Day Four of the AW Erotica Writers blog hop dawns with the usual levels of snafu and triumph. Thanks for alerting me to broken links; they’ll be fixed as soon as possible.
Today, Scarlet Day interviews M/M author Zoe X. Rider here. If you like your M/M with an edge of hard rock, blue-collar angst, and hot BDSM, give Zoe’s work a try.
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For those of you who haven’t seen my promo excerpts on the Love Romances Cafe Yahoo group, here’s one of the early snippets from Moro’s Price: when Val unknowingly meets the very guy he’s been obsessing over for the last five years…
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“Great Cama,” whispered the target. “You killed them?”
Dogleash kicked the incriminating light deeper into a corner between the turbine and another raised access hatch, then bent to check his handiwork. One broken neck, one crushed throat. No heartbeats. “Y-yes,” he said, face heating as he stammered.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Wh-wh-why?” Dogleash’s body shook and twitched with the effort to speak. He stared as the thugs’ target eased into the lit corner.
“Seems to be the night for it.” The young man shrugged. He was dressed in flowing gray and amber fabrics. The fight had ripped his long coat and the collar of his amber tunic. He carried no obvious weapons. A heavy black metal and plastic-web technician’s belt cinched his slim waist, myriad pockets and tools bulking out the belt.
Young, Dogleash guessed. Early twenties. At least seven inches shorter than Dogleash’s own six-foot-one frame. The youth’s rounded bronze face contrasted with shoulder-length, feathery pale-gold hair and grayish-gold eyes. Kott would have ignored him at a bonders’ auction as being too small to fight. He was pretty enough to be someone’s bed toy if his clothing and manner hadn’t screamed freeborn and rich. He reminded Dogleash of an owl he’d seen in one of Jost’s old picture books.
The strange young man stared up at Dogleash with a mixture of doubt, worry, and startled appreciation. “Er,” he said. “Sorry if I interrupted anything.” He blushed, the golden-brown skin turning deep rose on his cheeks. “I should be going. There are probably more of those maniacs somewhere below. They left float-cycles just around the turbine, if you want to steal one.”
Dogleash cursed time, ducked back around the turbine, and glanced toward the arena skyscraper. No hue and cry yet, no lights piercing the garden. He returned to the corner, pointing at the youth, then away into the city. “Y-you. G-g-go,” he said. “I-I-I j-jump.”
Owl-boy grabbed Dogleash’s shaking arm. “Jump? You don’t have any float-gear! You’ll die!”
As if to an idiot, Dogleash nodded. “Wa-want t-t-to.”
“Ah,” said the youth. As if just noticing it, he frowned at Dogleash’s collar. “A bonder. With a bad master?”
Dogleash nodded again, shrugging out of the youth’s grip. The wind and the black night wouldn’t wait much longer.
“Hold up,” said Owl-boy, placing his sturdy body between Dogleash and freedom. “You just saved my life, and all you want to do is die?” At Dogleash’s exasperated glare, the youth smiled crookedly. “I think I was sent to help you.”
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Loose Id buy link for Moro’s Price here.
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This image is very close to the owl picture that I suspect Moro saw in one of Jost’s old books. Yes, it is a cute, fluffy, disgruntled little thing – and flying death on wings. Moro sees more than he realizes.
The other inspiration for Val’s looks was, believe it or not, the prince of Atlantis from the Young Justice cartoon series. I saw Aqualad’s dark bronze skin, pale gold hair, and light eyes, and really liked the contrasts. The look stuck with me until I needed a counterpart for Moro in early 2011.
Aqualad / Kaldur’Ahm from DC’s ‘Young Justice’ animated series.
Today’s interview has me thinking about how character develops in the process of writing. Zoe X talks about writing stuff she’s not into herself, but her characters are. I guess the way writers do that is to write about how the characters think about … whatever the thing is – about what it means to them, how it makes them feel. It’s part of the ability to write a character who isn’t just a slice of ourselves.
I loved reading that Zoe X can sometimes be found with earphones on, having forgotten to press ‘play’ because she’s so into what she’s writing. I usually remember to press ‘play’, but when the tracks are all finished and I’m busy with what I’m writing, the earphones stay on, unnoticed. At least I’m not the only one!
Thanks for the ‘Moro’ snippet. When I first read ‘Moro’s Price’ I was a bit bemused by Moro calling Val ‘Owl Boy’. In popular culture, owls are a bit geeky and probably harmless. Actually, they aren’t. Owls are silent killers. They’re amazing things, stealthy assassins of the bird world. Val’s geeky, but not harmless – as we find out 😉
Writing characters that don’t match our own preferences can be really tricky. It takes lots of research and no little faith in our abilities.
As for Moro calling Val ‘Owl Boy’, I wanted to weave in all the cultural aspects that I was aware of, good and bad. The Welsh White Shadow, the Native American bird of dark witchcraft, the Hellenic bird of Athena, and many others.
In Price, I made Val a geeky and awkward character. I also know what he was like in college, and what he could potentially become. He’s a dangerous little person, a predator at heart. We see more of that in the sequel.