Lola Rayne Stops by with a Character Profile

 

Character Profile - The Aftermath: Nicole

Once upon a time I sent a slew of e-mails out to bloggers begging them to read my book and get the word out there, promising to even do guests posts if I needed to.

One of them totally called my bluff.

You, readers, are the ones who pay the price.

During the blog tour for “The Monster Within” I did several guest posts. Two of which were my odd take on a character profile (meaning their friends filled out an online dating profile for them) It gave a smallish look at our hero and heroine, but really it gave you a better look at couple of the key players in their lives. What would have given you an excellent look at our characters would’ve been their reaction when they found out about the profiles.

So basically this:

Saturday mornings were never a fun time for the employees of Montimore and Hadigan’s. They either had to work the night before and were cranky from missing out on all the fun, or they were recovering from all the fun. In an effort to lessen the harsh after effects, they had long ago resolved to assemble on Saturday mornings at Liza’s place. Since it was the most posh and… well because she kicked up a fuss whenever they wanted to go anywhere else since they couldn’t make a cup of coffee to save their lives.

It had become routine for Serge, Kari, Parker, Liza and even Ryland- though he looked like the experience caused him physical pain most weeks. And, conversely, it had become routine for Armand, Talia, Montimore and Nicole to blow them off. So when their morning ritual was interrupted by a pounding on the door, and they had all confirmed that the noise was not- in fact- in their heads, they were more than a little shocked. Though not nearly as shocked as they were when Liza opened the door to one very, VERY pissed of Nicole standing on her threshold.

“Nicky?” Liza asked, not entirely sure she wasn’t still drunk and seeing things. “Everything okay?”

“Why of course it is, why wouldn’t it be?” She replied with a smile. Not a nice, friendly smile, but the one women used when they were about to remove strips of someone else’s flesh. “I mean, just because someone walked up to me in the store this morning and grabbed my ass, that’s no reason for me to be upset, now is it?”

“Uhh…”

“But the funniest part of the whole incident was actually when I whirled around to kill him and he got all defensive. Tell me, do you have any idea what reason some strange man might have given for accosting a virtual stranger?”

“That it’s a nice ass?” Liza ventured a guess.

“Nope, try again.”

“It is a nice ass though Nicky. I mean I’m more than a little tempted to grab it myself.” She offered on a giggle.

“I’d pay to see that.” Serge said with a grin. Apparently he did not know the signs of impending doom when he saw them. Well, not until said doom whirled to face him and pinned him in place with a glare that Liza was pretty confident could shrivel nuts.

“I’ll deal with you in a minute pretty boy.” She spat before whirling back to her friend. “MYSTICAL SINGLES?! HOW COULD YOU?”

“You deserve to find someone who makes you happy.” Liza said, because it would’ve been indelicate to say…

“You need to get laid.” Ryland bit out in his gruff voice. Liza avoided slapping her forehead… but only because she was picking her jaw up off the floor.

“Oh you’re one to talk.” She said stalking towards where the much larger man was sitting.

“Watch it…” he grumbled.

“Been there, done that. I’d say don’t need a repeat but we all know there haven’t been any encores.” Oh this was not going the way she had hoped. The morning or the whole fixer-upper idea.

“Oh you’re just itching for a fight today, aren’t you?” Ryland’s chair started to scream in protest as the big man shifted in a precursor to actually getting up and engaging in fisticuffs. In her apartment of all places. With her best friend of all people. Dear lord the man tried her patience.

“Any time, any place.” Nicky said- because she too had a vendetta against her furniture. And probably had a real issue with her pristine white carpets not being splattered with the two most important people in her life’s blood.

“NICKY!” She grabbed the other woman’s arm, dragging her as far from the others as she could before whispering “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Well someone has to relieve Ryland’s obvious physical tension… You know, since you’re not. Or is that what this is all about, you’re cranky because I get to actually touch your man.” And there it was- the low blow. The one that had her own secret darkness clawing to get at the other woman.

Just like Nicky knew it would.

“Bitch.” Liza hissed.

“Skank.” Nicky retorted, though the jab was softened by the first hint of a smile ghosting her lips.

“We still on for tonight?” Liza asked. Her jealous darkness was confused. It was a creature of baser instincts. It didn’t understand that best friends were allowed to push your hot buttons- which they knew because they were your best friend- on purpose when you did something stupid. Something like sign them up for an online dating website.

“Oh hell yeah, we’re getting Thai, you’re paying and I get to pick the movie.”

“Oh god,” Liza groaned, “not another teenage angst movie.”

A finger appeared in her face and waggled in a menacing fashion. “Watch it or we’ll be watching one of the teenage angst spoof movies.”

“Not that,” she pleaded, “anything but that.” Both laughing, they finally embraced. Just like that the crisis was over. Well, all except for the one inevitable piece that Liza was in no way going to enjoy.

Breaking from Liza, Nicky walked over to Ryland and grabbed the collar of his shirt. “Come on Sparky,” giving his shirt a tug hard enough to tumble the black-clad biker bruiser to tumble out of his chair. “It’s long past time for me to bash your face in for something. Might as well be this.”

“Why wait?” He asked as he righted himself.

“Don’t want to bleed on the carpet.” Nicole said, giving Liza a little wink as she sauntered out of the apartment.

…the story of Lola…

A pseudonym within a pseudonym, Lola Rayne is a creation of Ginny Lurcock‘s fevered imagination. Less a person, and more of a secret garden of vice where her weird and twisted imaginings are allowed to run, jump, and play.

One that’s now open to the public with lovely guided tours.

And really, that’s all thanks to a girl’s night out.

(This story is less smexy than you’d imagine. I just want to say that right up front.)

See, on this particular evening out, we were discussing bad indie books. Or to be more accurate, bad indie smut. You know what I’m talking about, the ones with the horrible covers, horrible titles, and if you have the misfortune of actually looking inside one… *shudder* Well lets just say the covers and titles do not do the content justice. Yet somehow, these books (that are $2.99 for 50 pages, mind you) are still on the bestsellers list.

All was well until my friend uttered the one phrase guaranteed to burrow it’s way into my brain. “I bet you could do better than that…”

Well fuck.

The seed was planted, but of course I couldn’t come up with any clever ideas. Sure I’d joked about writing ghost porn when I first started writing, but since my idea was meant to be absurd I couldn’t even think about it without giggling. With no new smexy ideas presenting themselves, I returned to my comfortable world of not quite YA.

I was hard at work on the story of a girl who got the shit end of the super power lottery when, as always, I got an idea just on the periphery of my imagination. It flitted around, slowly gaining both mass and inertia, but I was sticking to my guns. I was going to finish a story for once goddamnit and it was going to be spectacular.

Then my flash drive crashed.

Well to be fair, I upgraded to a newer, shinier, bigger flash drive and that decided it wanted to corrupt my files. My desire for pretty new techno toys cost me Discordia.

With nothing else standing in it’s way* the tale of girl running from her past and the man who wants to be more than a monster came crashing in, refusing to be denied any longer. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So welcome into the deep dark parts of my deranged mind. Feel free to look around. Just be sure to stay on the path… some ideas are more dangerous than others.

*now that I type this, I’m actually a little convinced that this series had something to do with the death of Discordia. Like it’s some jealous lover who’s not entirely right in the head and decided the only way to get my attention was to remove the competition with extreme prejudice.

Guys, I’m a little scared…

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