Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 53

Borderlands Sponsors hold an Open Mic this Friday

Borderlands Bookstore celebrates its sponsors with its first Sponsors’ Open Mic Night this Friday, September 25, 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 our first 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.  All we ask is that the readings are kept short — five minutes or less — so as to allow as many readers as possible the opportunity.  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!”

This 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.    Loren Rhoads  – I’m going to read a snippet from Kill By Numbers.

3.    Nancy Jane Moore

4.    Betsy Streeter  – She’s the author of Silverwood, a time travel YA that’s been described as “The Incredibles meets Doctor Who meets MacGyver.”

5.    Louis Evans 

6.    Laurel Anne Hill – She’s the author of the award-winning Heroes Arise and a whole passel of stories in the Bard in the Hand series.

7.    Jean Butterfield 

8.    Igor Teper 

9.    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.

Claustrophobia and The Dangerous Type

Loren Rhoads:

Claustrophobia inspired The Dangerous Type & its sequels. Here’s the story:

Originally posted on horroraddicts.net:

http://lorenrhoads.com/

by Loren Rhoads

The first time I went away to sleep-away camp, I was a junior in high school.  Michigan Tech, a university 500 miles north of my home, was hosting a weeklong writing program. I dragged my typewriter into my assigned dorm room and waved goodbye to my parents, excited to be a real writer for a week.

Almost immediately I met another high school girl there for the program. I really liked her at first.  She seemed sunny and competitive and dramatic. I thought we’d provide a good challenge for each other. I looked forward to reading her stories.

I’m not sure what set her off.  She and some of the guys from the program were hanging around in my room when I went into the large walk-in closet to demonstrate how big it was.  Once I was inside, Nicole slammed the door behind me.

I heard…

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Raena’s Foremothers: Molly Millions

I read Neuromancer in 1986, the summer I went to Clarion. The book was a couple of years old by then, but everyone was still talking about it.

Those were the days before laptops, when not every writer brought a computer to a six-week live-in writing program.  Those of us who didn’t own a computer of our own rented a tower and monitor from the university, so we could write in our rooms instead of a computer lab.  It was incredibly liberating to have my own computer. I was used to writing on a typewriter.

When I read Neuromancer the first time, I didn’t know enough about programming to understand the AIs or the security ice or what exactly the cowboy Case got up to when he was jacked in.  But I did understand Molly, the souped-up security agent who moves the pieces into place to get the AI Wintermute’s job done.  Molly doesn’t get any point of view scenes in the book, so you never get into her head.

In the beginning, Molly has been tracking Case across Ninsei.  She almost caught up with him in the arcade, then got ahead of him and was waiting in his capsule hotel when he returns to his coffin room. She tells him, “Nobody wants to hurt you…’cept I do hurt people sometimes, Case. I guess it’s just the ways I’m wired.”

Despite the threat of violence, Case falls for her, as the reader does as well.  There’s plenty of description of her clothing and body, the burgundy nails that look artificial and extend into razors, the collection of boots she wears.  The first time Case wakes up beside her: “He lay on his side and watched her breathe, her breasts, the sweep of flank defined with the functional elegance of a war plane’s fusilage.”

So yes, Molly the perfect killing machine sleeps with Case.  He assumes that it’s done out of affection, but it may simply be her way of keeping tabs on a valuable asset.  As long as she’s with him, she knows he hasn’t drifted back into his addictions.

Only at the end does Case realize he doesn’t know the color of her eyes.  He never thought to ask.  Throughout their relationship, he was only gazing at the reflections of himself in the mirrors grafted over Molly’s eyes.  He’s mesmerized by his own reflection, thinking that it is how Molly sees him — but without sinking past the surface into her thoughts.  The effect is devastating.

In fact, the most intimate moments they share are when he jacks into her head and feels her assassinate Ashpool: “She had it: the thing, the moves. And she’d pulled it all together for her entrance. Pulled it together around the pain in her leg and marched down 3Jane’s stairs like she owned the place, elbow if her gun arm at her hip, forearm up, wrist relaxed, swaying the muzzle of the fletcher with the studied nonchalance of a Regency duelist.”

Molly herself wasn’t a conscious inspiration for Raena Zacari, but now, rereading Neuromancer after all these years, I hear the echoes.  I’m fascinated by the Gibson never questions Molly’s behavior, but never explains it either.  She does things on her own, for her own reasons.

Only after the caper is over does Case realize he doesn’t know the color of Molly’s eyes.  He never thought to ask.  Throughout their relationship, he merely gazed at the reflections of himself in the mirrors grafted over Molly’s eyes.  He gets mesmerized by his own reflection, thinking that it is how Molly sees him — but without sinking past the surface into her thoughts, he doesn’t know what (or if) she thinks of him at all.  The effect is devastating.

In the end, Molly walks away without saying goodbye.  She leaves a note in Cases’s hotel room dissolving the relationship in the most dispassionate way possible.  Case himself doesn’t protest the end of the relationship — who could he protest to?  But the novel’s final line — “He never saw Molly again” — makes it clear that he never gets over her, either.

Sloane and Raena’s relationship is much more combustible, much more physical, but in the end, he also never sees past the way she reflects him back to himself.  He never understands her at all.

My other Raena’s Foremothers essays so far are:

Aeon Flux

Jeri Cale

Pvt. Vasquez

Sarah Connor

What strong female characters have inspired you?

Win the Dangerous Type audiobook!

This is a new thing for me: one of my books is now an audiobook!  Last week, The Dangerous Type was released by Audible.com.  You can find the link here: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Dangerous-Type-Audiobook/B01554G02M?source_code=AUDORWS0911159EWR&

There’s even a free sample, drawn from the book’s first chapter, so you can get a taste before you bite.

One lucky winner will win a copy at the week’s end.  Details are below.

In the meantime, here’s the description:

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Sci-Fi: Contemporary



PLAY AUDIO SAMPLE


The Dangerous Type: In the Wake of the Templars, Book 1



Written by: Loren Rhoads
Narrated by: Liv Anderson
Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins 
Unabridged Audiobook




Release Date:09-10-15
Publisher: Audible Studios

Set in the wake of a galaxy-wide war and the destruction of a human empire, The Dangerous Type follows the awakening of one of the galaxy’s most dangerous assassins and her quest for vengeance.

Entombed for 20 years, Raena has been found and released. Thallian has been on the lam for the last 15 years. He’s a wanted war criminal whose entire family has been hunted down and murdered for their role in the galaxywide genocide of the Templars. His name is the first on Raena’s list, as he’s the one who enslaved her, made her his assassin, and ultimately put her in a tomb. But Thallian is willing to risk everything – including his army of cloned sons – to capture her. Now it’s a race to see who kills whom first.

Alternatively, Gavin has spent the last 20 years trying to forget about Raena, whom he once saved and then lost to Thallian. Raena’s adopted sister, Ariel, has been running from the truth – the one about Raena, about herself and Gavin – and doesn’t know if she’ll be able to face either of them.

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

©2015 Loren Rhoads (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

That’s great, Loren, but how do I win?

I’m glad you asked.  I have a code for a free copy of the audiobook.  In order to win it, you need to tell me in the comments below what your favorite science fiction novel is — and why.  I will pick a winner by the end of the week.

Raena’s Foremothers: Sarah Connor

I was talking with my good friend Mart about my project of tracing the genesis of Raena Zacari (protagonist of my In the Wake of the Templars trilogy) through her strong female role models.  Maybe the quintessential inspiration for Raena is Sarah Connor, the mother of the human resistance in the Terminator movies.

Mart is fascinated by Sarah in all her incarnations from Linda Hamilton to Lena Headey to Emilia Clarke, pointing out correctly that this is a woman who lost her roommate, her home, her lover, and the father of her child to a weapon from the future, then sacrificed her job, comforts, and any semblance of real life to raise her son to be a soldier who could save humanity.

My adoration of Sarah is much more focused.  It all comes down to one moment for me, one set of images that riveted my attention and fired my imagination.

Yes, I’m talking about the chin-ups.  They directly inspired a couple of moments in Kill By Numbers.

Every time I watch it, I want Terminator 2 to be all about Sarah.  I am bored and fidgety through the scenes with John, whiny and delinquent, and his taciturn substitute father.  I want to concentrate on Sarah, as she struggles to survive in a madhouse.

I wonder if every woman sees herself in that Sarah Connor:  certain of truths no one believes, confined by narrow minds who refuse to see the evidence and would just prefer is she’d stay docile and predictable and quiet.

Maybe I’m reading into it, but you have to admit that Sarah is inspiringly resourceful.  She figures out how to rearrange her furniture so she can keep her body in fighting condition.  She manages to steal a paperclip with which to unlock her restraints — despite being handcuffed at the time.  She’s come a long way from the soft, sweet waitress in the first movie.

Linda Hamilton is such an amazing actress that she can convey a lot about the character with little moments.  There’s a skip in Sarah’s step when she first tucks the cudgel along her forearm and begins to run through the hospital hallways.  There’s the shriek when the terminator steps out of the elevator and her feet skid out from under her.

And there’s the moment in the police car as they’re speeding away from the psychiatric prison.  Sarah leans into the back seat of the police car.  John thinks she’s coming to give him a hug, to thank him for rescuing her, when actually she’s checking him for injuries.  Mart sees that as evidence that Sarah’s given up her maternal pleasures, but I see it as a soldier who’s survived the skirmish but knows the battle has barely begun.

A quick unscientific survey on Facebook revealed that Linda Hamilton is everyone’s favorite Sarah Connor.  They might not all follow my preference for Linda’s biceps, but I can’t fault their taste.

You can feast your eyes on the first four Terminator movies in a box set at Amazon.

My other Raena’s Foremothers essays so far are:

Aeon Flux

Jeri Cale

Pvt. Vasquez

What strong female characters have inspired you?

Guest Blog: Counting Kisses with Loren Rhoads

Loren Rhoads:

Emmy Z. Madrigal encouraged me to count the kisses in The Dangerous Type.

Originally posted on Sweet Dreams:

Counting Kisses

by Loren Rhoads

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

And then I got this review:

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

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Guest Post: Crafting a Character

Loren Rhoads:

I talked about how ballet inspired Raena Zacari on Eden Royce’s blog:

Originally posted on Eden Royce - The Dark Geisha:

I am pleased to have Loren Rhoads as a guest poster on the blog today. Loren was kindly willing to share the origins of one of the characters from her new release, The Dangerous Type, part military sci-fi, part adventure space opera. Read on to see why Publishers Weekly mentioned its “well choreographed action.” 

Crafting a Character

by Loren Rhoads

A well-rounded character draws from many inspirations. Raena Zacari, the reformed Imperial assassin, in my new trilogy was born in ballet class.

I studied ballet as a child. I started the year I entered first grade – in a studio in the basement of the teacher’s house – and continued at a different studio until I went away to university at 19. One of the girls I danced with got accepted into the corps at Joffrey Ballet. Another became a ballet teacher at our studio. All of us in…

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Kill By Numbers hits the streets

Click on the cover to be taken to Amazon.

If it feels like the first book in my space opera trilogy just came out, you’re right.  The Dangerous Type came out July 7. Today, the sequel — Kill By Numbers — comes out.

My publishers call it the Netflix Effect, like when you discover a new TV show and binge-watch ’til you’re done.  With that in mind, the final book — No More Heroes — comes out in November.  You have time to catch up before then.

In some ways, Kill By Numbers is a different animal from the first book.  Where The Dangerous Type was a Hong Kong-style revenge story dressed up in space opera, Kill By Numbers is a Philip K. Dick mindwarp, complete with conspiracy, evil corporations, and reality as a fluid the main character is swimming in.

Suzanne Johnson is giving away a copy on her blog: http://suzannejohnsonauthor.com/2015/08/new-releases-august-29-september-4-and-readers-choice-contest.html

On the shelves at the Barnes & Noble in Flint, Michigan. Photo by Mart Allard.

Would you like a taste of the book itself?  I’ve put a sample up here: http://lorenrhoads.com/writing/the-dangerous-type/excerpt-from-kill-by-numbers/

There haven’t been many reviews up yet, but Library Journal says, “This military-flavored space opera, which launched with Dangerous Type, is sure to please David Weber and Joel Shepherd fans.”

The Book Faerie liked the Veracity‘s crew: “The airship she’s on has all kinds of aliens making up the crew.  I enjoyed reading about how they looked, how they talked and what their positions were for work.  There’s a lizard, octopus, and a cat-like creature among the crew.  There’s even a human captain.  She knows these people and likes them but she’s a weapon.”

Tor.com listed it second in their Fiction Affliction list for the fall.

First sighting in the wild: Kill By Numbers at Books Inc. on Van Ness, San Francisco.

Finally, Geek Dad had very nice things to say about The Dangerous Type: “There’s a healthy dose of chase scenes and heists mixed into this tale, and it was such a fun ride. Rhoads has created some fun alien races, some interesting technologies, and wonderful locations (included domed underwater hideouts), but it’s the dialogue and characterization that will win you over to this new series. I cannot wait to see where this story moves next… although (slight spoiler ahead), Rhoads has setup a very motley/Firefly-like crew by story’s end that begs for more shenanigans in a universe where humans aren’t the center of attention.”

Kill By Numbers should be in bookstores everywhere. Send me a photo of it at your local bookstore and I will enter you in a drawing to win a copy of No More Heroes in November.

Last chance to win Kill By Numbers on Goodreads

Giveaway ends September 1!

Win both a copy of the first and second book in a sexy military science fiction and adventure space opera that follows one of the galaxy’s most dangerous assassins and her quest for vengeance!

Enter the giveaway on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/148993-kill-by-numbers

Kill by Numbers:

Former assassin Raena Zacari thinks she’s left the past behind. The Imperial torturer who trained her is dead, the human empire is disbanded, and she is finally free.

But Raena is troubled by a series of nightmares that always seem to end with her shooting an ex-lover in the head. She needs to get her mind clear because there’s a flaw in the most commonly used starship drive—and the band of media-obsessed pirates she’s fallen in with is right at the heart of the controversy.

With humanity scattered across the galaxy, she’s going to have to rely on the alien crew members of the Veracity to help her put the pieces together. It doesn’t help that the Templars—wiped out in a genetic plague while Raena was imprisoned—have left booby-trapped biotechnology scattered across the galaxy.

Kill by Numbers mixes military science fiction with sweeping space opera that features aliens, androids, drug dealers, journalists, and free-running media hackers. Kill by Numbers is the second book in Loren Rhoads’s epic In the Wake of the Templars trilogy.

The Dangerous Type:

Entombed for twenty years, Raena, one of the galaxy’s most dangerous assassins, has been freed, and the first thing on her mind is revenge. At the top of her list is Thallian, the insane war criminal who enslaved Raena, turned her into a killing machine, and then ultimately left her for dead. When Thallian discovers that she has not only survived but also has escaped, he’s willing to risk everything—including his army of cloned sons—to bring her back under his control.

Gavin saved Raena once . . . only to lose her again to the clutches of Thallian. Since then he’s been alternately trying to forget her and desperately searching for her. Now that she’s free, he must come to terms with the fact that she might not be his, and perhaps never was.

Raena’s adopted sister, Ariel, is a child of wealth and privilege, as well as a gun runner who chose the right side of a galaxy-wide war that destroyed a human empire. She sent Gavin on his mad quest to find Raena in the first place, and now that she’s been found, Ariel doesn’t know if she can face either of them, or the truths she’s been running from since Raena was left for dead.

The Dangerous Type is the explosive opening to Loren Rhoads’s action-SF-meets-space-opera trilogy.

Raena’s Foremothers: Private Vasquez

I saw Aliens in the theater the summer it came out.  My friend Mart came up and whisked me away from Clarion, the live-in writing program where I was studying that summer, to see it.  It’s fair to say the movie changed my life.

At that point, I don’t think I had ever seen a woman warrior like Private Vasquez.  She wasn’t pretty. She didn’t flounce around in a floor-length dress with a tiara.  She doesn’t use magic or a bow or any sort of girly weapon. Vasquez has a big-ass gun and is ready to kill her commanding officer with her elbow.  She kills an alien at close range with a handgun.

The first time you see her, she’s doing pull-ups to wake herself up as everyone else shuffles out of their freezers to dress.  She’s doing straight pull-ups, then switches to behind the back pull-ups for her most iconic line of dialog:

At 5-foot-2, tiny Jenette Vasquez is tiny compared with the other marines, but when she poses with her oversized smart gun, it’s all about her gleaming muscles.  When the space marines hit the planet, she takes point, leaning back to brace the big gun on her hip.  She’s the first into the abandoned compound, with no helmet to interfere with her tracking system.  Her breast plate says, “El riesgo siempre vive,” a line from a poem that translates roughly as “The risk always lives.” It’s the same sentiment as Cicero’s “Fortune favors the bold.”

Each of the actors received a detailed dossier on their character before filming began.  In a Starlog interview published in 1987, Jeanette Goldstein revealed, “It’s never mentioned in the film, but in the characters’ background, she and Drake are recruited from juvenile prison, where they’re under life sentences (for murder). Therefore, they were different from the others, who were on a time limit….That was Vasquez’ attitude: she had no one or nothing, so she was the logical choice for point. It made perfect sense to the commander. Who would you put in that suicidal position? Someone who couldn’t care less, and whether it’s a man or a woman doesn’t really matter.”

I’ve watched Aliens over and over, more than any of the other movies, because I was fascinated by the way James Cameron individualized and characterized all the members of the marines.  (In fact, I usually turn the movie off after the last marines die.)  The little moments that capture the camaraderie were hugely inspirational when I was juggling all the characters on the Veracity in Kill By Numbers, which comes out on Tuesday.

Raena Zacari, my reformed Imperial assassin, was never before part of a team the way Vasquez was, but I like the sense that the background characters continue to have lives of their own, no matter what’s going on in the foreground.  I particularly like the way that Hicks mouths along with Vasquez’s dialog in the scene above, as if he’s heard this all before.  There’s affection and amusement in that moment, which is easy to miss if you haven’t seen the movie a hundred million times.

Sources:

Starlog interview with Jeanette Goldstein: https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/interview-with-jenette-goldstein-1987/

A behind-the-scenes Video about the training the space marines underwent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQXKJdjFPF4

Aliens vs. Predator wiki on Vasquez: http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Jenette_Vasquez

A video on the kill counts in Aliens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZYkBbB9cEA

The Aliens trailer: This time it’s war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSQmYUaIyE