Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 49

Never Enough: 2015, part 3

One of the ways I worked to get the word out about The Dangerous Type and its sisters was to guest blog anywhere that would have me.  Here’s the whole list for this year:

The Dangerous Type:

The amazing Jaime Johnesee hosted me on her blog to talk about the gender of my name and its effect on the publication of The Dangerous Type:

Mary Robinette Kowal let me blog about my experiments in persona of her My Favorite Bit blog feature: http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit-loren-rhoads-talks-about-the-dangerous-type/

Related to that, I wrote on Lisa Lane’s Cerebral Writer blog about how point of view affects The Dangerous Type: http://www.cerebralwriter.com/blog/loren-rhoads-shaping-your-story-through-point-of-view

At Tracie McBride’s Exquisite Corpse, I answered Publishers Weekly’s charge that I’m trying to bring grimdark to space opera: https://traciemcbridewriter.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/guest-post-grimdark-and-the-dangerous-type-by-loren-rhoads/

Eden Royce hosted me at Dark Geisha to talk about the connection between fighting women and dance in an essay I called Crafting a Character: https://darkgeisha.wordpress.com/2015/07/20/guest-post-crafting-a-character/

HorrorAddicts.net invited me to talk about where my claustrophobia came from and how it inspired The Dangerous Type: https://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/claustrophobia-and-the-dangerous-type/

I followed that up by talking about the decision to imprison Raena in the Templar tombs at Emerian Rich’s Emz Box blog: https://emzbox.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/guest-blog-loren-rhoads-on-surviving-the-templar-tombs/

Emerian (in her secret identity as Emmy Z. Madrigal) let me invade her romance blog to answer the reviewer who said The Dangerous Type was a good gateway to get your romance-reading friends to read space opera:  Counting Kisses https://sweetdreamsnovel.wordpress.com/tag/the-dangerous-type/

Armand Rosamilia allowed me to post an excerpt on his blog: http://armandrosamilia.com/2015/07/08/guest-post-loren-rhoads/

Kill By Numbers:

Nicholas Kaufmann encouraged me to talk about The Scariest Part of writing Kill By Numbers.  This is another guest blog series that is absolutely fascinating. I’m excited to be able to take part.

John Everson took over Not Now, Mommy’s Reading for a month of Not Now, Mommy’s Screaming blog posts.  I wrote about the connection between Lorelei, the succubus heroine of As Above, So Below, and Raena, heroine of the Templar books.  It’s worth checking out the blog post to see the fun illustrations they added:  Exes & Ohs at http://bit.ly/1Mofo49

At Aidee Ladnier’s blog, I talked about tentacles, octopi, and fluid gender.

For her Tell Me feature, Jennifer Brozek asked me to tell her about Kill By Numbers, so I talked about relationships falling apart: http://www.jenniferbrozek.com/blog/post/Tell-Me-Loren-Rhoads.aspx

At Unleaded Writing.com, I talked about the accusations of Mary Sueism thrown at any competent female character — and who the real Mary Sue is in Kill By Numbers: http://unleadedwriting.com/2015/10/29/guest-post-loren-rhoads-is-your-character-a-mary-sue/

For Fran Wilde’s Book Bites feature, I discussed using cooking as characterization of the Veracity’s captain: https://franwilde.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/book-bites-by-the-numbers-with-loren-rhoads/

No More Heroes:

Wattpad’s Fan Fiction community invited me to talk about how writing Star Wars fanfic led me to a three-book contract with Night Shade Books:

https://www.wattpad.com/182058407-the-fan-fair-star-wars-fanfic-literally-changed-my

Non-Space Opera guest posts:

Sherry Peters invited me to contribute to her Stories of Perseverance to Inspire Struggling Writers, so I wrote about how Luck Favors the Prepared: https://sherrypeters.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/luck-favors-the-prepared/

On Decluttering for Writers and Other Packrats, Morven Westfield allowed me to rave about hiring a professional organizer to sort through the Morbid Curiosity detritus:  Paperwork, Be Gone! http://declutteringforwriters.blogspot.com/2015/06/paperwork-be-gone.html

Pamela Kinney invited me to her Supernatural Friday blog to talk about moving into my house: Of course I live in a Haunted House: http://pamelakkinney.blogspot.com/2015/07/supernatural-friday-of-course-i-live-in.html

I wrote about eating in the dark for Lawrence Schoen’s Eating Authors feature:  http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/plugs/eating-authors-loren-rhoads/

Emerian Rich invited me to kidnap the Horror Addicts blog for a couple of days in October, so I wrote about the graves of horror’s forefathers: part one, part two, part three.

The Horror Writers Association hosted its annual Halloween Haunts blog series, so of course I wrote about Graveyard Horrors:  http://horror.org/halloween-haunts-graveyard-horrors-by-loren-rhoads/

 

Never Enough 2015, part 2

Loren reading at Borderlands Books. Photo by R. Samuel Klatchko.

This was a great year for doing live events. I said yes to every opportunity that came my way and met a bunch of great people as a result.

2015’s Readings:

At the Broad Universe reading at the World Horror Convention in Atlanta, Georgia,I read the beginning of the first chapter of The Dangerous Type.

I read the whole first chapter at The Dangerous Type release event at the Borderlands Cafe in San Francisco.

Loren reading in Spokane.

At the World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, I read the scene where Raena watches her booby-trapped tomb collapse from The Dangerous Type at my first Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading.

At the first Borderlands Books Sponsors’ Open Mic, I read Raena & Ariel’s escape from Imperial custody from Kill By Numbers.

For this year’s Litquake, I read a different scene from Kill By Numbers at Gamescape North in San Rafael, California.

Laura Anne Gilman, Terry Bisson, and Loren Rhoads at SFinSF at the Borderlands Cafe.

I read the space fight scene from Kill By Numbers at SFinSF.

I read two scenes from The Dangerous Type at Writers With Drinks. That’s one to cross off my Bucket List.

I told the ghost story that’s been published as “The Ghost of Friends” at San Francisco’s Literary Speakeasy in October.

Photo by Karen Colonna.

Book Signing:

I got to sign The Dangerous Type in my hometown Barnes & Noble, with my best friend.  That may have been the highlight of the year.

Radio/Podcasts:

I was on FCCFreeRadio twice this year, chatting with DJ Lilycat about the space opera trilogy before and after it was published.

Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 12-2 p.m. Listen to it here.
Sunday, December 6, 2015 at 12-2 p.m. Listen to it here.

Legendary San Francisco newsman Peter Finch featured Morbid Curiosity and Cemetery Travel again on his Finch Files in October.

Interviews:

Malina Roos featured me in her Women in Horror series: Loren Rhoads” on How to Dismantle Your Life, March 3, 2015.

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

Fiona McView interviewed me for her extensive series of author interviews.

Carole Ann Moleti interviewed me about Kill By Numbers on her blog.

Alyx Dellamonica made me face The Heroine Question.

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

Wendy Van Camp interviewed me about No More Heroes on her blog.

Lisa Haselton interviewed me and ran an excerpt of No More Heroes on her blog.

***

And I’m not done yet. Tomorrow I’ll put up the final installment of Never Enough 2015.  Thanks for following me so far!

 

Never Enough: 2015

Every year I recap the writing triumphs and disappointments of the previous twelve months. Every year I feel like I’ve never done enough. This year, with the three space opera novels out, I feel a little better about what I managed to accomplish, but I still see room for improvement.

Which means that this is the year that I’ve finally faced that I will never be satisfied.

I did manage to jump on almost every guest-posting opportunity I saw, as well as doing a bunch of readings and networking. Now that I gather all the links together, it looks like I was busier than I thought.

Books:

The Dangerous Type came out in July from Night Shade Books.  Beauty in Ruins said, “The story really takes off and races towards one of the more satisfying conclusions I’ve come across in years.”

Kill By Numbers came out from Night Shade Books in September. Geek Dad said, “I do like a good science fiction tale that revolves around questionable characters. That’s probably why I’m so crazy about Loren Rhoads ‘In the Wake of the Templars’ trilogy of books. There’s not an upstanding citizen to be found, but there are plenty of shades of gray. Raena and her crew are quickly becoming some of my favorite scoundrels, and I cannot wait to see where this story goes!”

No More Heroes, the conclusion of the series, came out from Night Shade Books in November.

Short fiction:

An Alondra story called “The Drowning City” appeared in NEVERMORE! TALES OF MURDER, MYSTERY, AND THE MACABRE, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Caro Soles. The book came out in July 2015. Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Nancy Holder, William Nolan, Thomas Roche, and Tanith Lee.

Another Alondra story — “Sakura Time” — was accepted by Billie Sue Mosiman for FRIGHT MARE: WOMEN WRITE HORROR, which will be out in February 2016.

Nonfiction:

“Puzzling Out History,” the last of my Scoutie Girl travel essays, when up in January.

“Touched by a Ghost,” an excerpt from my essay in the first Haunted Mansion Project book appears in THE HORROR ADDICT’S GUIDE TO LIFE, edited by David Watson and published by HorrorAddicts.net.  Other contributors include Emerian Rich, Sumiko Saulson, H.E. Roulo, Laurel Anne Hill, and many more.

An essay about San Francisco’s Wave Organ will appear in the spring issue of SEARCH magazine.

Fanfic:

I put some of my earliest published stories up on Wattpad.  These were the genesis of the characters that eventually appeared in the space opera trilogy.

“Just Another Day in Paradise” is up on Wattpad under the title Life During Wartime: Volume 1. In the snows of Hoth, a fighter pilot, the crew of a medical shuttle, and a former Imperial prisoner are just trying to survive to fight another day. This Star Wars fanfic, co-written with Martha Allard and Brian Thomas, was originally published in Tales of the New Republic.

“Claustrophobia,” “Trust,” and “Redemption,” the original Raena Zacari stories, were published in the zines Anthology and Tales of a New Republic by Martha Allard. I gathered them together as Life During Wartime: Volume 2 on Wattpad.

“A Contest of Nerves,” the original story introducing Ariel Shaad to the character who would become Gavin Sloane, appears on Wattpad.

This is getting long, so I’ll continue later. Thanks for reading this far.

 

Listening to my own story

The first writers group to which I belonged required its members to read their own work aloud.  It was useful for the writer to hear her own words spoken, to feel the places where the text was clunky or awkward or impossible to parse.  It gave me my first opportunity to perform my own work, too.

The drawback to reading your own work aloud is that a good reader improves all material.  As the author, you know how to emphasis the dialog, when to read faster to make a scene more exciting, where to slow things down to make it easier for the reader to catch what’s important. You can direct the listener’s attention in such a way that they miss things they should comment on.

When the publisher of my space opera sold the audiobook rights, my only concern was that I did not want to be responsible for recording the book.  I was relieved when they assigned me a female narrator, since I felt strongly that a woman needed to tell Raena’s story.  Other than that, I sat back to watch the project develop. At the time, I wasn’t very versed in audibooks, beyond hearing Neil Gaiman read The Graveyard Book.

Since September, Audible.com has produced audiobooks of the first two books in my Templar series and the third is in progress.  It’s been the first time in my life that I had the opportunity to listen to someone else read my work to me. I’ve been far more entertained by the experience than I expected.

The narrator, Liv Anderson, has been diligent about contacting me about the pronunciation of my peoples, planets, and foods.  She’s an actress, so she brings a variety of voices to my books, which was a great surprise to me.  When I read, I vary the voices a little — Raena’s is higher than Ariel’s, Sloane’s is lower than Kavanaugh’s — but Liv does a great job really individualizing each character.  It wasn’t an easy task, considering there are nine cloned boys in the first book, as well as the nonhuman crew of the Veracity.

My initial response on hearing Liv read chapter one of The Dangerous Type was that it wasn’t how I imagined it.  As I relaxed into the story, though, she caught me up, carried me along.  I mean, I know this story better than anyone.  I’ve read it more times than anyone.  And still I got tangled in it, eager to listen to the audiobook so I coul hear what happens next.  I stopped being the author of the book and became a listener.  And that made me a fan.

The Dangerous Type came out as an audiobook on September 10.  Here’s the link to Audible. There’s even a taste of the first chapter up for free.

If you check it out, please let me know what you think.

Raena’s Foremothers: Leia Organa

It wasn’t until I started writing these essays teasing out the influences behind my space opera trilogy that I even considered the large shadow cast by Princess Leia.

At first, I thought Leia’s chief impact on Raena’s story was the torture scene in A New Hope.  As you remember, Leia has been captured by Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer and taken to Governor Tarkin.  They know she had the stolen plans to the Death Star, but they haven’t been able to locate them.  The audience never learns the evidence against Leia. She really did have the plans and really is working for the Alliance, so there’s no reason — and no time in the movie — for the Imperials to prove her guilt as a traitor. It’s just taken as given.

Twenty-year-old Leia is thrown into a detention cell on the Death Star (with her boots, belt, and hairpins) and left alone to consider her fate.  She’s fairly confident that her diplomatic status or royal title will protect her, until Vader arrives with a pair of guards and an interrogation droid.

The database at StarWars.com informs us that these floating spherical droids were designed in secret by the Imperial Department of Military Research “to exploit a prisoner’s mental and physical weakness.”  They “inject drugs that lessen pain tolerance and block mental resistance, and use hallucinogens and truth serums to influence victims.”

We don’t see Leia get tortured.  In fact, the torture we see is limited to watching a droplet form at the end of the droid’s hypodermic.  Later, however, Vader is impressed by her resistance to the mind probe. One can only imagine what he did to her in that cell. Whatever it was, it didn’t leave a mark or even stain her white dress.

To illustrate the concept that what you don’t see is worse than what you do, that interrogation scene preyed on my young mind.  Raena didn’t start out in my initial short stories as an assassin. (That was actually an interpretation that my editor added in his description of The Dangerous Type, but I liked it, so I kept it.)  In the original stories, Raena served simply  as Thallian’s aide.  While he was nominally a diplomat who plays at assassination politics, his real love is torturing the enemies of the Empire.  Raena watches him refine his skills and learns all she can at his side.

Throughout the Star Wars movies, Leia continues to be amazing: she can fire a blaster more accurately than a stormtrooper, she can fly the Millennium Falcon, she gives inspirational speeches to men she’s sending to their deaths, and she rides a speeder bike through the forest on the Endor moon.  But she does those things so effortlessly that they fade into the background of the movies, passing without notice.  This is a 20-year-old who is the princess of her planet’s ruling family, who serves in the Imperial Senate while running messages for the Alliance.  I’m not sure when Leia had time to learn to pilot a spaceship, but damn, girl.

In reaction to Leia’s impressive and varied skillset, I wanted Raena’s talents to be more focused.  She grew up learning to fight in a paramilitary cult.  She knows weapons from running around with Ariel.  Thallian taught her how to destroy things and the variety of ways to kill people.  And he taught her to like it.

Re-watching the original Star Wars movies this month, I am even more amused that Publishers Weekly accused me of bringing grimdark to space opera.  Have they scene the Star Wars films? Torture (Leia in Star Wars, Han in Empire, Luke in Jedi), planetary genocide, slavery, all sorts of limbs being lopped off, crawling into the dead body of the tauntaun to keep warm, the burning bodies of Luke’s aunt and uncle… Beneath the Ewoks and the triumphant dogfights in space, the Star Wars universe is pretty grim.

I guess the earliest influences really are the strongest.

My other Raena’s Foremothers essays so far are:

Aeon Flux

Jeri Cale

Pvt. Vasquez

Sarah Connor

Molly Millions

Doctor Cyn Sharpe

Zoe Washburne

Martha Allard

What strong female characters have inspired your characters?

The Exact Moment When I Fell in Love with Star Wars

Inspired by i09’s Exact Moment When feature, I’ve been thinking about my love for Star Wars.  I can pinpoint it to one particular scene in A New Hope (which will always be called Star Wars as far as I’m concerned).

At 13, I’d already decided I didn’t fit in my hometown. I grew up in a church that believed in predestination.  Only god knew who was going to Heaven. Nothing you did or didn’t do was going to affect your status among the elect or the damned. I was pretty sure where that put me on the spectrum.

In the summer of 1977, I hung between junior high and high school. My junior high friends were going their separate ways and I hadn’t met my high school friends yet.  It didn’t really matter, because I lived on a farm with no one close enough to visit without a car, anyway. Driving was years away from me.

That’s where the library came in:  my mom dropped me and my younger brother off there every Saturday morning when she drove into town to buy groceries. I read my way through the adult science fiction section, because these were the misty days before the invention of YA.

I don’t remember a bookstore until I discovered the Dawn Treader in Ann Arbor:  a glorious warren of a secondhand shop, crammed into a basement full of towering, overstuffed shelves.  Until that moment, my reading was strictly at the mercy of whatever the librarians stocked. Jules Verne led me to Ray Bradbury, who led me to Pierre Boulle.  I read Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark books and Lin Carter’s Callisto books. I read Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard and anything else I could get my hands on.  I read anything that would take me away from my small town, even though I never saw myself reflected in the characters in the books.

I hadn’t even heard of Star Wars before my mom took me and my brother to the movie theater.  It wouldn’t have mattered if I had.  I didn’t have the right vocabulary.  I hadn’t seen the Westerns that inspired it or the WWI dogfights it quoted.  I would be years before I saw The Hidden Fortress.  At that point, I hadn’t even seen 2001.  But I loved Star Trek and the Planet of the Apes TV show. In my room, I had a globe with all the craters of the moon.  I remembered when my parents got us out of bed to watch men land on the moon.  I remembered standing outside in the snow when I was little, staring up at the moon after we’d gotten home from Christmas Eve service, and imagining the astronauts bouncing across its powdery surface.

As soon as the blockade runner blasted across the movie screen, I was awed.  Characters were introduced so quickly: the droids, the princess, Vader, Peter Cushing (whom I loved from the Saturday afternoon creature features on TV).  It was hard to follow, hard to know who the central character was supposed to be.

The experience was amazing, but I didn’t actually fall in love until Luke puts his foot up on the berm and gazes into the twin sunset on Tattooine.  John Williams lavish score swells — and my life had irrevocably changed.  I finally, for the first time in my life, saw myself on a movie screen.

I was the farm child who dreamed of getting away.  I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be special. I longed for a teacher who would give me the tools I needed to make a difference.

Once I saw Star Wars, I could imagine a way out.  Star Wars set my imagination on fire. It’s not too much to say that it rescued me.

My bookshop is live!

I’ve spent the last month completely overhauling and updating this website. For someone who is tech-challenged, that has been a big undertaking.  Hopefully all the information is current and easier to find now.

The biggest addition is that you can now buy my books from this website.  Whether you want to scoop up one of the last two copies of Morbid Curiosity #5 or you’d like to have (or give) an inscribed copy of one of my novels, you can do that directly from me now. If you’ve ordered from me in the past, you know my packages always come with stickers, postcards, and other goodies.

Stay tuned to the bookshop, too. I plan to add some secondhand books as I cull my library. These will include rare vampire books, cemetery books, San Francisco history, and more.

You can access the bookshop from the nav bar above or follow this link: http://lorenrhoads.com/bookshop/.

 

All the Morbid Curiosity magazine events

I was thinking again about all the wonderful events I hosted for Morbid Curiosity magazine. Over the course of the magazines 10 years, I had the honor of hosting Maria Alexander, Michael Arnzen, Maurice Broaddus, M. Christian, Alan M. Clark, Thorn Coyle, John Everson, Christa Faust, Dana Fredsti, Rain Graves, Brian Hodge, Brian Keene, Nancy Kilpatrick, Mark McLaughlin, Eddie Muller, Lorelei Shannon, Jill Tracy, John Turi, Simon Wood, and so many more.

Here’s the full list of events:

The First Morbid Curiosity Open Mic

Friday, October 2, 1998 at 5 p.m.

Death Equinox ’98

Sheraton West, Denver, Colorado

Storytellers: Michael Hemmingson, Jasmine Sailing, Gene Santagada, Jeffrey A. Stadt, R.N. Taylor, Brian Thomas, Bruce Young

The First Morbid Curiosity Reading

Saturday, November 28, 1998 at 4-6:30 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, Hayes Valley, 534 Laguna Street, San Francisco

Readers: J.D., Dean Estes, Vince Furia, Gravity Goldberg, George Neville-Neil, M. Parfitt, Claudius Reich

Morbid Curiosity #3 Release Party and Reading

Saturday, June 19, 1999 at 4-7 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 534 Laguna Street, San Francisco

Readers: Dana Fredsti, Scott Jacobson, M. Parfitt, Claudius Reich, Gene Santagada, Lee Smith, Brian Thomas

Morbid Curiosity Open Mic at Death Equinox ’99

Saturday, September 25, 1999 at 5 p.m.

Ramada Inn Denver Downtown, Denver, Colorado

Storytellers: Violet Blackwell, Michael Hemmingson, Claudius Reich, Jasmine Sailing, Gene Santagada, Jeffrey A. Stadt, Bruce Young

Morbid Curiosity #3 Reading

Saturday, October 16, 1999 at 7 p.m.

Dark Delicacies, 3725 W. Magnolia Boulevard, Burbank, California

Readers: Dana Fredsti, Claudius Reich, Benjamin Scuglia, Lee Smith, Brian Thomas

Morbid Curiosity Open Mic at World Horror Convention 2000

Thursday, May 11, 2000 at 11 p.m.

Adam’s Mark Hotel, Denver, Colorado

Storytellers: Chad Hensley, Brian Hodge, Darren Mckeeman Mark McLaughlin, Claudius Reich, Jasmine Sailing, Gene Santagada, Chris Yardley, Bruce Young

Morbid Curiosity #4 Release Party, Reading, and Art Show

Saturday, June 10, 2000 at 4-7 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 534 Laguna St., San Francisco

Readers: Jordan Cochran, Joe Donohoe, Dana Fredsti, Winter Laake, Darren Mckeeman, George Neville-Neil, M. Parfitt, Brian Thomas, Geoff Walker

1st art show:

Christopher R. Bales, Mike Hunter, Hugues Leblanc, M. Parfitt, Erik Quarry, Kimberlee Traub, Leilah Wendell

Morbid Curiosity Open Mic at World Horror Convention 2001

Saturday, May 26, 2001 at 9:30-11:30 p.m.

Seattle Marriott Sea-Tac Airport Hotel, Seattle, Washington

Storytellers: M. Christian, Chad Hensley, Claudius Reich, Lorelei Shannon, Robert Shuster, Willow

Morbid Curiosity #5 Release Party Reading & the 2nd Art Show

Saturday, June 9, 2001 at 4-6 p.m.

The New Borderlands, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: Shira B., Kalifer Deil, Dean Estes, Dana Fredsti, Dalton Graham, George Neil-Neil, M. Parfitt, Claudius Reich, Brian Thomas

2nd art show:

Mike Hunter, Dorian Katz, R. Samuel Klatchko, Hugues Leblanc, Loren Rhoads, Chris Schnapp, Kimberlee Traub, Leilah Wendell

Morbid Curiosity weds the Museum of Death

Sunday, June 17, 2001 at 6-8 p.m.

Museum of Death, 6430 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California

Readers: Shira B., Dana Fredsti, Bill Hayes, Alex S. Johnson, Claudius Reich, Brian Thomas

Ghastly Gorey Gala

Wednesday, October 31, 2001 at 9 p.m.

Café du Nord, 2170 Market Street, San Francisco

Readers: Shira B., M. Christian, George Neville-Neil

Morbid Curiosity Open Mic at World Horror Convention 2002

Saturday, April 13, 2002 at 9:30-11:30 p.m.

Radisson Hotel at O’Hare, Chicago, Illinois

Storytellers: Alan Beatts, Rain Graves, Brian Keene, Pattie Lee, Seth Lindberg, Darren Mckeeman, Sandy Schultz, Robert Shuster, Mason Winfield

Morbid Curiosity #6 release reading

Saturday, May 11, 2002 at 4-7 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: Shira B., M. Christian, Jeff Dauber, Kalifer Deil, M. Parfitt, Jill Tracy, Lilah Wild

SpookyCon

Saturday, January 11, 2003 at 6 p.m.

Holiday Inn Chinatown, San Francisco

Readers: Rain Graves, Allegra Lundyworf, Darren Mckeeman, Claudius Reich, Jill Tracy, Lilah Wild, Simon Wood

Morbid Curiosity Open Mic at World Horror Convention 2003

Thursday, April 17, 2003 at 11:15 p.m.

Kansas City, Missouri

Storytellers: Michael Arnzen, Alan Clark, Brian Keene, John Turi, Simon Wood

Morbid Curiosity #7 release reading

Saturday, May 10, 2003 at 3-6 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: Gravity Goldberg, Keith Lowell Jensen, Allegra Lundyworf, M. Parfitt, Ashley Phelps, Claudius Reich, Mary Ann Stein, Karen Toensfeldt, Simon Wood

Surviving Morbid Curiosity — Morbid Curiosity #8 release reading

Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 3-6 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: Uncle Anne, Aldyth Beltane, Katrina James & Sherilyn Connelly, Justin Hall, M. Parfitt, William Selby, Jill Tracy, Geoff Walker, Simon Wood

Morbid Curiosity in the Fog

Monday, August 23, 2004 at 8:30 p.m.

Canvas Café, 1200 9th Avenue, San Francisco

Readers: Gravity Goldberg, Allegra Lundyworf, Claudius Reich, Shauna Rogan, Jill Tracy, Geoff Walker

True Halloween Tales

Monday, October 25, 2004 at 8:30 p.m.

Canvas Café, 1200 9th Avenue, San Francisco

Storytellers: Thorn Coyle, Dean Estes, Dalton Graham, Eddie Muller (for Erik McMahon), William Selby, Mary Ann Stein, Karen Switzer, Tom Wiggins, Simon Wood

Morbid Curiosity reading

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Bride of SpookyCon

Hotel Kabuki, Japantown, San Francisco

Readers: Aldyth Beltane, Sherilyn Connelly, Katrina James, Allegra Lundyworf, William Selby

Morbid Curiosity Magazine Reading & Open Mic

Saturday, April 9, 2005 at 8-9:30 p.m.

World Horror Convention 2005

Park Central Hotel, New York City, New York

Storytellers: Cerridwen Alexander, Maria Alexander , Christa Faust, Nancy Kilpatrick, Hugues Leblanc, Claudius Reich, Gene Santagada, Simon Wood

Morbid Curiosity #9 release reading

Saturday, May 14, 2005 at 7-9 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: David Booth, John Domeier, Jude Gibson, Dorian Katz, Allegra Lundyworf, M. Parfitt, RuthAnn Spike, Beth Touchette-Laughlin, Will Walker, Lilah Wild

True Halloween Tales

Saturday, October 8, 2005 at 7-9 p.m.

Spellbinding Tales, 1901A Encinal Avenue, Alameda, California

Readers: Joe Donohoe, Dorian Katz, Claudius Reich, Willliam Selby, Chris West, Lilah Wild, Simon Wood

Morbid Curiosity Open Mic

Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 11 p.m.

World Horror Convention 2006

Holiday Inn Golden Gateway, San Francisco

Storytellers: Maurice Broaddus, Alan M. Clark, John Everson, Seth Lindberg, Claudius Reich, Simon Wood

Inspired by Jane: Morbid Curiosity magazine raises money for breast cancer research

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 7-9 p.m.

Avon reading #1

Borders Books on Union Square, 400 Post Street, San Francisco, California

Readers: David Booth, Seth Flagsberg, RuthAnn Spike, Mary Ann Stein, Beth Touchette-Laughlin, Rachel Trachten

A Wake for Morbid Curiosity — Morbid Curiosity #10 release reading

Saturday, June 3, 2006 at 7-9 p.m.

Borderlands Cafe, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: Sherilyn Connelly, Karen Harper, Seth Flagsberg, Seth Lindberg, M. Parfitt, Lena Strayhorn, Beth Touchette-Laughlin, Will Walker, Chris West

A Requiem for Morbid Curiosity

Saturday, October 7, 2006 at 7-9 p.m.

Spellbinding Tales, 1910A Encincal Avenue, Alameda

Readers: Seth Lindberg, Allegra Lundyworf, Claudius Reich, RuthAnn Spike, Jill Tracy, Lilah Wild

The Last Evening of Morbid Curiosity

Saturday, November 4 at 8 p.m.

Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento

Readers: Becca Costello, John Domeier, Keith Lowell Jensen, M. Parfitt

2nd Morbid Curiosity Breast Cancer Benefit

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 7 p.m.

Borderlands Bookstore, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Readers: Jeff Dauber, Gravity Goldberg, Mary Ann Stein, Jane Underwood

Raena’s Foremothers: Martha Allard

One of the things I wanted to look at in The Dangerous Type and its sequels was the idea of female friendship.  I wanted to capture how women change and grow together over the years.

The model for the friendship between Raena Zacari and Ariel Shaad is the friendship I have with Martha Allard.  I met Mart in 8th grade history, but we didn’t get to be friends until 9th grade, when we were both reading the novelization of Star Wars.  We’d both seen the movie over the summer with our parents.  We’d both fallen in love with it. Before long, we were writing stories about it. When we were in college, Mart published a zine of those stories called Tales of the New Republic.

Before that happened, Mart and I joined the Flint Area Writers Club together.  We wrote a novel together.  We’ve read practically every draft of every story either of us has written individually.  I published her essays in Lend the Eye a Terrible Aspect and Death’s Garden.  She published one of my stories in Out of the Green.

Mart sang at my wedding and propped me up through my brother’s funeral. She’s taught me how to speak up, how to live unapologetically, how to care for people fiercely.  She probably doesn’t know what a role model she is to me.

Going to see Adam and the Ants, 1982.

The largest chasm between us is that Mart moved back home to Michigan more than 20 years ago. She tried living in Southern California a couple of times, but family called her home. While I still think of the farm where I grew up as the Home Place, my home has been in San Francisco for the last 27 years. Mart hasn’t even seen the house I’ve lived in since 2000.

That schism is mirrored in Raena and Ariel.  After the Human/Templar War is over, Ariel returns home.  She still lives in the villa where she grew up.  She takes care of her elderly mother.  She’s raised her adopted kids.  Whenever Raena comes by, though, Ariel welcomes her as if she’s come home — even though both of them know she can never stay.

Ariel and Raena’s friendship, like mine and Mart’s, goes back to childhood. The year that Ariel turned 12 — the age of legal majority on Callixtos — her father bought her a bodyguard: Raena.  Raena had grown up in a Humans First! cult, being trained to fight for the Empire.  The transporters who had been supposed to deliver her to a chapter house for more training sold her into slavery instead.  Ariel thought Raena was an android at first, but when she discovered her bodyguard was human, she did her best to befriend her.

Raena says at one point in The Dangerous Type, “Did I ever have anything I didn’t share with you?” And Ariel can’t think of anything or anyone.

As the relationship gets explored further in Kill By Numbers and No More Heroes, it becomes clear that these two are each other’s primary relationship in the galaxy.  Each of them builds themselves a new family.  Each dates men — or lizard men, at least. Still, their real soulmates — the person with whom they could share any secret, the person for whom they would drop everything to help — are each other.  Their friendship has been tested by time and torture and death, but the one solid constant in their lives is each other.

Which is why I dedicated The Dangerous Type to Mart.

 

 

 

On the Radio today!

This Sunday(today!) we will have back on the wonderful writer of all that is haunted, morbid, and fun — Loren Rhoads — so we can give you a happy holidays scare!

Loren will be on the Lilycat on Stuff radio show on http://FCCFREERADIO.com/ from 12-2 PM San Francisco time. You can listen live or check out the podcast later.

Loren is:

Author of The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes

Co-author of As Above, So Below with Brian Thomas

Author of Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel

Editor of The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two

http://www.lorenrhoads.com/

….now she will be telling us how we can write our own spooky tales …

Past shows at:

http://fccfreeradio.com/shows/lilycat/live/lilycat_show.mp3

and

http://www.lilycat.com/radioshows.html