Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 50

Another Write-in Tonight

Tonight is the third Nanowrimo write-in I’m hosting at the Borderlands Cafe in San Francisco. If you are local, you should come and write with us, whether you are doing Nanowrimo or not. Every writer is welcome.

So far, the write-ins seem to be a hit.  We had 14 the first week and about that many last week (although I forgot to count).  The cafe is reserving space for 20 people — and more can be added, if needed.  You should come.

And if you’re not in San Francisco? Do a virtual write-in with us.  We’ll be sitting down from 6-8 PST.

In terms of these write-ins, I have been so impressed by how serious people are.  They come in, settle down, and get to work.  We haven’t been doing writing challenges or word sprints or playing with prompts. Everyone has just sat themselves down, opened up their laptops (or in my case, pulled out her composition book), and wrote like the wind.

There is so much to be said for tricking your subconscious into writing. Whether it’s setting a date with yourself for a time when you will be creative — or forcing yourself into a situation where you are surrounded by strangers who are writing and who expect you to be quiet and join in — or the ultimate artificial challenge of slamming down 50,000 words in a month so that you absolutely have to figure out how to write every single day, there are ways to fool your brain into creating more than you can imagine.

Come write with us.  And if you can’t come, just write.

No More Heroes is out today!

This is it!  This is the culmination of the last year’s work. No More Heroes, the third book of my space opera trilogy, comes out today. It’s the 13th book with my byline on it to be published.

When I pitched Raena’s story to Night Shade in the summer of 2013, only The Dangerous Type was done. I mentioned that I had a Nanowrimo draft of a sequel, just in case they might be interested in a series.  Jeremy kept the first book for a couple of weeks, then asked to see what I had of the sequel. A week later, he came back to ask, “You can write a third book, can’t you? I told them they should offer you a contract for a trilogy.”

For the first time in my life, I wrote an outline for a novel. I submitted the proposal before I’d written a word of the book.  And for the first time in my life, a publisher contracted me for more than one book.

I held off writing No More Heroes until I had the first two books finished and turned in.  That meant I began to write it the first week of February 2015. I had only written one scene  going in: the scene in chapter one where Raena stands in front of the alien jet bike game, wondering how she can play it because it’s built for a larger creature than she is, and Haoun, my big lizard pilot, suggests she play it with him.  I knew, going in, that the subplot would be their multi-species relationship.

The plot itself was going to center on Raena being tried for her crimes. I wanted to talk about secret identities and no good deed going unpunished. I wanted to study influence, the way the first book explored persona and the second book examined memory. I wanted to consider how reliance on technology the common person doesn’t understand could be disastrous. I wanted to look at the fears that governments have and the power of the media and pull apart what a hero is.

I finished the book in May, got the notes from Jeremy, completely rewrote the ending, turned it in June 10. Spent the rest of the month going over the proofread versions of Kill By Numbers and No More Heroes, wrote some of the guest blog pieces — and June 28, I woke up with pneumonia.

It was absolutely worth it.  I am really proud of No More Heroes. I got to emulate Ray Bradbury’s Mars and play with time travel, too. The Veracity‘s kids get out from under Raena’s shadow. Her relationship with Ariel becomes much clearer. Raena finally finds a boyfriend who likes her exactly the way she is. I got the solve the mystery of the Templars. And the action sequences were bigger and more fun to write than any yet.

So what’s next? I’ve got a couple of short stories set in Raena’s universe that I would like to write. I pitched a new series to Night Shade; this one’s urban fantasy, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m still toying with the idea of the Bay Area Cemeteries book.

Because, as you know, there’s no rest for the morbid. There’s writing and promotion and writing again. I’ve got 13 books with my byline on them, but there are so many more stories to tell.

Excerpt from No More Heroes

As they neared the correct docking slip, Raena turned to Coni. “Hang out here,” she said, scarcely louder than the rain. “Let me make sure it’s clear.”

Coni found a place to shelter from the storm. Her fur had doubled in weight. Heavens, she hated rain.

She was too far away to hear what triggered it, but Raena spun suddenly, crouching low. Then the loudspeaker over Coni’s head boomed, “On the ground now. Face down. Arms out.”

Coni stared around, panicked. She didn’t know what to do. She wished Mykah was with her.

What seemed like a whole squadron of Planetary Security encircled Raena, rifles trained on her. She looked them over calmly, then knelt, set down her pink shopping bag, and stuck her arms out at shoulder height.

“Face down,” the speaker repeated.

From where Coni was standing, she could see that the tarmac had flooded. Raena didn’t want to lie down in that.

The woman looked so small that it was hard not to think of her as harmless. Coni wanted to race to her rescue, demand to know the charges, protect Raena — but it made more sense logically to keep from being arrested, to work to get the charges dropped from outside the jail. Coni hated herself for being a coward.

As Coni struggled to decide what to do, she saw Haoun galloping down the commonway toward the Veracity. The Security squadron hadn’t seen him yet, but he was going to get himself shot down… Coni flung herself into his path. “Stop!”

Haoun crashed into her. They skidded on the wet walkway and landed in a heap. “What are you doing?” he growled, shoving her away.

Coni struggled to hold him down. “Don’t get yourself killed in front of her,” she ordered.

When they looked back, Raena had complied with the soldiers’ orders. She lay in the puddle, spread-eagled. Security agents surrounded her with rifles at point-blank range.

Coni expected to see Raena spring up, snatch one of those rifles, and beat the security corps off with it, but she didn’t. She lay meekly in the water, let them restrain her and haul her up to her ridiculous boot heels.

Coni scrambled to her feet and pulled Haoun up after her.

“What’s happened?” he demanded.

“Raena and I were shopping when a bounty hunter attacked her this morning. We came back here to get some weapons… Didn’t you get my message to stay away from the ship?”

“Yeah, but Mykah sent another message to say we had to get off Lautan right away,” Haoun argued.

Coni glanced at her comm bracelet to see it flashing. “What’s happened?” she echoed.

“I don’t know.”

The Security detail marched Raena past them. She didn’t turn her head or acknowledge her crewmates at all. The rain had washed her ragged black hair into her face, but with her arms bound, she couldn’t wipe it away.

Coni thought: Raena shackled and sodden, surrounded by soldiers, may be the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. Then she thought over the things Raena had seen and realized how sheltered her own life had been.

Once Security left, people crept out of the nooks in which they’d hidden. Vezali retrieved Raena’s shopping bag as Mykah leaped over the puddles to join Haoun and Coni.

“The Veracity has been impounded,” Mykah panted. Coni hugged him, desperate for comfort. He kept one arm around her waist and held her close.

“Why?” Haoun demanded.

“It’s related to Raena’s arrest somehow,” he said. “Those same agents locked the docking slip just before you came.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t on the ship,” Coni said.

“I was off paying our docking fees so we could get out of here.”

“How did you know they were coming?” Vezali asked.

“I didn’t. We got a message for Raena from one of the Thallian kids. Someone has apparently started up the cloning machinery on his homeworld again. The kid wanted Raena to go check it out.”

Stunned silence greeted that news.

“One of the Thallians invited Raena back to his homeworld,” Haoun echoed. “That’s why you called us to leave?”

“Yeah, but we can’t go now ’til we find out what’s going on with Raena and the ship.”

“Planetary Security didn’t seem to be looking for us,” Vezali observed. “Just Raena.”

Mykah nodded at the shopping bag in Vezali’s tentacle. “Did she steal something again?”

“Not with me,” Coni said. “We were doing a little legitimate boot shopping when a bounty hunter jumped her.”

“What happened?”

“Exactly what you’d expect when someone jumps Raena.”

Mykah’s smile flashed past, but he said more seriously, “We need to find out what she’s been charged with.”

Haoun volunteered, “I’ll go to the jail.”

“Not yet. If there’s a bounty on her, let’s find out what it’s for. She won’t like waiting it out, but they want her alive or the bounty hunter would have shot her instead of engaging her.”

“Got a plan?” Coni asked.

“We need to commandeer a public computer so the search can’t be traced to us.”

“Would the business office at a big hotel do?”

“Perfect. Haoun, can you find us a hotel?”

“On it.” He lumbered off.

“What do you want me to do, Captain?” Vezali sketched a salute with one tentacle.

“Get us some walking-around weapons? I didn’t have a chance to get anything out of the lockers. I didn’t even grab my jacket. My Stinger’s still in it.”

“Sure. Meet you for lunch?”

“Yeah, let’s stick to that plan.”

After she left, Mykah turned to Coni. “Did you get a chance to install that kill-switch on the Veracity’s brain?”

Rather than answer, Coni pulled the handheld’s case out of her shoulder bag and handed it to Mykah. “I’m too wet to do it. Can you sign me in?”

Mykah wiped the handheld case on his t-shirt before he opened it. Once it booted up, he typed in her passwords and brought the Veracity online. Coni gave him a string of characters in six different languages. He dutifully typed them in. Coni checked over his shoulder to make sure they were right.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked.

“Raena’s journal is in there. All your recordings of her. The stories she told the Thallian boy… We can’t let anyone get those things. They will destroy her.”

Coni nodded. She had encrypted some of the early stuff, backed it up in a coded info dump off the Veracity. Mellix had other bits of the Veracity’s recordings as research about the Messiah drug. But all Coni’s work on understanding humans, her studies of Imperial history, the book she was writing: it made her sick to think so much would be lost. Still, deleting it was the right thing to do. It was her own damn fault for not backing the Veracity’s memory up somewhere off the ship.

“Tell it to execute,” Coni said. “Then don’t turn off the handheld until it’s done running.”

From this point forward, the Veracity would have new memories. They wouldn’t include going to Mellix’s haven in the asteroid belt. They wouldn’t include the days Jain Thallian spent onboard. There wouldn’t be anything that connected Raena to the Imperial assassin she used to be. It was for the best, Coni knew.

“Now you need a drink,” Mykah said.

My First Write-In

I’ve been doing the National Novel Writing Month since 2003, because I find it entertaining to struggle to write a novel in a month.  Some years I’ve succeeded. Some years, I’ve crashed and burned.  Every year, I learn something more about myself and my writing process and my imagination and my work.

Of all the years I’ve done Nanowrimo, only one of my books has been published — Kill By Numbers, which came out in September.  It doesn’t matter to me that my track record isn’t great.  What matters is that by the end of the month, I will have a whole lot more written than I did before the month began.

This year, to stir things up, I decided to volunteer for Nanowrimo — in a small way, anyway.  Every Friday this month, I’m hosting a Write-In at the Borderlands Cafe.  Anyone who wants to come is welcome to sit and write with a gang of likeminded souls from 6-8 pm.

I wasn’t sure anyone would show up, but at the height, I think there were 14 people hunched over their laptops.  Everyone I spoke to seemed to have a productive evening.  There is so much to be said for hanging out in a roomful of writers and letting the creativity flow.

As much as I love writing in public, I wasn’t sure about being responsible for hosting the write-in.  But now, at the end, it seems to have been a great experience for people.  Almost everyone got a bunch of work done.  I managed to add almost 3,000 words to my work-in-progress.  And I met a bunch of really nice, really enthusiastic people.

I’m wrung out now, so it’s time to head home before the cafe closes down around us, but I am very much looking forward to doing this again next week.

The Morbid Month of October

October was the month of guest blogging at every opportunity I could.  It made for a rich, full month, along with the four live events I participated in and the birthday trip we took to Singapore.  Here’s the October roundup:

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

Terrie Leigh Relf interviewed me about my writing rituals and process: https://tlrelf.wordpress.com/a-day-in-the-life-interview-series/a-day-in-the-life-presents-novelist-loren-rhoads/

Emerian Rich invited me to kidnap the Horror Addicts blog for a couple of days, 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/

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

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

And finally, Morbid Curiosity and Cemetery Travel were featured on the amazing, long-running Finch Files podcast: http://www.finchfiles.net/podcasts/2015/10/26/finch-files-halloween-15-episode-28

If you host guests on your blog or talk to authors on your podcast, please contact me. I would love to talk about writing, performing, or space opera — or cemeteries.

Communing with my Idol

Loren Rhoads:

Happy Halloween!

Originally posted on Cemetery Travel: Adventures in Graveyards Around the World:

Holy Cross, it goes without saying, is a Catholic cemetery. It hadn’t occurred to me that Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi had been Catholic. I knew he’d been addicted to morphine and that he’d been buried in his tuxedo and black silk opera cape, but I hadn’t known what the man who’d portrayed my first literary crush had believed about his immortal soul.

“I wish I’d known we were coming here,” I told Brian, who’d surprised me with a late-afternoon cemetery adventure. “I would have bought him some roses.”

I grew up watching Sir Graves Ghastly host horror movies on Saturday afternoons, never understanding the homage. Sir Graves was an elderly man in white tie and tails, hosting movies in a thick, obviously fake accent which I now realize he’d cribbed from Lugosi. Sir Graves showed all the classic black-and-white horror movies of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties.

Looking back, I recognize…

View original 281 more words

Tonight at the Literary Speakeasy

THE HORROR!

To celebrate Halloween, this month’s Literary Speakeasy is all about martinis and nightmares. Join us for an evening of ghosts, zombies, monsters, and other spirits at Martuni’s, Wednesday, October 28. Show starts at 7PM.

Martuni’s is at 4 Valencia Street @Market Street in San Francisco.

The night’s readers are all amazing horror and sci-fi writers, including Samuel Sattin (The Silent End), David Edison (The Waking Engine), Loren Rhoads (Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel), and Wonder Dave (Entertainer and Poetry Slam Finalist). Host for the evening is James J. Siegel (How Ghosts Travel).

As always, Literary Speakeasy is FREE! And every audience member receives a FREE raffle ticket for a secret speakeasy prize given away at the end of the night. It’s our treat for coming out and supporting our writers!

Samuel Sattin is a novelist and essayist. He is the author of the novels The Silent End and League Of Somebodies, described by Pop Matters as “One of the most important novels of 2013.” His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Salon Magazine, io9, Kotaku, Publishing Perspectives, The Weeklings, The Rumpus, The Good Men Project, Litreactor, San Francisco Magazine, The Cobalt Review, Cent Magazine, and elsewhere. Also an illustrator, he holds an MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts and has a creative writing MFA from Mills College. He’s the recipient of NYS and SLS Fellowships. He lives in Oakland, California. Check out his website at http://www.samuelsattin.com.

David Edison is the author of The Waking Engine. He was born in Saint Louis and currently divides his time between New York City and San Francisco. In other lives, he has worked in many flavors of journalism and is editor of the LGBTQ video game news site GayGamer.net. Find out more about David at http://www.davidedison.com.

Loren Rhoads started telling herself stories when she was four or five, and her life changed after reading Dracula at age 10 and again after seeing Star Wars at 14. Telling true stories came later. She is the author of several novels, including The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes. Her first novel, co-written with Brian Thomas, was As Above, So Below, the story of a succubus who pursues an angel only to find herself possessed by a mortal girl’s ghost. Loren is also the author of Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel and the editor of The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two. For more on Loren, visit http://www.lorenrhoads.com.

Wonder Dave is a writer and performer from Minneapolis. He’s toured the country performing at poetry venues, schools, cabarets, science fiction conventions, burlesque shows, and bowling alleys. He was the recipient of the Jerome Foundation’s Verve grant for spoken word artists in 2007. In 2010, Dave, as part of the Minneapolis Slam Team, appeared on the Group Piece Finals stage at the National Poetry Slam. In 2011 he was part of the top 20 semi-finalist Berkeley California slam team. Past acting credits include “The Awesome 80’s Prom” at Hennepin Stages, “Verbatim Verboten” directed by Michael Martin and “The Sweetest Swing in Baseball” at The Mendocino Theatre Company. Dave’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in the Legendary, Orange Room Review, Breadcrumb Scabs, Pedestal, Shit Creek Review, and Assaracus Magazine. He also hosts the monthly Tourette’s Without Regrets show held on the first Thursday of each month in Oakland. Visit Wonder Dave’s site at http://www.wonderdave.org.

Win No More Heroes on Goodreads

Enter for a chance to win 1 of 10 paperback copies of the first edition of No More Heroes, the final book in the Wake of the Templars trilogy!

In the Veracity’s wake lie a string of crimes – and someone has got to pay. Former assassin Raena Zacari arrested on charges of kidnapping, murder, and the theft of an Imperial-era diplomatic transport: the Veracity itself.

In the meantime, something on the Thallian homeworld. Has the worst mass-murderer the galaxy has ever known been cloned back from the dead? Can the Veracity’s crew lay the ghosts to rest without Raena’s lethal skills?

No More Heroes mixes courtroom science fiction with sweeping space opera that features aliens, androids, drug dealers, journalists, and free-running media hackers. Following The Dangerous Type and Kill By Numbers, No More Heroes is the final book in Loren Rhoads’s epic trilogy.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


No More Heroes
by Loren Rhoads

Giveaway ends October 30, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

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https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/widget/159080

Halloween Haunts: Graveyard Horrors by Loren Rhoads

Yesterday, I blogged on the Horror Writers Association site about my favorite horror stories in graveyards I’ve visited. Here’s a taste of the essay. To read the rest, you’ll have to visit the Halloween Haunts blog at the link below.

From vampires, plague victims, ghosts, golems, and the gate to Hell, some of the best stories are buried in cemeteries.  These are some of my favorites.  All of these burial grounds are open to visitors.

Chinko-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan (http://cemeterytravel.com/2014/07/02/cemetery-of-the-week-142-chinko-ji-temple-cemetery/) This small Buddhist temple stands just south of Kyoto’s Gion neighborhood. The plaque at its […]

Source: Halloween Haunts: Graveyard Horrors by Loren Rhoads

Tonight at Writers With Drinks

Loren reading

Writers With Drinks is an amazing reading series, hosted by Charlie Jane Anders, that has been going on forever in San Francisco. I have seen so many incredible people read there. It’s a dream come true for me to be standing on the same stage!

When: Oct. 24, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM

How much: $5 to $20, all proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture

Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco, CA

About Writers With Drinks:

Writers With Drinks has won numerous “Best ofs” from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7×7, Spin Magazine and one of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The spoken word “variety show” mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance,

mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.

About the readers/performers:

Loren Rhoads is the author of The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes. She was the publisher of Morbid Curiosity magazine. In her secret life, she writes about cemeteries as travel destinations.

Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the award-winning author of ten books including the new collection of short stories,Pretty Much Dead, which addresses the eradication of a city’s most vulnerable, from the streets to the rent-controlled — in a city under siege by the tech industry. Previous works include Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words, a collection of letters from Death Row by the “first female serial killer” to her childhood best friend. She is also the author of five books of poetry, editor of two anthologies, and, with artist Diane DiMassa, the co-creator of the graphic novel Jokes and the

Unconscious. By day, she is band aid in the class war.

Adam Johnson’s newest book is the story collection Fortune Smiles. His novel The Orphan Master’s Son was published in 2012 by Random House and received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He also has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2013-14. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner, his work has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, GQ, Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages. Johnson was a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

Brontez Purnell is the author of Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger? He is the head of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, and also has performed with the bands Gravy Train!!!! and the Younger Lovers. He also published the illustrated book The Cruising Diaries and put out the influential zine Fag School. He was on Out Magazine’s Hot List.

Faith Adiele is the author of The Nigerian-Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems (Shebooks), and Meeting Faith (W.W. Norton & Co.), which received PEN Beyond Margins Award for Best Memoir of 2004. She’s also the co-editor of Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural Anthology and the subject of the PBS documentaryMy Journey Home. She also co-wrote the multicultural thriller The Student Body: A Novel(Random House). She’s been featured in O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire’s 5 Women to Learn From, and the Huffington Post. She has appeared on NPR, on the Tavis Smiley show, in a national television ad for TIAA-CREF, in the pilot for a new reality show, and in a 2-page spread: “A Day in the Life of Faith Adiele” for Pink magazine. She is the recipient of a UNESCO International Artists Bursary, the Millennium Award from Creative Nonfiction, and 16 artists’ residencies in Brazil, Canada, Italy and the USA.

Fayette Fox’s debut novel The Deception Artist was originally published in the UK by Myriad Editions in 2013. The book was just published in North America by Roaring Forties Press in March 2015. She works as the Writer and Community Manager at Jaunty, an organization that teaches social intelligence. She helps people put their best foot

forward and find love as the Co-Founder of My Love Ninja, a boutique OkCupid profile makeover service. She is a former commissioning editor for Lonely Planet Publications.