Character Interview: Benjamin R. Smith & Victoria from "Atlas"
Please welcome with me today, Benjamin R. Smith and Victoria from his book Atlas. Be warned, this one's a spitfire. Some language!
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Mia: What is the name of the book where we'll find you? Can you tell us a little about it?
Victoria: I'm lead to understand that the novel is called Atlas. It is a police procedural following a double-murder and conspiracy investigation in San Francisco in the year 2066.
I'm a cop working in the public sector six years after the signing of The Atlantic Compact, a document that declared the wealthiest Americans independent of the Republic and sent the rest of us into the dark ages.
I won't go into too much detail about how shitty the world has become in the later half of the 21st Century, but I will say that the communities of Sausalito, Berkeley, and Oakland have all conglomerated into the world's premiere Private City-State known as Atlantis.
Mia: Tell us a little about yourself. Where do you fit into the story? What should we know about you?
Victoria: "Tell us a little about yourself…" Well, If I could pass through each day like a blank—an invisible force unseen and unmolested by the world—I might have the means and wherewithal to answer that question without yelling for you to "fuck off and mind your own business!"
(Pause).
Sorry. I don't like interviews. I'm rather rude in general, but it's exacerbated when pressured into doing things I don't want to do by certain ass-hat authors who shall remain nameless.
ABOUT VICTORIA:
I don't know my real name. I named myself when I was 14 after the cop who eventually adopted me. He rescued me from an underground prostitution and drug ring in 2046. My age is an approximation. I say I'm 34. I don't know exactly what year I was born or whether or not I had actual biological parents. My first memory is of a government school, where I was forbidden to learn to read or write. At the age of 8, I was transferred from that school to an island off the coast of Southern California (You'd probably know it in 2012 as San Nicholas Island).
I refuse to go into detail about the events that lead to the rise in power of the Patriot Party and their experiments in eugenics and mood alteration. Suffice it to say that the Patriot Youth population on the island of San Nicholas was approximately 23,500 in 2040 and by 2044 when the camp was liberated along with 70 others nationwide, the Resistance Army of the Republic catalogued the surviving population as consisting of 1,411 adolescents, all suffering from sever mental and emotional disturbance.
I was one of those 1,411 slated for termination by the new republic but I escaped and managed to survive, drifting north towards San Francisco.
HOW I FIT INTO THE STORY:
Well, two women end up dead across the bay in fabulous Atlantis and one of them, it turns out, is the Public Prosecutor for the city of San Francisco. I get myself attached as a public liaison to the case and, through following the chain of evidence, find myself investigating the head of ATLANTIS SECURITY MULTINATIONAL as a chief suspect in the crimes.
It gets a lot more complex than that and my ethics will probably get called into question somewhere in there, but that's the thrust of it.
Mia: What do you think of the author? Be honest. We won't tell.
Victoria: He's an asshole and I'm going to kill him for subjecting me to this shitty tell-all interview. And you can tell him I said so. I don't give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut if he knows.
Mia: How do you feel about the story you're in?
Victoria: Oh, I'd much rather be in historical romance if I could have my say in the matter. You know, something along the lines of taking over for Elizabeth Bennett or Marianne Dashwood, whipping out the badge and the gun on occasion just to fuck with Wickham and Willoughby–show them some ladies know how to deal with punk-ass dipshits with no sense of moral obligation whatsoever.
Mia: Do you like being a character in the book?
Victoria: To be frank, it's emotionally trying. On the one hand, I'm fictional; that's kind of rough when you're trying to register at the DMV. I will say I like the action though the pay is lousy and there were times when I enjoyed myself. There were times also when I wanted to claw Smitty's eyes out for some of his lines of exposition…
"She felt like a marshmallow headed to fight a house fire armed with graham crackers and chocolate."
Yeah, that line stuck sucked.
The sex was fun…
Mia: How do you see your future? Without giving anything away about the story, naturally.
Victoria: I don't do fortunes, cupcake. As far as I'm concerned, long-term plans are what ancillary characters make just before they get shot in the crossfire.
What do you know about your author's plans? Can we expect to see you in any future stories?
He's cagey, but I can play detective. On his desk right now he's got a lot of books on mythology. One of them is opened with a post-it marking the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. I'm not sure if that says anything about my future, but its making me a little nervous.
Mia: Let's say they make a movie about this book. Who do you want to play you, and why?
Victoria: I don't want anybody to play me in a movie. If you're asking me what actresses could be made to look like me, I'm not altogether sure. I have dark hair that I keep cropped short and my eyes are dark brown. I'm tall but not willowy, athletic but not tanned, self-conscious but not uncomfortable. As for distinguishing marks, my nose was broken sometime ago and it's been kind of crooked ever sense. My go-to expression is repressed sarcasm mixed with general distain. I like leather jackets and avoid jewelry because I can't afford it.
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Author Bio: Benjamin R. Smith (1985-) was born in Wichita, Kansas. He attended a rural high school where he excelled in art and theatre. He attended the University of Kansas, studied Journalism at the William Allen White School for Media and Mass Communication, and completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Playwriting. In 2009, he was nominated for the David Mark Cohen Playwright's Award. ATLAS is his first novel.
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