Unsafe Words by Loren Rhoads - Horror, Science Fiction, Dark Fantasy Short Stories - Once you’ve done the most unforgivable thing, what will you do next?
by Loren Rhoads
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction,
Dark Fantasy Short Stories
Publisher: Automatism Press
Date of Publication: September 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1735187600
ASIN: B08HHNQ6XV
Number of pages: 174
Word Count: 55K
Cover Artist: Lynne Hansen
Once you’ve done the most unforgivable thing, what will you do next?
In the first full-length collection of her edgy, award-winning short stories, Loren Rhoads punctures the boundaries between horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction in a maelstrom of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.
Ghosts, succubi, naiads, vampires, the Wild Hunt, and the worst predator in the woods stalk these pages, alongside human monsters who follow their cravings past sanity or sense.
Interview with Author:
Loren Rhoads
Welcome to JB’s Bookworms with Brandy Mulder, Tell us about your newest book.
Loren Rhoads: Unsafe Words is a collection of short stories.
They skate in genre from horror through science fiction into fantasy, with some
fairly straight-up literary stories, although they all have a dark edge.
Fourteen of the stories were previously published. One is original to the
collection.
Writing isn’t easy. What was the most difficult thing you
dealt with when writing your newest book?
LR: Picking the new story! I had a couple of choices but I'm
happy with the one I chose. It was the story that got me into the Clarion
Writing Workshop, but I moved away from writing science fiction for a while, so
I'd stopped sending it out. When I was going through everything to decide what
to include in this collection, I read "With You By My Side It Should Be
Fine" for the first time in a long time and discovered I still loved this
story. It makes the perfect ending to this book.
Tell us a little bit about your writing career.
LR: Unsafe Words is my 14th book, but my first full-length collection
of short stories. I started out as a publisher in the 1990s, editing two
collections of essays for Automatism Press, then developed and ran Morbid
Curiosity magazine for 10 years. Morbid Curiosity published confessional
first-person essays. I collected some of my favorites of those essays into an
anthology called Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues for Scribner, who published
it in 2009. Since then, I've written a space opera trilogy, a duology about a
succubus who falls in love with an angel, and a nonfiction travel guide called
199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die.
They say Hind-sight is 20/20. If you could give advice to
the writer you were the first time you sat down to write, what would it be?
LR: Settle in. Get comfortable. This is going to take a
while. You learn writing by doing it, so the more you do, the more you'll
learn.
What was your most difficult scene to write?
LR: The story "Sound of Impact" was a challenge.
It's about a woman deciding to have an affair with an old boyfriend, but it
doesn't go well and he gets vindictive. It's one of the literary stories, in
that nothing speculative happens in it, but it was emotionally difficult to
write. Strangely enough, it was one of the stories that sold the first time I
sent it out, so I guess I did something right.
Are themes a big part of your stories, or not so much?
LR: I think all my stories, novels included, are about the
way that loving someone else can save us. Sometimes that love is sexual, but
other times it's friendship.
What are you working on now?
LR: Once the promotion for Unsafe Words is done, I'm going
to start work on another novel. It's about a young witch reclaiming her power.
She meets a vampire in New York City and comes with him to San Francisco, so
it's a love letter to the city where I live, too. I'm in the mood to write
something escapist.
Is there a release date planned?
LR: Not yet. If people are interested in keeping up-to-date
with my progress on the project -- it's called The Death of Memory -- they
should join my monthly newsletter. Here's the link: https://mailchi.mp/aa9545b2ccf4/lorenrhoads
Who is your favorite character from your own stories, and
why?
LR: Alondra DeCourval, the protagonist from The Death of
Memory, appears in a whole bunch of my short stories. One of those stories is
in Unsafe Words. After the events of the novel (which is kind of an origin
story), Alondra spends a year trying to save the life of the wizard who trained
her. He has a bad heart. In the story in Unsafe Words, she's decided that
Victor needs a new heart and she will get him one.
Alondra is really fun to write. She isn't entirely sure she
likes or trusts people, but she is willing to risk everything to protect them
from magical creatures -- and vice versa. Her adventures are always about her
stepping off into the unknown and building a bridge as she falls.
Most writers were readers as children. What was your
favorite book in grade school?
LR: Peter Pan is the book that taught me to write when I was
a kid. I loved the adventures Peter got into, the pirates and the mermaids, but
Wendy is limited to playing everyone's mother. I wanted to be a character in
Neverland, but I didn't want to be rescued. I wanted to have adventures of my
own, separate from Peter's. So I told myself stories at bedtime. It took me a
while to realize that you could make up stories and write them down.
What are your plans for future projects?
LR: Once The Death of Memory is done, I have rough ideas for
a couple more books about Alondra. I'd like to put together a collection of my
confessional essays, kind of a memoir. I'm thinking about calling it This
Morbid Life. Then who knows? I have a couple of ideas for more cemetery books,
if I find the time to write them.
Is there anything you would like to add before we finish?
LR: Thanks so much for interviewing me!
You're welcome. Good luck with Unsafe Words, and thank you for being
with us today.
Excerpt
from "Here There Be Monsters" from Unsafe Words by Loren Rhoads
Something
brushed her leg. Violet kept treading water, legs pedaling below her, but
wondered: did the pool have leeches in it? Snapping turtles? Her thoughts
darted into paranoia: were there sharks? Piranhas? Anything that might bite?
Not that it
mattered. She would stay in this water and be gummed to death by goldfish
rather than get out and take her chances with the mountain lion watching her
from the side of the pool.
Whatever it was
below her tangled in her toes. It felt for all the world like hair. Violet
shuddered, losing her rhythm momentarily, but then forced her legs to scissor
once more.
She peered down
into the murky water. Something below her glowed an icy white color, like
moonlight. Like the moon had fallen into the old swimming pool. The temperature
of the water around her plummeted. A cramp knotted her left calf. Violet
whimpered.
Her head dipped
toward the surface of the water. Violet fought to calm herself, to hold herself
up by the determined stroking of her arms. She tried to stretch the charley
horse from her muscle.
Something very
much like a hand touched her thigh.
She shrieked.
The sound echoed from the hills surrounding the pool and repeated from the
mountain peak on the other side of the valley.
The mountain
lion narrowed her eyes and stared at Violet.
Then a girl’s
voice said in her ear: “Don’t be afraid.”
Ice flooded her
veins and Violet lost the ability to control her limbs. Her head slipped under
the surface of the water and she took a breath…and something caught her in its
arms and lifted her, coughing, back to the surface. And held her there, safely,
until she could breathe again.
Violet’s heart
fluttered in her chest, struggling to regain its rhythm. She could see arms
around her ribs, holding her up in the water. They were a pale grayish white.
Not a natural color. She wondered if it was possible to die of fear.
“Don’t be afraid
of me,” the ghost said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I’m afraid to
look at you,” Violet whispered. She didn’t trust her own voice, didn’t want to
hear the sound of her own terror.
“I’m not
horrible,” the ghost promised.
“Did you drown
here?”
“A long time
ago.”
Violet swallowed
hard. Her throat was sore from the water she’d inhaled. She coughed once more,
but it didn’t really help. Tentatively, she started to dog paddle.
The ghost
released her. Violet turned slowly, to find a girl her own age bobbing
alongside her. Her long, long hair was blond, where Violet’s was dark. It was
slicked to her skull and green with streaks of pondweed. Her eyes were pale
blue, maybe, or green, where Violet’s were brown. The drowned girl wasn’t
horrible, even if her skin had gone the color of something kept from sunlight
for a long, long time.
“Are you alone
here?” Violet asked. The quaver in her voice unnerved her even more, if that
were possible. She swallowed again and tried to concentrate on her kicking.
“My boyfriend is
here, too,” the ghost said. “He doesn’t like to talk to people.”
“Did you die
together?”
“We thought it
would be romantic,” the ghost said. “We didn’t realize we’d be trapped here.
That’s why I don’t want you to die. You will be trapped here, too.”
“Why are you
trapped?”
“A creature
roams these woods. A monster. It is hungry for company. It collects us.”
“How many of you
are there?” Violet asked, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.
“Lots,” the
ghost said sadly. “Lots.”
“I don’t want to
be trapped here,” Violet said, “but I don’t know how to get past the mountain
lion.”
“There is no
mountain lion,” the ghost said. “That’s the monster. It takes many forms.”
About the Author:
Loren Rhoads is the author of the In the Wake of the Templars space opera trilogy, co-author of a succubus/angel duology called As Above, So Below, and editor of Tales for the Camp Fire: An Anthology Benefiting Wildfire Relief. She's also the author of a nonfiction travel guide called 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. Unsafe Words is the first full-length collection of her short stories.
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Thank you so much for interviewing me!
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