#NewRelease EXTRATERRESTRIAL NOIR
- Dan
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Today on the blog, Rich Leder gives us insight on how he create characters, including aliens, and tells us about his latest release, Extraterrestrial Noir. I enjoyed his insights, and I must admit, I love his book's cover! Oh, I don't miss out on the giveaway, deets below.
#NewRelease EXTRATERRESTRIAL NOIR
Character creation: Characters are People Too
First things first, your characters are not characters; they’re people. Three-dimensional folks living three-dimensional lives rich with three-dimensional thoughts and dreams, fears and feelings, triumphs and failures, friends and lovers, and someone or something (also three dimensional) that wants to stop them dead in their tracks, thoroughly roadblock them from achieving whatever goal you’ve set for them to achieve, someone or something who/that personifies the peril you’ve cooked up to make their 3D lives oh so very hard to manage.
Where were they born? Siblings? Parents still alive? Multi-lingual? How and why? Overweight? Underweight? Why is that? What occupation? Cab driver? Surgeon? Attorney? Plumber? What level of education? Hobbies? Phobias? Supernatural gifts? These and a dozen other questions should be addressed while creating the people who will populate your tall tale.
What I’m saying is that your cast of characters have histories that really happened to them. They came from somewhere that influenced them right up to the moment your story started and they appeared on the page to play their part in it.
They bring an attitude to your story before your story even starts. An attitude forged from the life they’ve lived, from their experiences, relationships, wins, and losses. They arrive in your book (or screenplay) fully formed before you’ve written word one.
Sure, sure, what they look like is important too. No doubt. But who they are is more important. (Unless what they look like determined who they turned out to be.)
Character creation is a writer’s deep dive into the who’s who of their cast and the why of why they are that way. It’s work that must be done if you expect your reader to engage your work with their heart and soul, if you’re hoping they get lost in the journey of your book.
Anyhow, that how I make them up.
Blurb
A PSYCHO-CRIMINAL EXTRATERRESTRIAL ON A SUBURBAN CUL-DE-SAC
A FAMILY ON THE BRINK OF ALL-ENCOMPASSING INSOLVENCY
A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD UBER-GENIUS DAUGHTER IN THE LINE OF FIRE
CAN SHE SAVE THE FAMILY, NOT TO MENTION THE PLANET?
An extraterrestrial crashes into a suburban cul-de-sac Colonial, absorbs every binary bit of information ever chronicled in all of human history, rearranges its molecules and presents itself as a couple of late and legendary film noir superstars, then immediately displays an appetite for debauchery, depravity, decadence, and destruction, seducing the family into its psychopathic criminal orbit with irresistible Hollywood panache, alluring sexual charisma, and inconceivable intergalactic powers.…all in the name of saving the family from their emotional, marital, and financial ruin.
But uber-genius-daughter Mike Devine figures out fast that the extraterrestrial’s principal plan is to employ its unfathomable interplanetary muscle and implode the planet. Which leaves the fate of her family, not to mention the world, in her twelve-year-old hands.
Excerpt
“That’s almost six trillion miles per year—a single light-year,” Mike said.
“So, if they travel at light speed, they should be here pretty soon,” Maggie said.
“Better make extra pancakes,” Connie said.
“That’s lame, Dad,” Danny said.
“It’s witty, son,” Connie said. “You’ll understand when you get older.”
“I hope not,” Danny said.
“Not too soon,” Mike said. “The distance from Earth to the edge of the universe in any direction takes forty-six point five gigalight-years.”
“How many light years in a gigalight-year?” Connie said.
“A billion,” Mike said.
“What does that mean in Earth years?” Maggie said.
“Voyager 1, our most distant space probe, traveled fourteen light-hours, not even one light-day, and that took thirty Earth years. So, it would take about twenty-two thousand Earth years to travel the same distance light travels in one light-year. About one quadrillion and one hundred two trillion Earth years to reach the edge of the universe.”
If that’s a question on the genius test, I wonder which part of the light-speed equation Mike will only get ninety-two percent right, Maggie thought.
“What if they were coming from the closest galaxy?” Maggie said.
“Andromeda,” Mike said. “Twenty-five hundred Earth years.”
“Long time,” Maggie said, and she turned off her flashlight.
“The meteors should have been here by now,” Connie said.
“I saw something up there,” Maggie said.
But something up there had seen her and made a sharp turn toward Earth.
Giveaway
One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card.
AUTHOR Bio
Rich Leder has been a working writer for more than three decades. His credits include eight novels for Laugh Riot Press and 19 produced movies—television films for CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark and feature films for Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Longridge Productions, and Left Bank Films.
He’s been the lead singer in a Detroit rock band, a restaurateur, a Little League coach, an indie film director, a literacy tutor, a magazine editor, a screenwriting coach, a wedding consultant (it’s true), a PTA board member, a HOA president, a commercial real estate agent, and a visiting artist for the UNCW Film Studies Department, all of which, it turns out, was grist for the mill.
WEBSITE: https://www.richleder.com
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