#CharactersTell Antagonist Week - Interview with Lizbeth

Here we are again for our interviews as promised!

I know some of you might think it as cheating, but hey...that would be totally in line with the sort of people we're talking about today!

I took the liberty of inviting to this interview one of my own antagonists - Lizbeth, in short Liz. She's a tough one, and honestly not very easy to work with - quick to anger, quick to violence, and what's worse, reveling in it. You don't learn her name in the book - but when you meet her, you most assuredly recognize her.

She comes from Tiogair, my newest published novel - it's a cyber-fantasy thriller with heavy erotica elements, and it's available for purchase on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions - and people with Kindle Unlimited can read it for free too!!

You can find Tiogair here: https://amzn.to/2NqGPjH

But - let's cut to the chase and get to know Liz...and hopefully not get killed.

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Well, hello there...it's been a while since we had a proper chat. Would you mind introducing yourself to our audience, please?

Was it now? As if you don't overwork me enough with all the questions on that social media of yours, Twitter... A girl has some things to tend to, you know? I still haven't finished playing with the new toy I got gifted with in your book. Anyway - hello lovelies. I'm Liz! I'm a nice person, whatever he might try to tell you. You can say that up to recently I ran a pretty well managed operation in a difficult part of town.

You can say that again... what she's trying to say, is that she was involved in an Oldtown illegal pleasure house as the manager.

Oh, please, you make it sound so dirty when you say that in such a tone. I wasn't doing anything that a lot of other people do in our condition. You know very well that the living conditions in Oldtown aren't really the best. You have to get by with what you have.

You...do have a point. I guess. Not a justification, but a point. But I highly doubt this was always your life... Or was it?

My my, if even my author doesn't know if this was always my life I'm in really good hands, ain't I? Honestly, I am quite worried. Might need to look into that. But far from me from letting such a nice segue. No, it definitely wasn't always my life. I had a very nice life back in the day. Then things went to shit.

I'm sorry to hear that. How was your life before this? This month we're themed on education - what sort of schools did you go to?

I was a...pretty lackluster child, to be perfectly honest. I was born in a small family, a late and only child, and I went to public primary and secondary school. I was from Minnesota. It was all pretty uneventful...well, until university, that is. There things got a lot more interesting.

Interesting? Do you mean in a good or in a bad way?

Definitely a good way, trust me. I went to med school. I had some pretty good grades, and I always liked biology, so that was pretty much a good pick...my parents, bless them, did their best to support me. Then a car accident took them away from me. I finished paying the studies with the inheritance and I graduated...and in the middle of all that, I met Ian.

Huh...That...is quite the different side of you. You were a medic? I'm sorry, but honestly... that kinda clashes with what we see you do.

Does it really? Being a medic is only a term. I've come to the realization that things like oaths, or society, or anything else for that matter, hold very little sway on what things really are. I have medical training. I was a doctor. That training comes in handy. The oath is worthless.

I have to admit, that does sound a bit weird. If you went to medical school, I'm sure you held a very different view than that - what brought you to such a cynical view of the world?

The Gatecrash. Plain and simple. My life was good - we moved in a house here in Colorado Springs just a couple years before everything happened. We both worked at one of the hospitals. Then...the Gatecrash, the chaos...I lost everything. My eyes, too. My dignity, my honor, my safety...you...don't even know what the people that captured me did to me. That's when I figured out, if society really is just this kept together by laws and societal norms...then it's tantamount to nothing.

But you're here - and your eyes are fine. I mean...they're obviously cybernetics, but it clearly means you got out of there.

Sure you don't want to keep it for another story, Mr. Writer? Spilling those guts all over like this? You kinda remind me of Stripes. Do say hi to her from me, will you? I bet she misses me.

Ahem...just be vague.

You're the boss, and I am currently unemployed...I killed my captors. All of them. I stumbled into Oldtown as it was being formed...But the damage was already there. I already became who I am now. I died, and was reborn.

Did you need any other training for your new position?

Hah! Hah...Oh...that's a nice one. There's only one training in there, and it's the sort of 'school' that either kills you or makes you stronger and more powerful. I ain't dead and I was in quite the position of power - so...

Point taken...I'm afraid our time for tonight is near an end though. Anything you'd like to tell our audience?

Oh, sure, I'm certain you're so sorry that we have to cut our time together now...but I'll see you soon. I'm sure of it.

As for the rest of you...Not every monster is born a monster. Sometimes it takes just the right amount of bad to push anyone over the edge.

Isn't it right, Stripes? I know you're looking. How far were you from the edge that day?

Liz...

What? You asked me if I had anything to tell your audience. I'm sure she's there, if I'm here. Your fault for the words you use.

Right...Thanks for coming tonight. It's been...enlightening, at the very least. And if you all want, you can search for her in Tiogair. I can promise she's...just as lovely there too.

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Wow...ok, that was...surprisingly difficult. But hopefully fun for you all! But, this is unfortunately the time we have for tonight!

As always, a reminder that you can reserve YOUR spot on #CharactersTell blog interviews by writing to characterstell@gmail.com ! Reserve your slot now!!

And with that, I bid you goodnight~

Ta-ta!

#CharactersTell Background Character Week - Interview with Amanda Levi

And we're back for another week, and another #CharactersTell interview!

And as with every fourth week of the month, we're focusing on the background characters - the sort of people that live into your worlds, but that us, as readers, don't get to know much about: one of the faces in the crowds, one of the bodies hidden from sight in the houses of your books cities and villages, one of the drivers in the cars of that high-octane speed chase that just end up caught in the crossfire. They deserve some love too!

That's me! Some time ago...

Tonight we're hosting Amanda Levi. She's a woman, a wife and a mother coming from Cerulean Springs. A well mannered person, that tries to keep her neighborhood orderly along with her husband.

She comes from Tiogair, my recently released book now available on Kindle and Amazon - You can find the blogpost with the pitch, my experience writing it and all the links to get it following this link.
Of course, you can find me on Twitter (where you can follow me on this page). And if you wanna know more about me, there's the handy about section!


But! Let's get to it, shall we?

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Well, good evening there! Welcome to the blog! Would you please introduce yourself, your author and the book you're from, please?

Why yes. Good evening. I'm Amanda Levi, wife of Arnold Levi. I'm an housewife, and I tend to our child, Leonard. He's such a nice boy, he's ten now. We live in Cerulean Springs, ex Colorado Springs, in the Evergreen Boulevard gated community. I mean, at least we still have that. Even if things went...a bit downhill since the Gatecrash. I'm from Manuel Arbanassi's Tiogair, his newest novel. He called it a cyberfantasy thriller with erotica elements.

Can't say I really approve of his choice of Main Character, though.

Aren't we off to a great start... Interesting. Why don't you approve of that choice?

Well, it's simple, really. It's glorifying what can be considered a disease. I really can't understand how people can't see it. Not to mention, me and my husband have seen this woman and honestly? She's not a good role model. She's violent. Foul mouthed. Last time my husband spoke to her, she even threatened him, can you believe that? Just because he went to talk to that...damn orc woman that lives on the other side of the street. It wasn't enough that her gardening almost got us attacked, now she stubbornly keeps living in this area. It's just wrong, what will the children think? They'll think it's normal! Do you know she's not even from here? She came from Wales or something.

You do sound pretty opinionated on the manner. Some would even say... a bit on the extremist side? I know for a fact there is quite a bit of backlash against this point of view in your world.

Oh, please. Don't tell me you are one of those blind people as well? You all should listen to the morning broadcasts on Springtime radio with Tatiana Fairwater. That woman is a genius. She knows what's up. Everyone seems to hide behind the shield of us being 'racist' or some other awful epithet when we're just trying to look after humanity and the future generations. Tell me, did you know Gatecrashers are a lot less compatible with implantation technology? Human technology? Doesn't it sound strange to you?

Then again, you're barking against something that mutated a lot of the population. Between a quarter and a fifth. It's not something that has an easy solution, especially due to the fact society still does need people to function.

This is such a trite argument. I could understand it three years ago, after the riots - God, it was such a terrible time, we were locked in our houses for days! - But now? Now we need to face reality. We need to do something about the Gatecrashers, and Ether and all this...this weirdness! This is not a safe environment for us or our children!

Is this what puts your family into conflict with the Orc woman? By all accounts, she sounds like a lovely lady.

For the love of- Listen. Please. It's not that we didn't like July. She was a lovely woman, and we all know that, but since the Gatecrash we really can't let all these weird stuff spill over into our little community. We managed to be all spared by the Gatecrash except July, and what does that do for our kids? How-How do we explain this? We already have to send him to school with other weird kids, and it's all so normalized. We're not saying we hate Gatecrashers and Ether, but we need to face facts, as Tatiana says. We need to realize they're not *normal*. They're victims, but, again, as she said in her article she posted earlier this month, if they really had the best interest of our community in their mind, they'd take steps *themselves* to be studied and hopefully cured.

Who says they need a cure, though? I mean, there's plenty of Gatecrashers and Ether users that are perfectly integrated in all aspects of society. Doesn't that invalidate your point?

That's just anti-humanist propaganda. For every good example you can give me, there's plenty of others that completely disprove your points. For every doctor that uses Corpus Magic to do good, there's someone who suffers from C.D.E.D, Corpus Dis...basically, they become monsters. For every good application of alchemy, there's another weird, poisonous substance on the market. For every adjusted member of society there's some sort of new racist, anti-human Gatecrasher society. It's time to put a stop to this.

Well...I guess that's an interesting rebuttal. Anyway, I'm afraid we're kinda out of time for tonight. Anything you'd like to say?

I can see how it is. Let me tell you. You won't be able to deny us for much longer. People are starting to see the truth, and luckily I'm married to an amazing man who is still trying to do his best for the community. We'll see who's right or wrong when that happens. We just want the best.

I'm sure you do. Thank you for your time, Amanda. Have a nice evening.

Thank you for having me, I guess. Not for much else. Goodbye. I'll leave you the links to the morning broadcasts, please do listen to them.

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This concludes our brief (albeit intense) interview for tonight! I wonder what is it with characters from my book treating me badly...

But remember! You can have YOUR characters interviewed on this blog by sending me a direct message on Twitter! You can find the link to do so on the right-hand side of the page!

See you soon! Toodles!

TIOGAIR

Book pitch:

It's 2067. 

It's been 3 years since the Gatecrash, the cataclysmic event that mutated a quarter of the human population.
Magic - known as Ether - returned to the world, and monsters roam again in the wilderness, crossing the portals opening to unknown worlds that appear throughout the globe. 

As a constant reminder of this event stands the azure sphere of chaotic energy, glowing in the hills northeast of ex-Colorado Springs, now rebaptized Cerulean Springs due to that unending glimmer: a city that changed its face just as quickly as its name, becoming an enormous metropolis with its own dark sides in the span of a few decades.

These sudden, worldwide changes caused chaos at first - but, with the 'humanitarian' support of the corporations, the flash-fire riots were quelled, and the population settled - the rise in power and standing of the corps being just a side effect, of course.

Society evolved, assimilated the new and adapted: from fear to unease, from unease to new business venues and research fields, just as it did in the last decades with the blindingly fast development of technology and the discovery of the almost mystical Essences. After all, what's a new weirdness in a world where mechanical implants are common and the body is nothing but a canvas to change and adapt to one's wishes?

Despite all this, certain things never change: there's still the need for shadowy figures able to do things that others wouldn't.
Zoe is one of them: a mutated human - a Gatecrasher - and a combat mage by trade, introduced into the life of an underground mercenary after the Gatecrash riots.

She's minding her own business between jobs, when the disappearance of a woman working in her favorite Pleasure House pushes her to go on the hunt to uncover the dancer's fate - free of charge.

Once on the trail, though, she will quickly realize she might have bitten more than she can chew: what started as a simple investigation will bring her to uncover darker and more dangerous secrets, forcing the Irish mage to use all her tricks and delve into the dirtiest parts of Cerulean Springs to keep her word, while trying to keep sane indulging in the pleasure of the flesh.

One of the ways she keeps her mind busy from the painful memories of a past she's still trying to cope with.

My experience writing it

This is my second novel!

And...it's been quite a surprise, really. Last year I was working on Elemental 2 and I was starting to get a tad burned out (I was coming out of translating, formatting, etc Elemental 1, and the whole publishing thing, which can be somewhat stressful), so I decided to write a short just for the heck of it.

Just for kicks, I decided to make it an erotic short.

In the meantime I was continuing to promote Elemental on Twitter, where I've seen some erotic books being promoted.

And that was pretty much the moment I decided I wanted to try my hand writing something that still had erotic contents, but had a serious story and well rounded characters into it.

I had the Cerulean Springs setting in mind for quite a long time now, and I always had an intention to write in that universe. And I thought to myself "Why not now?"

Soooo... I did!

I wrote the first draft in about a month or so. I was completely engrossed in the story, and in the end I got this missing person thriller going, with some spicy elements to it - elements being the keyword since in the end the erotic parts are more tied to character fleshing out and development than the story itself. It's a story about someone who's extremely sexual, but the driving plot is actually something much darker and 'detached' from sex, to the point that in one specific pitch (which I still hold dear to this day!) I've been told the naughty bits took too much of a backseat to the story for that house. And that was the most brilliant and helpful rejection letter I received, one that I still am thankful for.

This experience helped me cement my views on sexuality in fiction, which I talked about in detail in this blog post.

And in the end, Tiogair had its big launch party during #MCchat on Twitter last week!

There are a lot of projects I'm tying to this universe as well - one that I'm currently working on a Tabletop Roleplaying Game based in it, still in the works - and I do intend to write more stories in this setting, along with Elemental 2.

Where can you find it?

First, a warning: Tiogair contains mature themes that place it in the 'adult only' category (graphic sex and violence, use of substances, foul language). With that out of the way you can find it through these links:

English Versions:

- Tiogair - Kindle eBook

- Tiogair - POD Paperback on Amazon

Italian Versions:

- Tiogair - Kindle eBook

- Tiogair - POD Paperback su Amazon

Goodreads:

- Tiogair page (all editions available)