New Contemporary Fantasy from Loren Rhoads!

Check out this new collection from Loren Rhoads. A few weeks ago, I got to ask her questions about her stories. Read the interview below!

Alondra DeCourval travels from San Francisco to Prague to Olso, encountering magical creatures and searching for the limits she will go to for love.

Alondra's Experiments

 So, how long have you been writing your Alondra stories. I've been a fan forever.

Loren Rhoads: I wrote the very first story in high school. Thank god it's still unpublished. The first story that was published appeared in Not One of Us in 2008. That story -- about a fox spirit in Tokyo -- made the long list for the British Fantasy Award that year.

I remember that! It's a beautiful story. Alondra is such a great character, and you've been carrying her with you for a long time. Where did she come from?

Loren Rhoads: To be honest, I wanted to write a story about a red-haired witch. I had the hubris to think I could spin the trope and add something new to it. Actually, she's one of my favorite characters to write for.

The magic in her stories is so great too. I always learn something that I didn't know about magic.

Loren Rhoads: Wow, that is the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day!

I’m glad. It's true. What are your favorite monsters? What are Alondra's?

Loren Rhoads: Alondra has a thing for older men, so she's not sensible when it comes to the tragic backstory. She keeps getting tangled up with vampires and other immortals.

I mean, I like tragic. Also it keeps your commitment down.

Loren Rhoads: This is true.

I also like that the stories take place all over the world. You're very good at setting the scene. Where do these three stories take place?

Loren Rhoads:  The three in this book are set in Golden Gate Park, Prague -- including a visit to Franz Kafka's grave, and Olso. Olso is the one I haven't been to, so it took a lot of research

Which I know you love. I can't wait to read them. Do you see a more collections in Alondra's future?

Loren Rhoads: Thank you so much for asking that. I will have another collection of stories out sometime in April. It will be called Alondra’s Adventures.

Aha! I'm so glad to hear this. Something to look forward to.  I'm so envious of everyone who gets to read these stories for the first time!

The Alondra stories have appeared in Best New Horror #27, Strange California, Sins of the Sirens, Fright Mare: Women Write Horror, The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One, The Ghostbreakers: New Horrors and more.

Loren Rhoads is the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. She blogs about graveyards as travel destinations at CemeteryTravel.com.
Loren is also the author of The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes, a space opera trilogy set after a galactic war has wiped out much of humanity.
She is the co-author (with Brian Thomas) of the novel Lost Angels about a succubus who sets her sights on an angel and ends up possessed by a mortal girl's soul. 
Loren likes long walks in the moonlight and old graveyards. She remembers when men walked on the moon.

At the End of Things.

I am dangerously close to finishing a short story that has been on the back burner for a while. I write slowly. And that's also dangerous. Last year when Black Light, my novel, was published, it was the end of three decades of work. It's a rare thing when I come to an end. It's hard, I find to let go.
This story, as it turns out, is a prequel to Black Light. It's about Albrecht Christian as a young man, far, far before he meets Trace. It's set between WWI and WWII, when Albrecht is still adjusting to his new life as a psychic vampire, feeding off the misery and decay of Europe of the time.
I should have finished it months ago, but something has been holding me back.
After the election I could barely concentrate. I was lucky to get six paragraphs a day. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to feel so afraid.
Awhile before all that a friend said to me, "I don't think your writing is holding you back. I just think that your characters are gay."
I know how that sounds, but she wasn't criticizing my choices, she was commenting on a fact.  Queer stories have a smaller audience than straight. I knew that, but, last year when Black Light came out, I thought the gap was closing. I mean, I read books about straight people, right? And I met a bunch of the people who bought the book.They seemed to be everybody.
But then November came, and you all know that story. So, I spent a while thinking about why I write, and who I write. Because suddenly I became afraid. Afraid that even less people would read my stories.  Afraid that it exposed me in a way that felt new to me. And I forgot that the best fiction is about what scares you. And that good words are dangerous.
So soon I will have completed a story about Albrecht Christian,gay  psychic vampire and his first true love, a powerful black magician and the Loch Ness monster. Yep, you read that right. It turns out that I like the story. iIt might find a home, it might now. But that doesn't matter, really. the finishing of it reminded me to write the story that I have. No matter what.
I think I've got my faith back now.

Where to find me. (In which I plug the anthology I'm in)

So have you all been wondering what I've been doing with my time lately? Well, here's one thing. Below is the blurb and the lovely cover of Re-Vamped: Blood Lust Revenge. In it you'll find my story, "Getting Fixed" along with many other fantastic stories about the fairer (and fanged) sex, For 2.99 it's a bargain. Check it out on amazon. 
Though people have been exploring the legend of the vampire for hundreds of years, the female vampire has been largely overlooked...until now.

Neophyte Press proudly presents Re-Vamped: Blood Lust Revenge, a collection of short stories focused on fanged girls of the night with a taste for human blood and a penchant for power, seduction and terror.

Find your favorite turtleneck and sink your teeth into this monster of a collection. You're in store for some long, dark nights filled with beautiful, hungry creatures. But don't cry when you find yourself with two perfectly round puncture wounds on your neck...

‘Cause you've been warned.

Re-Vamped: Blood Lust Revenge(Kindle Edition)

by Ty Schwamberger, Adam Lewis

Here's a small bite of my story:
                                                                             Getting Fixed

 The bite turned out to be profitable for Casey. Made her lucky. Of course it had taken her a while to accept this. A vampire bite wasn’t your average injury. Not something you came out of happy to be alive. You get bit, you turn, somebody stakes you before you spill blood. That’s how the world worked.

She thought. Turned out, it wasn’t that simple. The taint, passed through the spit of her attacker had given her some vampiric qualities: increased strength, sensitivity to sunlight. It also woke the thirst, but Casey found ways to deal with that. 

Want more? Click on the link above. It'll be fun, I promise.

Mart