Hi! I’m J.A. Rock, and right now
I’m touring the internet talking about my latest release, The
Silvers.
Thanks so much to the blogs that are hosting me on this tour, and be sure to
leave comments on the tour posts for a chance to win a $15 Riptide Publishing
gift card!
~The Silver Planet~
The Silvers is told in two parts: Part One
takes place on Imms’s home planet, which humans have dubbed the Silver Planet. And
Part Two takes place on Earth.
The Silver
Planet was very vivid to me when I started writing. I had an image of a place
where light comes out of the ground, and there are huge, metallic-looking
lakes, and other than that…a whole lot of nothing. An atmosphere that keeps the
sky black at all times. Nothing sentient except for blind snakes and the
Silvers. No plants except for a flowering stalk called quilopea whose flowers
look like corpse lips. I wanted to create a place that suited the Silvers—a
place that to humans might seem cold, bleak, uninteresting, but that to the
Silvers is peaceful and orderly in its barrenness.
The Silver
Planet becomes a point of contention for B and Imms. Even though Imms wants to see the universe beyond his
planet, even though he sometimes finds the Silver Planet dull, it’s still his
home. To B, the Silver Planet is a place that drained his humanity—that made
him colder, less loving, more violent. He doesn’t particularly want to remember
his time there, and once he and Imms are on Earth together, he finds himself
wishing Imms would let go of his home planet. To the point where he starts
pressuring Imms to act more human, to sever ties with his past.
Home
is a major theme in The Silvers:
leaving home, returning, searching for permanence and stability within other
people… so it was a really cool as a writer to write about the same setting
from two very different points of view, and to find those places where the two
perspectives intersect—the moments B can see the Silver Planet through Imms’s
eyes and assess it less harshly. Or the moments Imms sees it through B’s eyes
and wonders if he should be ashamed of it.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
What humans want from
the Silver Planet is water. What they find is a race of humanoids who are
sentient, but as emotionless and serene as the plants and placid lakes they
tend.
B, captain of the
mission, doesn’t believe that the “Silvers” are intelligent, and lets his crew
experiment on them. But then he bonds with Imms, who seems different from the
others—interested in learning, intrigued by human feelings. And B realizes that
capturing, studying, and killing this planet’s natives has done incalculable
damage.
When a fire aboard B’s
ship kills most of the crew and endangers Imms, B decides to take him back to
Earth. But the simplicity of the Silver Planet doesn’t follow them. Imms learns
the full spectrum of human emotions, including a love B is frightened to
return, and a mistrust of the bureaucracy that wants to treat Imms like a test
subject, even if they have to eliminate B to do it.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
About the Author:
J.A. Rock
is the author of queer romance and suspense novels, including By His Rules, Take the Long Way Home,
and, with Lisa Henry, The Good Boy
and When All The World Sleeps. She
holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and a BA in
theater from Case Western Reserve University. J.A. also writes queer fiction
and essays under the name Jill Smith. Raised in Ohio and West Virginia, she now
lives in Chicago with her dog, Professor Anne Studebaker.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Giveaway:
To
celebrate the release of The Silvers,
J.A. Rock is giving away $15 in Riptide Publishing credit.
Leave a comment with
your contact info to enter the contest.
Entries close at midnight, Eastern
time, on July 16, 2016.
Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.
Thanks for
following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your
contact info!
About the Author:
