaguely familiar with, to sign into a convention where I didn’t have a concrete plan to see anyone I knew.  Maybe some people can do that and not think twice, but I am a person who used to be afraid to leave my house alone. (For good reason. Someday I’ll tell you that story.) I felt like I deserved a medal just for setting out.

I got to Walnut Creek. In the course of my 10-minute walk to the hotel, I walked through a downpour, had my umbrella torn out of my hands by the wind, and was blinded by sun.  I still managed to get myself checked in, find the reading I wanted to hear, score free coffee in the hotel bar (big tip to the waitress for that), and get myself to the panel I was assigned.

“From Caterpillar to Butterfly” was so much more fun than I expected.  It may have been the first time I was on a solely female panel that was entirely unconcerned with the gender of its participants.  We were there to talk about weird creatures on earth and how familiarity with them can make the alien creatures we write about more plausible.

Jamie Henderson, the moderator, did a great job of including everyone and keeping the conversation moving. I held down the literary end of the discussion, since the others were science nerds of varying stripes, all of whom were on fire with enthusiasm for the weirdness in our world.  I got to gush about octopi and cuttlefish.  The audience was a nice size, everyone contributed, and I had a lot of fun. I wish I’d been taking notes.

Up in the bar afterward, a couple who had been at the panel invited me to join them. We had an amazing conversation about Mary Roach (she has a new book coming out!), earthquakes, serving our feline masters, and so much more.  Once again I had to marvel: I was talking to strangers, almost unselfconsciously.  I was enjoying myself immensely.

Only after we parted ways did I begin to criticize myself and my inability to act normal in public.  It was as if I had forgotten briefly how socially inept I am.  I decided it didn’t matter.  I didn’t care.  I’d enjoyed myself.  I would just hope that they had as well.  I walked alone through the rain back to BART, came home to an empty house, and went to bed, wrung out.

Saturday morning I had to be back to the convention to read at 10:30.  I managed to get to the hotel early enough to be the first one in the reading room, to settle and relax a moment before people came.  I set up a copy of No More Heroes on a table in the front of the room, like a real writer might.

Then people came and we made conversation.  I met the other readers.  They decided I should go first and I was okay with that, because there were people to hear me.  (So different from all the readings when I was afraid, when nausea choked me and my heart beat too loud!) I sat down, opened the book, and read about Mykah wading on the beach, facing the anti-human prejudice.  I read Ariel and Eilif getting the message that the Thallians might not be dead after all.

The applause was so beautiful afterward.

Micah Joel read from his soon-to-be published novel about a Silicon Valley guy sent back to ancient Sumer.  Then Shara Tran, who’d won the convention’s writing contest, read a lovely fairy tale.  It was a nice range of material.

I gave the books I’d brought to Joel and Toni for Rebound Books in San Rafael. They were kind enough to invite me back up to read at the Litquake in October — maybe even to read in a funeral home, which would be a huge treat.

One of Shara’s friends was nice enough to buy the last of the books I had with me — and then they invited me to join them for lunch.  I couldn’t get a ticket, so I didn’t go, but once again I felt like a normal, socially skilled person — someone that strangers might like to have lunch with.

While I ate my solo lunch in the bar, I read an email from a generous stranger, who said, “I’ve just finished No More Heroes and wanted to say well done on such a great trilogy. I thoroughly enjoyed the way you used elements in each book to craft a connected trilogy of individual adventures, from action thriller to time travel mystery to court room drama. Thanks very much. Do you have any plans for a book 4? Or any further adventures for the Veracity and its crew?”

It felt, at the time, like the nicest thing anyone had said to me ever.

Of course, this morning, I got a second rejection for one of the stories of the Veracity‘s further adventures.  I’m sure the story will find a home, eventually.  The rejection was just a little reminder that I may have come a long, long way, but I still have a long way to go.

At FogCon this weekend

I’ll be at FOGcon 6 this weekend, so if you’ll be there, please say hi.  It’s my first FogCon.  The theme of the weekend is Transformations. The guests of honor are Jo Walton, Ted Chiang, and Octavia Butler (posthumously).

I’m scheduled for two events:

Friday, March 11 @ 4:30–5:45 pm

A panel called “From Caterpillar to Butterfly” with Jamie L Henderson, Ashley Christina , Theresa Mecklenborg, Colleen T. O’Rourke, Loren Rhoads

We all know that caterpillars turn into butterflies and tadpoles turn into frogs, but what other strange changes are out there in the natural world? How about male seahorses giving birth, or the way that temperature determines the sex of alligator babies? What creatures can change their reproductive roles, and how or when? What can we learn from Earth animals to make our aliens more interesting and more plausible? What, if anything, stays constant through those changes, and how?

My plan is to talk about octopi and how they inspired Vezali in the Templar books.

Saturday, March 12 @ 10:30-11:45 am

I’ll join Micah Joel and Writing Contest Winner Shara Tran for a reading.  I’ll be reading from No More Heroes, the third of the Templars novels. Micah plans to read from his debut novel.

Location: San Francisco Bay Area at the Walnut Creek Marriott.

Interview with David Orr

I first encountered David Orr’s photography at the Death Salon in San Francisco in October 2014.  David gave a talk about his project All That is Solid Melts into Air, which combines heavy survey markers displayed on a gallery floor with photos of sky suspended above them. The markers and skies record places where people died violently.

At the Death Salon, David showed slides of remarkably beautiful images of clouds or sunrises.  I felt rattled physically by the juxtaposition of looking at this natural beauty while being told about the violent deaths that had occurred in these specific spots.  I had the sense of lying on my back beneath the sky, as if it was the last image I would see before death.  The skies were so lovely and uncaring that vertigo overwhelmed me.

David’s photography has been shown extensively in the United States and internationally. His work is in public collections alongside such artists as Ansel Adams, John Baldessari, Jim Dine, David Hockney, the Brothers Quay, Edward Weston, and Joel-Peter Witkin.

David’s new show, Perfect Vessels, is on display this March at San Francisco’s Five Months Gallery.  It’s part of Marvelous Strange, curated in part by Annetta Black of the Odd Salon.  Check out the gallery’s hours and the series of lectures here.

I’ve wanted to interview David for quite some time, so I asked him about his photography and death.

How did you get interested in death as the subject of your art?

David Orr:  It didn’t start that way. Most of my early work dealt with symmetry and the ways in which it creates formal order. Repeating a form makes it resolve. From there, I began to become more and more interested in order systems, how we catalog and make sense of the world around us. I often end up in an area where art, science, and philosophy manage to intersect.

Then some personal history began to work its way in. My father died when I was 10. My mother was Dutch and had been in a Japanese Internment camp in Jakarta during WWII. Most of her friends were fellow Europeans who had been through their own war experiences. All had dramatic stories to tell about who and what they’d lost — how things can shift in an instant. These things all shaped me and, particularly after my mother died, began to manifest themselves in my work.

My series All That is Solid Melts Into Air, where I travel to the locations of violent deaths and photograph the skies above, was originally meant simply to illustrate absence. When it’s installed, with the sky images mounted on the ceiling and the details about about the person and their death etched into survey markers below, it’s an exploration of context creating meaning, because without the captions telling you where these photographs of clouds were taken — they’re just images of clouds. Once you know the context, everything changes. It’s an interesting installation to do, because it becomes a kind of Rorschach Test for belief systems. I showed it in Dublin, and a priest said: “See? They’re at peace now!” An atheist said: “See? This proves there’s nothing!” A Buddhist said: “See? This illustrates that all is interconnected…”

Interestingly, the Buddhist’s take is backed up by hard science: on a molecular level, elements of our matter still exist in the world after we go. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a great quote where he points out that a molecule of every sip of water you drink also passed through the kidneys of Ghandi, Napoleon, or “any other historical person of your choosing.” The same concept applies to the air we breathe. Isn’t that great?

Are you continuing to show ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR?

Yes. All That is Solid Melts into Air is an ongoing project. It will continue to be shown in various venues with varying configurations. I’ve photographed over 140 locations over the past eight years.

We met through the Death Salon in San Francisco.  You were showing photos of skulls then.  How is this show different?

The images I showed at Death Salon in 2015 were proofing images leading toward the finals I’m showing at Marvelous Strange. The end images are dye-infused onto 30-inch diameter aluminum discs, which take on the feeling of a mandala. They are also very high gloss, so the viewer can see themselves reflected as well: a memento mori.

I’m showing them in combination with Sub-Rosa, a work that uses heraldic symbols to illustrate the turmoil we keep hidden from the public. The phrase Sub-Rosa, or “under the rose,” means to keep a secret. It was derived from an ancient Roman practice of placing a wild rose on the door of a room where secret or confidential matters were to be discussed. The term is still in use to describe black-ops military actions.

How would you describe PERFECT VESSELS?

Well, the origin of Perfect Vessels goes back to my early studies of symmetry. A skull is a much more forgiving form to reflect than a human face. A face mirrored looks immediately unreal, but most don’t even notice a skull mirrored at first.

We tend to gravitate towards symmetrical forms because we are, ourselves, symmetrical. Studies have shown that a person with a more symmetrical face is more likely to be considered attractive, earn more, be trusted, and be chosen during sexual selection.

I also liked that by mirroring one side of a skull’s ‘face,’ I created an image that both reinforces the original shape and creates many areas of abstraction within that shape. Many of these occur in areas considered auspicious in Eastern thought.

What’s with the ‘VESSELS’ part of the title?

The word ‘vessel’ has multiple meanings: A craft one travels (or has traveled) in. A container. A conduit for powerful energy. A utilitarian artifact (like a vase or urn), now considered art. I wanted to evoke all of those meanings.

There’s actually a very interesting history of skulls being used as practical vessels. Did you know that Lord Byron had a skull-cup that he drank wine from? He actually wrote a poem about it. Victors often drank from the skulls of the vanquished. Tibetan Buddhists drink from a skull-cup, called a kapala, to reinforce impermanence.

This association isn’t new. The oldest carbon dating of a skull-cup is 12,700 BC, but many think it goes back much further. And, linguistically, the words for ‘cup’ and ‘head’ have the same roots, in Sanskrit that extends to include ‘skull.’ I was surprised to learn that “noggin” originally meant “cup.”

Will you put together a book for people who can’t see your photos in person?

I am hard at work on books for both Perfect Vessels and All That is Solid Melts Into Air.

What’s next?

I’m having a solo show of Perfect Vessels at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia starting July 14th, running through January 2017. The Mütter is where many of the skulls images were shot, so I’m especially excited to be exhibiting them there, where you can go down the hall and see the source!

Keep up with David’s upcoming exhibitions at his website.

nEvermore: Tales of Murder, Mystery, and the Macabre

Nevermore!: Tales of Murder, Mystery & the Macabre – Neo-Gothic Fiction Inspired by the Imagination of Edgar Allan Poe by Nancy Kilpatrick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I Kickstarted this book because Poe was my first literary crush 40-mumble years ago. I knew Nancy from her vampire novels and because she contributed an essay to Morbid Curiosity magazine. I tell you all this because I have a story in this book that I’m extremely proud of — and I think this is not a five-star book. Context is important.

The collection opens with a story by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro that is the weakest in the book. It’s way too long and the only interesting thing happens in a rushed paragraph at the end. It’s followed immediately by Robert Lopesti’s “Street of the Dead House,” which is being reprinted in all the Year’s Best collections. It’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” as told by the orangutan.

The quality continues to seesaw through the rest of the book. The highlights are amazing: Christopher Rice’s “Naomi” (The Telltale Heart), “The Masques of Amanda Llado” by Thomas Roche, Robert Bose’s “Atargatis,” Barbara Fradkin’s “The Lighthouse,” and especially Richard Christian Matheson’s “133” (Ligeia). That one is brief and completely devastating. David Morrell’s “The Opium-Eater” is lovely and effective (and only available in the print version of the book), but its connection to Poe seems tenuous.

Other contributors to the book include Tanith Lee, Margaret Atwood, William Nolan, Nancy Holder, Lisa Morton, and Kelley Armstrong.

Overall, nEvermore is a fascinating collection. It goes far in demonstrating Poe’s range from Gothic fantasy to urban fantasy to mystery to revenge to horror and even dips a toe into science fiction. It illustrates the breadth of his influence. While I wish it was a perfect collection, it is very, very good. Most of all, it’s inspired me to return to the original stories and enjoy Poe all over again.

Get your own copy of nEvermore at Amazon.

View all my reviews on Goodreads.

Loren Rhoads on Horror Writing

I’m working hard on getting the revised As Above, So Below (soon to be called Lost Angels) to the printers, but here is one of my favorite essays about how the book was written.

horroraddicts.net

Character Generation

by Loren Rhoads

The novel As Above, So Below (co-written with Brian Thomas) is the story of Lorelei, a succubus who sets her sights the angel Azaziel. She can see he’s been cast out of Heaven, but is not yet Fallen, and she vows to do whatever it takes to bring him down.

Aza has plans for Lorelei, too. Together on the streets of LA, they encounter Ashleigh Johnson, one of Azaziel’s mortal charges, who is dying of hepatitis in the street. The angel rescues Ashleigh’s soul from two harpies poised to devour it — then uses it to possess Lorelei.

Taking Ashleigh along for the ride, Lorelei flees. They encounter demons, tempters, fallen angels, and damned mortal boys, while Lorelei keeps trying to swing the angel into her corner. Up All Night Horror Fiction Review said, “As Above, So Below has a creative plot, vivid descriptive imagery…

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Morbid February Wrap-up

The chief highlight of this last month was the publication of Fright Mare: Women Write Horror, which includes my Alondra story “Sakura Time.”  The story was inspired by my trip to visit dollmakers in Tokyo, as well as by Japanese ghost stories like The Ring and Dark Water. I reviewed the book yesterday, if you’re interested.

Also exciting is that nEvermore: Tales of Murder, Mystery, and the Macabre, the Poe-inspired anthology edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Caro Soles, has advanced to being officially nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Anthology this year.  The voting takes place in March and the awards will be given out in Las Vegas in May.

nEvermore contains my story “The Drowning City,” in which Alondra faces a decades-long vendetta in Venice. You can order your own copy of the book from Amazon.

This morning, Carl Slaughter’s interview with me about grimdark, violence in space opera, Mary Sues and kick-ass heroines went up on SFSignal.

Nina D’Arcangela was kind enough to feature me on her Spreading the Writer’s Word blog for Women in Horror Month.

David Owain Hughes featured my favorite Hammer Horror-style scene from The Dangerous Type on his blog for Women in Horror Month.

The Dangerous Type — and a giveaway of the audiobook of No More Heroes — were featured on the Queer Sci Fi site.

Other than that, I’ve been working hard to get Lost Angels (the updated version of As Above, So Below) ready for publication next month.  More about that very soon!

Fright Mare: Women Write Horror

Fright Mare – Women Write Horror by Billie Sue Mosiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There’s a good variety of horror in this collection, ranging from a nightmare Civil War mindgame to a Kafka-esque hurricane to families gone bad to post-apocalyptic science fiction. The characters include an undersea Lovecraftian archeologist, a Chicana Bruja, and my American monster hunter in Japan, in addition to the terrifying grandmothers, the murderous fathers, the vengeful ghosts of the homeless, and the wish-granting fortune tellers.

My favorite story is Kathryn Ptacek’s City Girl, because it excavated a lot of buried childhood memories for me and yet the ending remained a surprise. A close second is Marie Victoria Robertson’s The Ouroboros Bite, a Bradbury-esque mixture of alchemy and being careful what you wish for that was beautifully written.

If there’s a drawback to the collection, it is that it begins to repeat itself. There are two post-apocalypse stories where women are subjected to medical experiments for the benefit of society. The stories are as different as can be within that framework, but they echo each other, as do the two first-person turning-into-a-zombie stories. That said, I’ve never read a possession by curtains story before.

All in all, I am honored to have my work included in this collection. More than that, I’m thrilled to have been introduced to a bunch of new authors whose work I’m eager to explore.

You can order your own copy of Fright Mare from Amazon.

View all my reviews on Goodreads.