Extraterrestrial Noir
by Rich Leder
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GENRE: SciFi
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BOOK 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.
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EXCERPT TWO:
“Maybe it’s a missile, or a rocket,” Emily said. “Jesus, it’s really moving fast.”
“Is it me?” Carol said. “Or is it coming right at us?”
“It’s not you,” Maggie said.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Lisa said.
“Do meteors split off from the flock?” Carol said.
“I don’t think meteors travel in a flock,” Maggie said.
“It’s like somebody aimed the thing right here,” Emily said.
And then they were silent, watching whatever it was shoot toward them. A fireball, they were now realizing, that was going to hit New Jersey any second.
“Jesus,” Lisa said, and the women dove to the ground. There was no time for them to think of their husbands, who, as it happened, were face down on Peter’s green, or their children, who were unaware that some kind of cataclysmic crash was about to occur.
No time even for their lives to flash before their eyes because the thing was low in the sky now and not aiming for New Jersey or Bergen County or Paramus. Aiming for The Stars. And not just for The Stars, for Hope Circle.
With a blinding blast of flame and a supersonic swoosh, the thing shot over their heads and hit the Devines’ roof at a forty-five-degree angle on the front side. There was a smashing sound that was oddly muted and echoless, though the original crash was followed by three successive lightning-quick crashes, and then there was nothing.
Maggie got to her knees first and followed the black, smoky, fast-dissipating trail over their heads to her house, where smoke was wafting around the hole in her roof where whatever it was had gone crashing in.
“Oh no,” she said, “My kids.”
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AUTHOR INTERVIEW:
Have you ever had an imaginary friend?
Dozens of them. I’m a writer, remember? Imaginary friends are tools of the trade. When my children were young and living at home, they would stand at my office door, listening to me have full conversations with people not in the room, and say things like, “There’s something wrong with you, Daddy.”
Do you have any phobias?
Don’t love hanging around wasps. But I don’t beat myself up over because I don’t know anyone who does.
Do you listen to music when you're writing?
I do not. I need to hear the sounds of the world I’m creating. In fact, I wear noise-cancelling headphones. No sounds other than the voice of my characters and the locations they inhabit.
Do you ever read your stories out loud?
When I was writing movies in LA, something I did nonstop for 15 years, I would often read my scripts aloud so I could hear the characters say the lines I was writing for them. I still do it on occasion with my novels but less often. I’m better at hearing what the words really sound like coming out of this or that character’s mouth. At least I like to think I’m better at it. Anyway, I hope I am. I better be. Geez, I mean after all this time.
Tell us about your main character and who inspired him/her.
Mike Devine is a 12-year-old uber-genius trying to live a normal seventh-grade-girl life. She likes soccer, the Talking Heads, baked ziti, and dinosaurs. She’s never had a boyfriend, but, man, she’d sure like to. All normal stuff for a normal girl living a normal life in the suburbs of New York. Unfortunately for her—though good news for the planet, not to mention the cul-de-sac—she has to be a genius to save the world. She’s sassy and snarky and funny as can be. She’d be even funnier, I think, if the fate of the Earth wasn’t in her preteen hands.
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AUTHOR BIO & LINK:
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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.
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