Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 55

As Above, So Below and Negative Space

Loren Rhoads:

A great review of As Above, So Below!

Originally posted on horroraddicts.net:

As Above, So Belowby Loren Rhoads and Brian Thomas is not your average boy meets girl love story. This story is more of an angel meets succubus, they fall in love and both have agendas type story. It all started when the succubus Lorelei goes into a night club in Los Angeles and sees the angel Azaziel. Azaziel has been cast out of heaven and Lorelei has the task of getting Azaziel to become one of Hell’s minions. Lorelei thinks its going to be easy to turn the angel, little does she know that Azaziel has an agenda of his own.

Azaziel has claimed the soul of a young woman named Ashleigh and wants to use Lorelei’s body as a host for Ashleigh so he can show her a night of love in exchange for him being able to save her soul. After Azaziel puts Ashleigh’s soul in an…

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I’m reading at Borderlands this weekend!

Just a reminder:  I’ll be reading from The Dangerous Type at Borderlands Books in San Francisco on Sunday (July 19) at 3 p.m.

Please come! I’m nervous about having an audience.

The Dangerous Type has been described as La Femme Nikita meets Firefly or as the kick-ass and totally original love-child of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s also been accused of bringing grimdark to space opera.

Sharing the bill is Robert Brockaway, author of The Unnoticeables. He describes it: “It’s part horror, part urban fantasy, part metaphysical punk rock pulp adventure (that’s a particularly weird part). The Unnoticeables is a bright, garish book—it’s silly and brash and dumb and it does not care if you know it—but it also gets incredibly dark in places.”

So keeping in mind that I truly believe morbid curiosity cures the blues, come to the Mission on a sunny Sunday afternoon and see if we can live up to the hype.

Borderlands Bookstore is at 866 Valencia Street, between 19th and 20th Streets.  You can call them for more details or to order a signed copy of the book at 415.824.8203. Their website is http://www.borderlands-books.com/.

Guest Posts Galore

The Dangerous Type was spotted at Powell’s Books. Photo courtesy of LisaMary Wichowski.

I haven’t been blogging here, but I’ve been getting around.  Here’s the update on my wanderings:

The thrill of today was guest blogging about persona on Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog: http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit-loren-rhoads-talks-about-the-dangerous-type/

Last week, the amazing Jaime Johnesee hosted me on her blog and let me talk about the gender of my name:

In the fastest submission to publication ever, Shells Walter interviewed me for her blog: http://shellsinterviews.blogspot.com/2015/07/interview-with-loren-rhoads-author-of.html  Here’s my favorite part, where she asks me to talk a little about the upcoming books:

“I wanted to play with different tropes in each book.  The Dangerous Type is a space opera revenge story centered around two interlocking love triangles.  Kill By Numbers is a Philip K. Dick mind warp, which deals with the failure of the Templar tech and looks into the nature of memory and truth.  No More Heroes is an interspecies love story set in a courtroom drama that ends with a time travel attack and rescue, as a venue for exploring the way a strong leader can influence people and inspire the best in them. The second and third books will both be out before the end of the year.”

And as a nice surprise, Caro Soles, co-editor of the nEvermore! anthology, wrote about discovering my story in the slush pile. She describes it as “a clammy, chilling, shivery sort of tale that snakes its way along your nerves.” http://carosoles.com/2015/07/14/joys-of-discovery-3-introducing-loren-rhoads/

I have three more guest posts out in the world — and another handful I need to write. The pneumonia hasn’t turned loose of me yet, so everything is taking me longer than I’d like.

Raena’s Foremothers: Aeon Flux

One of my prime inspirations for Raena Zacari was Aeon Flux.  Not the Charlize Theron version, which didn’t invest Aeon with quite enough chaos, but isn’t on retrospect as disappointing as I first thought.

I can tell you when exactly I fell in love with Aeon: September 1991, when the first shorts appeared on MTV’s Liquid Television.  Aeon was ridiculous: all spidery long legs and spit-curled hair and a costume with so little fabric that it wouldn’t make a mini skirt.  The first episode was so over-the-top violent that you had to laugh at it.  Aeon kills every Bregnan soldier she comes across in an unending parade of death and lakes of blood, but not a single return shot strikes all her bare skin. Here’s an excerpt:

At the end of each of the original shorts, Aeon dies, usually through her own miscalculation or carelessness.  The implication is that she’s actually a series of clones, each one activated for a certain attack.  Each clone is equally lethal and completely expendable.

Raena doesn’t die at the end of her adventures, but she always goes all out. Pain doesn’t slow her down.  Her eyes are on the goal and nothing is allowed to stand in her way.  Unfortunately, because she doesn’t hesitate, she also doesn’t reassess when things go wrong.  She’s used to being on her own, so it’s hard for her to ask for or accept help.

In 1995, MTV responded to Aeon’s cult status by granting her an animated series.  Originally, I was disappointed by it, because not only did Aeon cease dying at the end of every episode, she spoke.  It didn’t take long for Denise Poirier, the voice actress, to win me over.  Her low, dry voice was the perfect embodiment of Aeon’s sense of humor and fatalism.

My favorite Aeon moment comes in the episode “Thanatophobia,” the second episode of season 3. Aeon is timing out her attack by chanting the lyrics to “Danger Boy” as she fires tripod bombs: “Ready for the action now, danger boy/Ready if I’m ready for you, danger boy/Ready if I want it now, danger boy/How dare you ,dare you, danger boy?” The earworm is perfect, stuck in her head and cycling through her thoughts.  I think if Raena has a favorite song, that’s probably it.

I can’t find a clip of just the song, but here’s the episode it comes from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbiB8oFkR7s. “Danger Boy” starts at 1:30.

The movie with Charlize came closest to the right Aeon Flux attitude in the scene with the ball bearing bombs:

Aeon was designed for boys and scripted by men, but I wondered what she thought about her life.  Who was she really under that leather harness?  My answers to that question live in Raena Zacari.

The first book of Raena’s adventures, The Dangerous Type, came out this week.  You can order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or — my personal favorite — from your local bookstore.

While you’re at it, pick up the Aeon Flux Animated Collection. Here’s the link at Amazon.

The Dangerous Type hits the streets

Yesterday was the official release date of the first book of my trilogy.  I’ve been merrily checking the links as they come in. There are some great ones I wanted to share.

First off, The Dangerous Type made io9’s list of must-read fiction for July.  I am thrilled to be on a list with my hero Richard Kadrey’s new Sandman Slim book, as well as Kim Stanley Robinson, Guillermo del Toro, China Mieville, N.K. Jemsin, and Wesley Chu’s Time Salvager (which looks really good.)  Check the whole list out here: http://io9.com/there-are-too-many-must-read-science-fiction-and-fantas-1715535068

The Dangerous Type also made Barnes & Noble’s Bookseller’s Picks for July. Some of the same books made this list, along with reprints by Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman. I like their description of it: “In the grimdark universe of Rhoads’s propulsive, action-heavy debut, the universe’s deadliest assassin sets off on a mission of vengeance into a galaxy wracked by genocidal warfare. The stage is set for a revenge tale constructed from a web of complex, strained relationships.”  Here’s the rest of the list: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/bn-booksellers-picks-for-july-2015/

My friend Martha Allard, to whom the book is dedicated, blogged about selling it out at my hometown B&N: http://marthajallard.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-dangerous-type-by-loren-rhoads-is.html

Would you like a taste of the book itself?  Armand Rosamilia published an excerpt on his blog this morning! http://armandrosamilia.com/2015/07/08/guest-post-loren-rhoads/

There are a couple more guest posts coming up that I am super excited about coming up soon, but I’ll link those when I can.

The Price for Finishing a Book

The first two purchasers of The Dangerous Type: Claud and Jim

The night I did the first media for Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues — Stoo Odom’s radio show at the old Pirate Cat studio — I started to come down with bone-rattling chills. Swine flu was going around then and I was sure I had it. The nausea waited to kick in until I managed to get myself home. It was a long, horrific night. In the morning, I got up, caught a plane to LA, and did my first-ever solo reading at Stories in Echo Park.

After I cranked through the copyedits on As Above, So Below — intrusive, copious, and mostly unnecessary — I came down with a bad cold.

I knew that I had been working so long and hard on the Templars books that I was facing some kind of illness at the end. In November when I started the death march, I was good about walking every afternoon, not drinking coffee, watching what I ate. I optimized for sleep, sunshine, and fresh air. But as the final revision of The Dangerous Type ran into finishing Kill By Numbers, and the final revision of Kill By Numbers slammed up against writing No More Heroes, everything fell apart. I didn’t walk. I propped myself up with expresso and sugar. I didn’t get up from my desk while my daughter was at school.

I thought at worst I’d get a sinus infection, maybe the flu.

Last Saturday night, at the Borderlands Bookstore Sponsors party, I discovered The Dangerous Type on the shelves. It was wonderful and completely unexpected. I babbled to everyone I met that my book was on the New Books shelf.

I came home giddy. Because of that, it took me a while to wind down to sleep. Even then, I couldn’t really get warm, but I was never awake and aware long enough to get up and put on some socks. Throughout the night, I was tormented by dreams of page proofs and imaginary errors that needed to be corrected. I even dreamed of Raena for the first time.

After I made breakfast for my family, I went back to bed. By the time I realized that lying in bed in my pajamas and robe on a sunny Sunday was not normal, my temperature was 102. By Monday afternoon, it was 103. Tylenol brought it down until the middle of the night, when it spiked up again. It was back to 102 yet again on Tuesday at noon.

Long story short, I have pneumonia. I’m on Levofloxacin, which has the unhappy side effect of dissolving your achilles tendon’s connection to your foot. Luckily, the drug is also prescribed against the plague and anthrax, so I’m covered for the diseases I’m owed for the other two books in the series.

For the most part, having pneumonia hasn’t been as dire as I expected.  Only today, six days in, did I cough so hard I pulled a muscle.  The fever dreams have been more irritating than terrifying.  I got myself to the doctor before the congestion in my lungs got very noticeable.

This morning, though, may win the prize for the most horrific body sensation I have ever experienced.  I woke up at 4:30 and read for a while, but couldn’t stay away to take my pill at 6, so I took it early and went back to sleep.

Fresh out of the box!

When I woke up, I felt as if something slithered loose inside my lungs.  I felt it tearing away from the upper side like a piece of packing tape.  Its weight settled again as my eyes came open.  I couldn’t think of anything but Alien.

After that, the day could only get better. My husband got to the PO box and came back with my author’s copies of The Dangerous Type.  He took the traditional “opening the box” photo for me.

I have a ton of writing to do this coming week. In the meantime, I’m gonna take it easy, get fit, and be ready to get back to work.  No rest for the morbid, baby.

The Dangerous Type at Borderlands Books

I’ll be reading from The Dangerous Type at Borderlands Books in San Francisco on July 19 at 3 p.m.

The Dangerous Type has been described as La Femme Nikita meets Firefly or as the kick-ass and totally original love-child of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s also been accused of bringing grimdark to space opera.

Sharing the bill is Robert Brockaway, author of The Unnoticeables. He describes it: “It’s part horror, part urban fantasy, part metaphysical punk rock pulp adventure (that’s a particularly weird part). The Unnoticeables is a bright, garish book—it’s silly and brash and dumb and it does not care if you know it—but it also gets incredibly dark in places.”

So keeping in mind that I truly believe morbid curiosity cures the blues, come to the Mission on a sunny Sunday afternoon and see if we can live up to the hype.

Borderlands Bookstore is at 866 Valencia Street, between 19th and 20th Streets.  You can call them for more details or to order a signed copy of the book at 415.824.8203. Their website is http://www.borderlands-books.com/.

nEvermore! Tales of Murder, Mystery, and the Macabre

A wonderful thing happened while I was cranking away on the Templar series: I had a story accepted for an anthology of works inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.

My story is set in Venice, like Poe’s “The Assignation.” It features Alondra DeCourval, the young witch whose stories have appeared in Wily Writers, Instant City, Not One of Us, and in the books Sins of the Sirens and The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One.

Alondra is traveling after the death of her guardian. She stumbles into a church where a monster sings so beautifully that she drives everyone in her audience to drown themselves in a canal. Only Alondra is left to stop the vendetta from coming due again.

The book includes stories by Margaret Atwood, William Nolan, and the last story by Tanith Lee.  I am stunned and honored to have my story appear alongside theirs.

All the contributors to this book are absolutely amazing:

Colleen Anderson

Kelley Armstrong

Margaret Atwood

Robert Bose

Jane Petersen Burfield

Rick Chiantaretto

J. Madison Davis

Barbara Fradkin

Nancy Holder

Michael Jecks

Tanith Lee

Robert Lopresti

Richard Christian Matheson

David McDonald

Lisa Morton

William Nolan (with Jason Brock, Sunni Brock)

Loren Rhoads

Christopher Rice

Thomas S. Roche

Uwe Sommerlad

Carol Weekes & Michael Kelly

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

You can preorder the ebook here.  The paperback will be coming soon.

No More Heroes is done at last

I turned in the final draft of the last book of my trilogy last Monday.  I checked my email every hour for the next three days until my editor said he’d passed the book on to production.  No More Heroes is good to go.

The news made me feel lightheaded.  It’s strange to be out from beneath this pressure. I started No More Heroes the first week of February, directly after I turned in the final draft of Kill By Numbers.

At the time, I had an outline and the scene where Haoun, the lizard pilot, asks Raena to join him in a jet scooter race, a metaphor for how their relationship changes in this book.

Four months and 95,000 words later, I’m done.

I was in a daze pretty much all of last week.  I’ve been working on this story pretty much constantly since I got the editor’s notes on The Dangerous Type in October.  First thing in the morning, last thing before bedtime, weekends, holidays, school vacations… I gave up my column at Scoutie Girl in February and basically stopped blogging.  I have not written anything new, except for continuations of Raena’s story, in the last seven months.

I’m trying to shift gears, but it’s hard.  My editor would like me to write some short stories set in Raena’s universe.  I need to finish enough of the San Francisco pioneer cemeteries book that I can get the proposal out to publishers.  After that, I need to think about what my next novel might be.

In the meantime, I’d love to do a blog tour.  I’ve never done one before, but I’ve missed the guest blogging I used to do.  If you have a blog — about writing, about science fiction, about making your dreams come true — I would love to write for you.  You can comment below or use the Contact Me form on the tab above.

If you don’t have a blog, but have a question about writing, editing, women in science fiction (as creators or protagonists), please feel free to ask.  This has been such a ride.

Where the Trilogy Stands

This month has been amazing, stressful, productive, social, and very draining.  I’m working through my editor’s notes on No More Heroes, the final book in my space opera trilogy, which is running way too long and getting much too complicated…  I am trying not to panic.  It will get done.  Soon.  I hope you will like it.  It comes out in November.

While I’ve been finishing NMH up, I’ve been over the second book, Kill By Numbers, twice this month: going over the proofreader’s notes, then doing the final polish.  Haven’t seen the final cover yet, but that book will be out in September.

The first book in the series, The Dangerous Type, got its first reviews this month.  Publishers Weekly called the book dark and brutal and said I “seemed to be determined to bring the style of grimdark fantasy to space opera.” That’s pretty much exactly what I was going for, so I’m glad the book succeeds.

Pulling all this together has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  I went into this trilogy with the first book finished and the second book in a 50,000-word Nanowrimo draft.  Since the end of October last year, I’ve revised The Dangerous Type, proofed it four times, finished Kill By Numbers, revised it, proofed it three times, and written well over 100,000 words of No More Heroes.

Oh, and set up the release event at the fabled Borderlands Books for July 12.  See you there?

The highlight this month is that 750+ people entered to win a copy of The Dangerous Type on Goodreads. That number just blows me away. I already got a super nice note from one of the winners. I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s thoughts on the book, once they’ve read it.

This has been such a ride!