Dante's Girl has been on the shelves since the start of the month so we thought we'd disturb Natasha Rhodes from her nocturnal activities and ask her some probing questions. Read on to find out more about bees, falling over while trying on bikinis and, of course, Kayla Steele.
Why should we buy your book over all the other books out there?
Because it’s written by me! Just kidding. Actually, I had a lot of fun writing this book, which I hope comes across when you read it. I set out to combine the fast-paced high-octane action/ horror of the Blade series with the dark, bleak, gritty urban atmosphere of Sin City, starring some likeable, multidimensional characters, with a Manga-style adventure-based plot which hopefully makes you think at the same time as being entertaining. There’s a lot of cute half-naked guys in there too, which for me is always a big selling point.
What's your favorite book of all time?
The Crow, by James O’Barr. It’s actually a graphic novel, but I think there are times when words by themselves aren’t enough. James wrote this story after a personal tragedy in his life; someone he loved was stolen from him. This book was a place for him to put all the anger and rage he felt at having that person torn away from him by an unjust world. The pain of his loss comes across stark and clear in every frame in the novel – I’ve read the book a thousand times, but there are still pages I still can’t look at. Not because of the violence (it’s a pretty gory novel) but because it’s such a personal, intimate work. I also think it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. His hyperviolent and intensely cinematic black-and-white imagery was a big influence on me in writing Dante’s Girl.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I like to write each chapter of my books in different places around town, just to make each scene as vivid as possible. I’ve written in all kinds of weird places like the back rooms of S&M clubs, in gay bars and downtown backstreets, on church rooftops and even on the beach. I wrote the first few chapters of Dante’s Girl in a seedy little strip club in the backwaters of El Segundo, which actually turned out to be a great place to write in. I even put the club into a scene where the heroine is stalked through the place by two rival werewolves. In the end I got thrown out of the strip joint because the owners said that having a girl working in there on a laptop rather than on the pole was ‘not in keeping with the image of the place.’ Like the two biker guys in the next booth with the carving knives strapped to their shins were? Go figure.
Do you have any writing superstitions?
I like to write everything on my ancient Sony Vaio laptop. I’ve written six books in three years on this thing, and still haven’t killed it, which is amazing to me. It’s got half its keys missing and I’m constantly spilling beer on it and dropping it down multiple flights of stairs, but it still keeps on ticking. I swear, this thing is like a cockroach. It flat-out refuses to die. When mankind have evolved into super-beings and we’re all driving cars powered by air it’ll still be working, cheerfully running Windows even though everyone else is now running Doors, telling me I have too many spelling and grammatical error to display in the currently open document and would I like to save (S) or Quit (Q) before I teleport home for the evening? The guys from Sony should come out to take a look at this thing. I really think it’ll be worth their while.
You are granted five minutes with an author of your choice (living or dead). Who would you choose and what would you ask them?
Douglas Adams, without a doubt. I’d ask him if, when he was lying in that small field in Innsbruck in the 1970s, what color the spaceship was, and what the whole deal was with the towel.
Which of the characters in the book are you most like and why?
In theory I’d say the lead character, Kayla Steele, but in practice I always empathize far more with the bad guys. It’s a particular weakness of mine. There’s always been a fine line between good and evil, and I love writing characters who stand with one foot on either side of the line. Good people can do very bad things, but the reverse is also true. For instance, I love the character of Cyan X. She’s so full of contradictions – she’s a biomechanically enhanced vampire, so she’s an incredibly powerful being, but her emotions always prove to be her downfall, particularly when it comes to men. Despite everything she’s been through to make herself physically invulnerable, the one thing she can’t control is the way she feels, and the knowledge that her inherent cynicism and almost deliberate moral corruption are useless weapons against a guy who truly loves her drives her nuts. Not autobiographical at all, by the way. Oh no…
What, or who, inspires you to write?
I currently have a rather large stack of unpaid bills sitting on my desk. I keep them beside my writing computer. It’s amazing how well the threat of eviction focuses the mind.
What's your preferred way to relax after a long day of writing?
I live about two blocks from the beach, so when I’m done writing for the day I grab my rollerblades and head off down the bike path to Malibu. It’s a great way to unwind and relax, and if I get to knock down some small annoying children in the process, so much the better. Old ladies are double points.
Tell us your most embarrassing moment.
I never seem to have much luck with dating. No matter how hard I try I always seem to end up making an ass of myself. For instance, the other week I went to the surf shop down the road to buy a new bikini. There was a cute male assistant at the checkout, so I rather cheekily asked him to show me to a changing cubical, chatting and flirting away as I did so. Everything was going swimmingly until I tried to get dressed again after trying on the bikini. At some point I tried to lean on the wall in order to pull my skintight jeans back up, not realizing that the wall wasn’t solid, being one of those fabric screen things they put up when the store is too cheep to fit proper cubicles. The screen loudly and dramatically gave way and I went flying, landing with a thump on the floor right in front of the hot guy, jeans around my ankles, still wearing four different bikini tops with the labels hanging out of them. To make things worse, I was wearing my ‘F*ck Me, I’m Famous!’ panties, which an ex of mine bought me as a joke after my last book came out. Suffice to say, I haven’t been back to the store since.
What made you chose SF/F over any other form?
For me, SF/F is the most exciting field to write in because it is one of the most inherently misunderstood genres that exists. It’s not all about demons and monsters and vampires – although they are rather fun. To me it’s all about allegory, and if you do it well, you can quite literally get away with murder. In its purest form, the function of SF is to hold up a circus mirror to reality, so that we might safely point and laugh at the world and all its crazy, terrible glory without realizing that the image we see reflected back is our own. I love it.
When did you discover you wanted to write?
When I was a kid I was a devout Sci-Fi/ Horror fan – as soon as I was old enough to walk down to the library by myself I’d sneak out and raid the Horror aisles. When I got older I decided wanted to be a Special Effects artist, and would spend hours in the garage making 15-foot long robot veloceraptors powered by miles of hydraulic tubing. I actually got quite good at it. When CGI started to take over movie Visual Effects I got a job at a Post Production house in London and tried to learn the hellishly complicated programs they used to create the creatures in Jurassic Park and so on, but eventually I had to admit defeat. It would take me eighteen straight hours of work just to enter the coding instructions to make a wireframe ball bounce. I officially sucked at CGI. So writing seemed like the logical next step to try, in order to get the monsters in my head out into the world.
Who would you most aspire to be able to write like, and why?
Terry Pratchett, without a doubt. He’s always been one of my favorite authors, even though he costs me a fortune because I have to buy all his books twice, as I re-read each one so many times that eventually the covers would eventually fall off. But since becoming an author myself I can’t bear to even read his stuff. He puts the rest of us to shame. Whenever I even begin to feel even the slightest bit pleased with something I’ve just written – a cool action scene, perhaps, or a nice piece of dialog, I go through the same, well-worn ritual. I make myself a cup of tea, open one of his books at a random page, read for thirty seconds, then heave a sigh and pitch the book through the nearest window before stomping back to my desk to type loudly for the next six hours. I don’t know how he does it. In the space of a single paragraph, he can set up six memorable characters, show us the convoluted and crazy but above all uniquely human relationships between them, introduce the philosophically-profound plot of the story, then make us laugh at all of the above and at ourselves before neatly segueing into the next scene, which is usually about something cool like dragons or trolls or witches, but with his own unique twist. He can do with a sentence what it would take most writers a whole chapter to accomplish. And he writes about two new books a year, each one somehow twice as good as the last. I hate the guy.
Read more from Natasha in Part 2 of the interview.
