Friday, November 29, 2013

BLACK FRIDAY BOOK BLITZ AND GIVEAWAY: The Last Bastion of The Living by Rhiannon Frater

 
I'm excited to help promote the BLACK FRIDAY sale of The Last Bastion of The Living by Rhiannon Frater!!  For a short time you can purchase this amazing book for only $0.99!! Yay Black Friday!  The best part of this Black Friday sale is you don't have to change out of your PJ's OR leave the house!!
And what would a Black Friday Blitz be without a giveaway?
Make sure to check that out below!
 
 
The Last Bastion of the Living
Author: Rhiannon Frater
Publication Date: 06/12/2012
Audience: Adult
Genres: Horror, Science Fiction
 
 
The Bastion was humanitys last hope against the fearsome undead creatures known as the Inferi Scourge. A fortified city with a high wall, surrounded by lush land rich with all the resources needed to survive, protected by high mountain summits, and a massive gate to secure the only pass into the valley, the Bastion became the last stronghold of the living on earth. But one fateful day, the gate failed and the Inferi Scourge destroyed the human settlements outside the walls and trapped the survivors insidethe city. Now decades later, the last remaining humans are struggling to survive in a dying city as resources and hope dwindle.
 
Vanguard Maria Martinez has lived her whole life within the towering walls of steel. She yearns for a life away from the overcrowded streets, rolling blackouts, and food shortages, but there is no hope for anyone as long as the Inferi Scourge howl outside the high walls. Her only refuge from the daily grind is in the arms of her lover, Dwayne Reichardt, an officer in the Bastion Constabulary. Both are highly decorated veterans of the last disastrous push against the Inferi Scourge. Their secret affair is her only happiness.
 
Then one day Maria is summoned to meet with a mysterious representative from the Science Warfare Division and is offered the opportunity to finally destroy the Inferi Scourge in the valley and close the gate. The rewards of success are great, but she will have to sacrifice everything, possibly even her life, to accomplish the ultimate goal of securing the future of humanity and saving it from extinction.
 
~ My Review ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo ~
 
 
 
 



The Badass Heroine
By
Rhiannon Frater
 
I’m not going to lie. I need to be honest with you from the start. The honest to God truth of the matter is that I hate/despise/loathe a lot female characters that fall under the “badass” heroine banner. I often have to suppress the deep, dark desire to give them a roundhouse kick to the face.

Well, if I could actually manage to do a roundhouse kick. I’m not that limber.

Though there are plenty of amazing, strong female characters that I absolutely love with all my heart, there are a smorgasbord of female characters that really rub me the wrong way. The reason for this is simple. Badass has been confused with women who are just plain bitchy, self-centered, and mean.

I didn’t really realize how ingrained the bitchy heroine had become in entertainment until I saw a script for one of my books. The heroine uttered a lot of really mean, nasty comments in the first few pages of the script and I was stunned by how awful she came across. I spoke to the scriptwriter about the added dialog and he answered, “Oh, I added that because I wanted her to come across as a strong.”

“Uh, strong doesn’t mean bitchy,” I said carefully. To my surprise, and relief, he agreed and those lines were removed.

But after that event, I realized that was exactly why some heroines really rub me the wrong way. To make a woman appear strong, a lot of writers have defaulted to making her really bitchy, egocentric, and often just plain mean. It hurts me whenever I see this trope in a book, movie, or TV show. A woman doesn’t have to be a bitch to be strong or badass.

A badass female character should be someone you can see as a friend. Someone you love, cheer for, and believe in. You understand they’re flawed, but that’s okay. As they keep working hard to overcome all their obstacles and achieve a happy ending, you’re invested in their journey.

Even when my heroines have something exceptional about them like Vanguard Maria Martinez in THE LAST BASTION OF THE LIVING, they exist realistically in their circumstances. Maria’s military training, intelligence, and determination to accomplish her mission all contribute to her badass factor. But the power that compels her to do extraordinary things isn’t her anger at an unfair world, but her love for a man who loves and respects her. Maria not only serves The Bastion, but her own heart. She struggles with fear, suffers loss, and knows that she may lose her life in the battle against the Inferi Scourge. But victory means freedom from the undead hordes and the ability to build her life with Dwayne, the man who sees beyond her hard veneer to the women she is inside.
My goal when writing my strong female protagonists is to create realistic women who have strengths and flaws just like everyone else does. I don’t create perfect people that have nothing bad happen to them. Or women that all the men want to be with and all other women hate. I create women who could live in our own world very easily. They could be your neighbor, friend, or family member.
I
n the end, I think Maria Martinez is a badass heroine because her strength doesn’t come from being bitchy, but from being a woman willing to do her very best to overcame the most terrible odds.
 
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The Characters of The Last Bastion of the Living
By
Rhiannon Frater
 
One of the biggest challenges in starting a new novel is discovering all the new characters that will inhabit the world you’ve created. I usually have the primary characters fully-developed in my head when I sit down at my computer and type in the first sentence of a book, but the secondary characters are not always clearly defined.

While writing THE LAST BASTION OF THE LIVING, the main characters of Dwayne and Maria were incredibly vivid in my mind. Their back stories came easily to me as I pondered the story and considered my approach to writing it. Maria’s personality and appearance was the first thing that developed in my mind when the first seeds of the story germinated in my dreams. I knew she was Dominican-Puerto Rican in descent, strong-willed, loyal, and the daughter of a soldier who died in battle and a mother who hated Maria enlisting in the military. Maria’s desire for a life with the man she loves without the threat of the dangerous Inferi Scourge (a type of zombie) was the central motivation for everything she does in the book. Dwayne was much older than Maria, a career officer, a man stuck in a nasty divorce, a father of three children (two teenagers, one an adult), and someone who has lived a hard life and knows exactly what he wants out of the rest of his years on the Earth. Together, they shared a love bond that was deep and a wellspring of strength to both of them.

But what about the rest of the people surrounding them?

My novels run like movies in my head. I watch and attempt to transfer the images in my mind to the page. I am often surprised by what I observe, but that is some of the fun in writing. A lot of times characters will make unexpected appearances in the narrative. When that happens, I have to ask the question, “Who are you?” Surprisingly, a lot of the characters just drop into the story fully-formed.

Mr. Petersen and Dr. Curran were two such characters. As soon as they appeared on the movie screen in my head, I “got” them. Though they both surprised me in little ways throughout the story, their basic personalities and motivations never changed.

But another character became much more than I ever anticipated. She originally showed up briefly with Maria in a scene that I had considered cutting. I thought she was a one-off character, but the blond soldier hobbling with a cane became a vital part of the plot, much to my surprise. I gave her the name Lindsey after Lindsey Wagner (who played the Bionic Woman) and made her a veteran of the last push against the Inferi Scourge, which was the battle that left Maria and Dwayne with their battle scars. I gave her a job in the communication center of the Constabulary, not realizing how vital that position and her skills would be to the story later on.

Later, about a third of the way through the book, I realized I needed to show that big battle, which was not originally present when I started writing it. Therefore the prologue was written. Lindsey ended up with a part in that big scene along with another character named Ryan. Again, Lindsey and Ryan were created to show that Maria had friends outside of her romantic relationship, but both characters held the weight of something more than just walk-ons. Suddenly, the relationship that Maria had to both of these characters added much more dimension to her personality and her future struggles.

That’s the fun of writing. The unexpected twists and turns. Discovering new and dynamic characters as scenes unfold. Finding out that a character you thought would show up in one scene is actually a vital part of the overall plot.




THE AUTHOR


 
Rhiannon Frater is the award-winning author of over a dozen books, including the As the World Dies zombie trilogy (Tor), as well as independent works such as The Last Bastion of the Living (declared the Zombie Release of 2012 by Explorations Fantasy Blog and the Zombie Novel of the Decade by B&N Book Blog, and other horror novels. Her next novel for Tor, Dead Spots, will be published in 2014. She was born and raised a Texan and presently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and furry children (a.k.a pets). She loves scary movies, sci-fi and horror shows, playing video games, cooking, dyeing her hair weird colors, and shopping for Betsey Johnson purses and shoes. 
 
 
 
 

THE GIVAWAY

Blitz-Wide Giveaway
Prizes:
A signed copy of The Last Bastion of The Living + SWAG
Contest is open to U.S. and Canadian residents.
 
 
 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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