This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
What are four things you can’t live without?
Me-time. Mornings belong to me. I do what I want at the pace I’m feeling that particular day. I often get up early but not always. So what? It’s my morning. Belongs to me. Don’t mess with my morning. I spend a lot of the morning thinking about my work. But I don’t usually write anything. I think about what I wrote and what I want to write and how I want to write it.
Work-time. I write in the afternoon. I’ve been thinking about it all morning, so now I’m ready to transport myself into the world I’ve created and spend four or five hours with the people living the adventure I’ve set for them.
Love-time. I’ve been married forty years. My wife and I are best friends. We have three kids (adults now) and get along just great with all of them. And we have close friends. I need to be connected—heart to heart—with these people every day. Not all of them all day every day. But some of them for some of the day every day.
Escape-time. Get me out of here, man. Take me somewhere enthralling. I read like crazy. It’s a drug. And I’m addicted to it. Reading, that is. But after so many decades of filmmaking, I’m also addicted to television and movies. Luckily, my wife is too. So we watch a little bit every day. Films, limited series, standup comedy. There always some show to carry me away. And then I’m ready to do it all over again.
What is your favorite television show?
Let’s answer this one broadly, shall we? I love science fiction and most all things sci-fi. I love mysteries and crime and thrillers and action. I love comedy, often dark, often silly, often obscene-ish. I don’t usually love romantic comedy, but sometimes I do. I love documentaries that don’t soft-shoe the material. I don’t watch news because no one spends more than 60 seconds on an issue that demands two hours. Not no one, actually. “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” is news the way I like to watch it.
If you could be any character, from any literary work, who would you choose to be? Why?
Broadly again, please. I want to be in space, traveling enormous distances, impossible distances, in the blink of an eye. The far-far future suits me. So Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Wells, Herbert (especially Herbert) … just go ahead and put me in one of their books. I’ll go.
What have you got coming soon for us to look out for?
What I’ve got now is “Extraterrestrial Noir.” My next book is “Money Dog.” Almost done.
What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
Tom Robbins. Kurt Vonnegut. Chuck Pahalniuk. Phillip Roth. Carl Hiaasen. Richard Ford. Maybe even in that order. Good place to start, anyway.
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.
Enjoy an Excerpt
“That’s almost six trillion miles per year—a single light-year,” Mike said.
“So, if they travel at light speed, they should be here pretty soon,” Maggie said.
“Better make extra pancakes,” Connie said.
“That’s lame, Dad,” Danny said.
“It’s witty, son,” Connie said. “You’ll understand when you get older.”
“I hope not,” Danny said.
“Not too soon,” Mike said. “The distance from Earth to the edge of the universe in any direction takes forty-six point five gigalight-years.”
“How many light years in a gigalight-year?” Connie said.
“A billion,” Mike said.
“What does that mean in Earth years?” Maggie said.
“Voyager 1, our most distant space probe, traveled fourteen light-hours, not even one light-day, and that took thirty Earth years. So, it would take about twenty-two thousand Earth years to travel the same distance light travels in one light-year. About one quadrillion and one hundred two trillion Earth years to reach the edge of the universe.”
If that’s a question on the genius test, I wonder which part of the light-speed equation Mike will only get ninety-two percent right, Maggie thought.
“What if they were coming from the closest galaxy?” Maggie said.
“Andromeda,” Mike said. “Twenty-five hundred Earth years.”
“Long time,” Maggie said, and she turned off her flashlight.
“The meteors should have been here by now,” Connie said.
“I saw something up there,” Maggie said.
But something up there had seen her and made a sharp turn toward Earth.
About the Author 
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.
Thank you for hosting today.
Thanks for hosting me today, L&SR. Delighted to be a part of your cool blog. I forgot I’d answered those interview questions. So that was fun. I agreed with everything I said, so I must have meant those things. Many thanks again.