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WORK TITLE: Her Nightly Embrace
WORK NOTES:
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http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Adi-Tantimedh/554218322 * https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/mysterypeople-qa-with-adi-tantimedh/ * http://ew.com/article/2016/08/18/adi-tantimedh-ravi-pi-series/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2016032412
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016032412
HEADING: Tantimedh, Adi
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PERSONAL
Born November 4, 1967, in Singapore; son of Adisorn and Orasa Tantimedh.
EDUCATION:Bennington College, B.A., 1988; New York University, M.F.A., 1995.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
AVOCATIONS:Drawing, painting, photography.
MEMBER:Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Society Authors (United Kingdom).
AWARDS:BAFTA for Best Short Film, 1995, for Zinky Boys Go Underground.
WRITINGS
Screenwriter for the short film Zinky Boys Go Underground. Author of radio plays and television scripts for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and author of graphic novels for DC Comics. Columnist for BleedingCool.com.
SIDELIGHTS
La Muse
For his debut graphic novel, La Muse, Adi Tantimedh follows Susan La Muse as the rest of the world discovers that she has superpowers. The revelation occurs when Susan levitates to escape a suicide bomber in London. Susan’s sister Libby is a publicity agent, and she handles Susan’s accidental unmasking. Now that the cat is out of the bag, Susan is free to teleport around the world to help the starving and impoverished. Susan also convinces neo-Nazis to become pacifists, all while making sure that the world switches to renewable energy sources. While the people praise Susan, government officials and CEOs would like to see her dead. She survives their smear campaigns and assassins alike, but when Susan’s and Libby’s alien parents return to check on their offspring, they are so horrified by recent events that they strip Susan of all her powers. How will Susan survive her attackers without them?
Praising the story in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Charles De Lint announced: “La Muse is fast paced, socially and politically aware, funny, sexy, in short, a fun book that also leaves you room to think away from its pages.” Carl Hays, writing in Booklist, was also positive, finding that the “conspiracies, explosions, sex, ribald humor, and lush, full-color illustrations” are “guaranteed to satisfy even the most jaded fan of action comics.” Indeed, a Publishers Weekly contributor declared: “This tale is a pleasure from start to finish, refreshingly free of clichéd, citysmashing, superhero throw downs.”
Her Nightly Embrace
Tantimedh begins a new detective series with his novel Her Nightly Embrace. Following Ravi Singh, the tale details how Ravi drops out of his religious studies program and eventually becomes a detective for the Golden Sentinels Private Investigations Agency in London. Ravi is desperate to pay off his mother’s gambling debts, and his employer pays well, but the jobs he is given are often questionable. The dirtier the task, the more it pays, so when Ravi begins seeing the gods while working, he begins to question the ethics of all that he has been asked to do. As Ravi wrestles with religious and moral quandaries, he locates the ghost lover of a politician, manages his godly visions, and reveals the identity of a nefarious online troll.
Explaining his inspiration for the new series in the online Mystery People, Tantimedh told Scott Butki: “The Ravi stories came out of a desire to update the private-eye genre. I hadn’t intended to write a private-eye series, but over the years I’d been given information about how private investigators work in real life, which I found much more complex and interesting than they were portrayed in fiction.” Lauding the author’s efforts in Kirkus Reviews Online, a critic praised Her Nightly Embrace, announcing that “Tantimedh’s bright dialogue and breakneck pacing tend to obscure the difference between legitimate and bogus surprises and even between developments that do and don’t make sense.” Offering additional applause in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer found that “those who enjoy mysteries with a touch of fantasy will welcome this auspicious debut.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 15, 2008, Carl Hays, review of La Muse.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June-July, 2009, Charles De Lint, review of La Muse.
Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2008, review of La Muse; September 12, 2016, review of Her Nightly Embrace.
ONLINE
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (September 1, 2016), review of Her Nightly Embrace.
Mystery People, https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/ (June 12, 2016), Scott Butki, author interview.*
INTERVIEW
MysteryPeople Q&A with Adi Tantimedh
DECEMBER 6, 2016 MYSTERYPEOPLEBLOGLEAVE A COMMENT
Interview and Introduction by MysteryPeople Contributor Scott Butki
9781501130571In his recently released book, Her Nightly Embrace, Adi Tantimedh has kicked off an exciting new series. It came to my attention partly because I can’t recall before seeing a book series launched with the face of its lead actor on the cover. But I’m getting ahead of myself, which is part of why it caught my eye.
The author’s hope is that the book series will be picked up as a television series and it will star popular actor Sendhil Ramamurthy of NBC’s Heroes fame, as newly minted PI Ravi Chandra Singh.
The new Ravi PI trilogy is about a destructive private investigator and his eccentric coworkers, who handle cases so high-profile that they never make the headlines. It is fun, clever and, at times, funny. It’s also interesting having a main character who often hears in his head childhood admonishments and Hindu gods.
Scott Butki: How did this story come about?
Adi Tantimedh: The Ravi stories came out of a desire to update the private eye genre. I hadn’t intended to write a private eye series, but over the years I’d been given information about how private investigators work in real life, which I found much more complex and interesting than they were portrayed in fiction.
In private eye novels, there’s the archetype of the down-on-his-luck, hard-drinking, two-fisted gumshoe who solved murders and have affairs with a femme fatale who may or may not betray him, the latter often an expression of the authors’ own paranoid and sexist fears about women.
“The reality of what private eyes do is much more interesting. They don’t really solve murders. They’re often hired to clean up people’s dirty laundry, to be fixers for the rich, the powerful and the famous. They’re hired by tabloid newspapers to help bug and uncover dirt on people.”
The reality of what private eyes do is much more interesting. They don’t really solve murders. They’re often hired to clean up people’s dirty laundry, to be fixers for the rich, the powerful and the famous. They’re hired by tabloid newspapers to help bug and uncover dirt on people. A private detective in Britain is in jail right now for hacking people for the tabloids in the Phone Hacking Scandal. Private detectives are also hired as outside contractors for intelligence agencies like the CIA when they want deniability. Private investigators also use increasingly sophisticated methods to find out about people using the internet now. Why isn’t any of this being addressed in private eye fiction? This is much more interesting than the old cliché of the hard-drinking gumshoe. I decided I wanted to write that in RAVI on top of reflect the cultural diversity of Britain and the US where the hero doesn’t always need to be a white guy. Crime fiction is really a lot more political than a lot of people talk about, with movements in countries like Italy where the novels are very directly addressing social and political issues right now. I tend to be drawn to genre fiction that deals with contemporary issues and ideas.
My high-falutin’ idea at the beginning was that I wanted to reinvent the private eye genre from the ground up, if only to write stories that I wanted to see but haven’t found in the genre fiction that’s currently out there.
At the same time, I also wanted to write a series that was more irreverent and more darkly comic than gloomy or wallowing in moral despair. I wanted to have a series with a very particular snarky London voice that I wanted to see more of.
SB: Which came first – the plot or the characters?
AT: Ravi Chandra Singh popped into my head first, followed by the first case in the book, Her Nightly Embrace, even its title. The core of his character was always there from the beginning: a well-educated middle-class Indian-British Londoner who fell into being a private investigator.
SB: Was it written with the actor Sendhill and a TV series in mind?
AT: I wrote the first case “Her Nightly Embrace” as a short story originally, with a vague notion of pitching a TV series later. When my producer Leopoldo Gout grabbed the story to pitch it as a multimedia project, he proposed the idea of Sendhil Ramamurthy being attached to be the face of Ravi and to play him in the TV series. Once Sendhil and I met and found we got along, I’ve been writing with the assumption that Sendhil would be playing Ravi, and he and I molded Ravi’s personality into a character Sendhil would be playing.
SB: How did you come up with the premise of Ravi Chandra Singh going from being a high school teacher to a private detective?
AT: This came out of my discussions with Sendhil about Ravi’s backstory. Since he would no longer be a callow twentysomething who became a private eye, we wanted him to have more of a past, a very different life that he’d left behind to become a private investigator, and we wanted something quite ordinary for him. Since we determined that Ravi’s father was an academic in Religious Studies and his mother was a teacher, it made sense that Ravi would have become a teacher to appease his parents after he gave up his PhD studies in Religious Studies.
“I believe in casting a wide net in research rather than give in to the tempting of personal bias or confirmation bias. The best research often blows open your assumptions on a given topic and generates new ideas.”
SB: Which of the many characters is most like you?
AT: My first impulse is to happily say none of the characters are like me at all, although if push comes to shove, I would have to admit I gave Ravi some exaggerated versions of a few of my traits, namely his tendency to think and perhaps overthink everything, his constant worry that he might be doing something that could cause harm to someone.
That said, at least 80% of the things Ravi does in the books are things I would never dream of doing.
SB: How did you go about researching this book?
AT: My research into private investigators was done without my really even doing it over the years: Hearing about how they worked from a friend who was once on the receiving end of tabloid attention, attending a talk by a high-end private investigator about what they do and what digital and high-tech tools they use these days. I even spoke to a private investigator who used to be a DEA agent who talked about how his agency worked and the legal lines they had to stick to in order to avoid arrest and prosecution.
As for the topics in Ravi’s cases, I keep my ears open with headlines, tech news, cultural news, I have my social media feeds open for the latest news and when something catches my attention, I look into it and it might become something I write about. When there’s an issue or topic I want to research, I search for different articles that have proper attribution to read a variety of takes on the topic to get a big a picture as possible. It’s all a combination of searches, reading articles and talking to humans. The latter often offer insights and information that you don’t find on the internet. I believe in casting a wide net in research rather than give in to the tempting of personal bias or confirmation bias. The best research often blows open your assumptions on a given topic and generates new ideas.
SB: What’s your background?
AT: I started out wanting to be a playwright and cartoonist. I wrote plays and comedy sketches in school, sold my first radio play to the BBC at the age of 17, and had four radio plays produced by the time I got my English Literature degree from Bennington College. Writing for the BBC and writing TV scripts for Britain prompted me to go to New York University to get an MFA in Film and Television Production, after which I began to write screenplays for Hollywood and Britain. During that time I also wrote comics and graphic novels like a Superman and Justice League graphic novel for DC Comics, Blackshirt, which was an update of a decades-old pulp character for Moonstone Books, and La Muse, a comedy about a political activist with superpowers who becomes the world’s biggest celebrity. I also worked in development for a China-based production company for a year and got an inside look at how movies are made and approved in China. I also did the occasional writing for video games.
“I also wanted to write a series that was more irreverent and more darkly comic than gloomy or wallowing in moral despair. I wanted to have a series with a very particular snarky London voice that I wanted to see more of.”
SB: What experience and knowledge from past work were you able to call upon when writing this book?
AT: My experience in scriptwriting definitely informs the writing of the book. I tend to think visually, and the discipline of knowing how to write and pace scenes, how long they should run and so on gives me a good idea for how much or how little I should write. It gives me a good sense of boundaries and structure for writing a book. From there I can push beyond just writing scenes and delve into what prose lets a writer do, which is to write in a character’s inner voice, give the reader access to the inside of their heads, and be able to discuss abstract ideas that scripts often don’t have room or scope for. The point of writing a book is to use the opportunities the medium offers that other mediums can’t handle. A book can go deeper than a movie or TV show does, and I want to use that opportunity as well and push the genre in places you don’t always get to in a visual medium like TV or movies.
SB: Have you already written books two and three?
AT: I have not, alas. I am current writing Book Two, and will immediately begin Book Three once I finish it. I have outlined Books Two and Three in some detail, leaving room for improvisation and updates for any interesting news in the world of tech, politics and culture that I can use as part of the up-to-the-moment social commentary that’s part of the story in the books.
Crime fiction is really a lot more political than a lot of people talk about, with movements in countries like Italy where the novels are very directly addressing social and political issues right now.
SB: Lastly, what is the status of the goal of having it adapted for a TV series?
AT: At the moment we’re still in discussion with various production entities. There’s the question of whether it’s going to be a US show or a British show. We would all prefer it be a British show and closer to the novel. If it ends up becoming a US show, we would want Ravi to be British, since that’s the key component of his character – not that he’s Indian, but he’s British with that unique darkly comic, ironic way that Londoners have of seeing things.
You can find copies of Her Nightly Embrace on our shelves and via bookpeople.com.
Adi Tantimedh announces Ravi PI series -- exclusive
Featuring ‘Heroes’ star Sendhil Ramamurthy on the cover.
ISABELLA BIEDENHARN@ISABELLA324
POSTED ON AUGUST 18, 2016 AT 4:22PM EDT
Atria Books will publish a new crime fiction series starring a failed religious scholar-turned-detective, EW can announce exclusively. The first book, Adi Tantimedh’s Her Nightly Embrace, will be released Nov. 1.
Tantimedh’s Ravi PI trilogy follows Ravi Chandra Singh, a London private investigator who handles “cases so high-profile that they never make the headlines” with his bevy of happily corrupt colleagues, like a hacker from Hong Konk, a Nigerian lawyer, and a brilliant stoner. When Ravi starts to see visions of Hindu gods as he becomes overwhelmed by his complex cases, he has to figure out if he’s completely delusional — or if he might actually be a modern day shaman.
And if the face on the cover below looks familiar — that’s because it is! Heroes star Sendhil Ramamurthy is slated to play Ravi in the still-in-development TV adaptation of the series, and will appear in person as the character at publicity events for the books. “Ravi Chandra Singh is the most unusual and unexpected character I’ve been cast to play,” Ramamurthy says in the release. “He’s unique and complex as he struggles to survive in a crazy and dangerous world.”
Home > Comics > Our Own Adi Tantimedh Writes ‘Her Nightly Embrace’ Starring Sendhil Ramamurthy As Ravi, PI
Our Own Adi Tantimedh Writes ‘Her Nightly Embrace’ Starring Sendhil Ramamurthy As Ravi, PI
Posted by Rich Johnston August 18, 2016 10 Comments
9781501130571Adi Tantimedh is the longest serving writer on Bleeding Cool. Apart from me, obviously. His Look! It Moves! columns have been running regularly since 2009 and in total would easily fill a large novel.
But no need, because he’d written one of those as well, that has just been announced by Entertainment Weekly.7
Her Nightly Embrace, will be released on November 1st by Atria Books, a new crime fiction series starring a failed religious scholar-turned-detective, Ravi PI – to be played by Sendhil Ramamurthy in a planned TV adaptation. The Amazon listing says,
The first in a trilogy of whip-smart novels—currently in development as a TV series set to star Sendhil Ramamurthy (NBC’s Heroes and Heroes Reborn)—about a destructive private investigator and his eccentric coworkers, who handle cases so high-profile that they never make the headlines.
Ravi Chandra Singh is the last guy you’d expect to become a private detective. A failed religious scholar, he now works for Golden Sentinels, an upmarket London private investigations agency. His colleagues are a band of gleefully amoral and brilliant screw-ups: Ken and Clive, a pair of brutal ex-cops who are also a gay couple; Mark Chapman, a burned-out stoner hiding a great mind; Marcie Holder, a cheerful former publicist; Benjamin Lee, a techie prankster from South London; David Okri, an ambitious lawyer from a well-connected Nigerian immigrant family; and Olivia Wong, an upper-class Hong Kong financial analyst hiding her true skills as one of the most dangerous hackers in the world—all under the watchful eye of Roger Golden, wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, and his mysterious office manager, Cheryl Hughes.
Thrust into a world where the rich, famous, and powerful hire him to solve their problems and wash their dirty laundry, Ravi finds himself in over his head with increasingly gonzo and complex cases – and the recent visions that he’s been having of Hindu gods aren’t helping. As Ravi struggles to stay ahead of danger, he wonders if the things he’s seeing are a delusion – or if he might, in fact, be an unrecognized shaman of the modern world…
Entertainment Weekly have an exclusive preview of the novel here.
To get your first peek into Ravi’s world, check out our exclusive cover reveal and excerpt, below:
(Last Updated August 21, 2016 3:16 am )
Quick Six Interview: Adi Tantimedh
JL Jamieson10.2016Author Interview, Books
her-nightly-embraceAdi Tantimedh has written graphic novels (JLA: Age of Wonder, La Muse), radio plays and TV scripts, a weekly column for Bleeding Cool, and now wrote the private detective novel, Her Nightly Embrace, out November 1st. It’s the start of the Ravi PI series, which is also in development as a TV show and audio drama podcasts.
Adi writes interesting and quirky characters in some of the most awkward and amusing situations. They’re fully dimensional, far from perfect people that make for a thoroughly entertaining and relatable read.
We caught up with him for a Quick Six Interview, and asked a bit about the book:
What inspires you recently?
Alan Moore and his near-infinite micro and macro scope of his massive new novel JERUSALEM.
Who decides on your book cover art?
In the end, it’s the publisher who decides. I pitch ideas, then we discuss and arrive at a concept we’re all happy with.
What do you do when you aren’t actively writing?
Reading, doing research, lots of reading, and some drawing.
Morning or night person for work?
For writing prose, I find night is quieter and more suited for work. Mornings can be distracting with emails, news and briefings to deal with.
How do you know when a book is finished?
When all story and character progress have been exhausted and there’s nothing else left to write. I never write a story without knowing the ending beforehand, but that still leaves plenty of room for discovery and surprised before the end.
What book is your touchstone?
THE IDIOT by Dostoyevsky. I wasn’t even forced to read it.
What’s next for you?
The second RAVI P.I. novel, which I’m now writing, a new project involving ghosts, and another project involving the most dangerous woman you will ever meet, but that one will have to wait till I finish the third RAVI P.I. novel.
How has writing the novel been different from everything else you’ve done?
Challenges?
Writing HER NIGHTLY EMBRACE felt like a honing of ideas I’d had about updating the private eye genre, which I’d never written before but thought about for years. The challenge was to present a world that’s very close to our own and private eyes closer to what they do in our reality than I’ve read in most detective fiction, and without relying on fantasy or Science Fiction elements as a crutch. Ravi seeing gods should be a complement and commentary on his reality rather than altering reality into a fantasy world.
Review of Her Nightly Embrace, Pop Culture Beast 2016:
Ravi sees gods. They are the spectators of his life, watching as things get interesting, chaotic, and fall apart. He’s been seeing a lot more of them lately, Tweeting each other on their mobile phones about #ourownpersonalholyfool.
Ravi lost his job as a teacher awhile ago, and came to work for Golden Sentinals as a Private Investigator. It’s a fairly exclusive service, and sometimes his cases can get pretty weird. (Click to continue)
Quick Six: Pop Culture Beast lets artists choose from our standard ten questions – and we let them tell us what they’d like you to know.
Also see our Quick Six Interview with Sendhil Ramamurthy!
JL Jamieson
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.
Adi Tantimedh
Adi Tantimedh has a BA in English Literature from Bennington College and an MFA in Film and Television Production from New York University. He is of Chinese-Thai descent and came of age in Singapore and London. He has written radio plays and television scripts for the BBC and screenplays for various Hollywood companies, as well as graphic novels for DC Comics and Big Head Press, and a weekly column about pop culture for BleedingCool.com. He wrote “Zinky Boys Go Underground,” the first post-Cold War Russian gangster thriller, which won the BAFTA for Best Short Film in 1995 and is the author of the first Ravi PI novel Her Nightly Embrace.
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Print Marked Items
Her Nightly Embrace: Book 1 of the Ravi P.I.
Series
Publishers Weekly.
263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p33.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Her Nightly Embrace: Book 1 of the Ravi P.I. Series
Adi Tantimedh. Atria, $26 (288p) ISBN 9781501130571
Tantimedh's episodic first novel, a trilogy launch, takes the reader on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride of unusual
cases. Ravi Singh, a religiousstudies dropout and failed teacher who's on the hook for his mother's gambling debts, is
employed at the London office of the Golden Sentinels Private Investigations Agency. Working with other social
misfits hired to discreetly resolve issues in any way necessary for clients willing to pay well, Ravi is tasked with
finding the ghost having sex with a highranking politician. Ravi's success brings on visions of Hindu gods. Helping a
runaway bride, or outing an online troll who's bashing an author, is hard work with Lord Vishnu looking on. As the
cases become more intense, more gods appear to Ravi. When investment bankers start dying, a new client hires the
agency to save her. Ravi eventually begins to grasp that there's more to his employerand himselfthan he first
realized. Those who enjoy mysteries with a touch of fantasy will welcome this auspicious debut. Agent: Lisa
Gallagher, DeFiore and Company. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Her Nightly Embrace: Book 1 of the Ravi P.I. Series." Publishers Weekly, 12 Sept. 2016, p. 33+. General OneFile,
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p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464046231&it=r&asid=af7edc0a46405d7f3e119c8613061312.
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La Muse
Charles De Lint
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
116.67 (JuneJuly 2009): p49.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Spilogale, Inc.
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
Full Text:
La Muse, by Adi Tantimedh & Hugo Petrus, Big Head Press, 2008; 222pp; $19.95.
Maybe this is just something that nerdy teenage boys would think about, but Superman always bugged me as a kid.
There he was, this being with all this amazing power. So why didn't he use it to do some good on a global scale? Why
didn't he stop all the world's wars? Famine? Drought? Cure the incurable diseases with his superior intellect that always
figured out some way to beat the bad guys? Sure, various writers over the years have come up with explanations, but I
never bought them.
Well, if that was ever you, you'll get a kick out of La Muse.
Susan La Muse is a flamboyant political activist who just happens to have powers that rival and even surpass
Superman's. She uses them on a crusade to save the world from itself, driving her sister Libby crazy in the process.
Where did she get these powers? You need to read the book to find out. In fact, it's hard to say much about it at all
without giving away all the good bits you really should discover on your own.
Just let me say that this is the way it should be done with such an omnipotent character. And while everything doesn't
go exactly her way, she doesn't let setbacks get in the way of her mission.
La Muse is fastpaced, socially and politically aware, funny, sexyin short, a fun book that also leaves you room to
think away from its pages.
Hugo Petrus'sart suits the character. It's lively and expressive and good comic art, which means that while each panel
isn't necessarily a gem, the storytelling flow is terrific.
I get the sense that this was originally serialized, but I'd never heard about it until this trade paperback collection came
out. Which is just as well, because I didn't have to wait a month for each installment. And neither do you.
De Lint, Charles
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
De Lint, Charles. "La Muse." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, JuneJuly 2009, p. 49. General OneFile,
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La Muse 3
Carl Hays
Booklist.
105.8 (Dec. 15, 2008): p30.
COPYRIGHT 2008 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
La Muse 3.
By Adi Tantimedh and Hugo Petrus.
2008. 222p. illus. Big Head, paper, $19.95 (9780974381466). 741.5.
When Susan La Muse survives a London suicide bomber's blast unscathed and levitates away from the scene, the
unveiling of her previously hidden superhuman powers turns her into an overnight celebrity. Fortunately, Susan has her
plucky publicityagent sister Libby at her side to handle the media interviews while she teleports to impoverished
countries arresting famines, turns neoNazis into peaceniks, and ends the world's dependence on fossil fuels. Of course,
the world's power brokers, who profit from other people's misery, are not amused. Yet against the onslaught of
assassins' bullets, cruise missiles, and even mediamanufactured scandals, Susan manages to emerge unblemished
every time. That is, until Susan and Libby's extraterrestrial parents show up to evaluate Susan's planetchanging
handiwork and summarily strip her of her powers, leaving the sisters vulnerable to one last ambush. Veteran graphic
novelist Tantimedh and his collaborators throw everything into this often outlandishly unconventional superhero
adventure: conspiracies, explosions, sex, ribald humor, and lush, fullcolor illustrations. Guaranteed to satisfy even the
most jaded fan of action comics.Carl Hays
Hays, Carl
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Hays, Carl. "La Muse 3." Booklist, 15 Dec. 2008, p. 30+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA191817242&it=r&asid=54a6bf39bc37d8a51ca6832702bb863e.
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La Muse
Publishers Weekly.
255.47 (Nov. 24, 2008): p43.
COPYRIGHT 2008 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
La Muse
Adi Tantimedh, Hugo Petrus and 3, Big Head Press, $19.95 paper (224p)
ISBN 9780974381444
This raucous comedy of divine intervention tells the story of two sisters, Susan and Libby La Muse, two 20somethings
whose parents are noncorporeal aliens from whom Susana hardliving, polyamorous, chainsmoking political activist
has inherited powers that grant her nearomnipotence. She keeps her abilities hidden, but when an attempted suicide
bombing leaves her with no choice but to act and be outed, she rises to the occasion, saves the day and immediately
sets about fixing all of the world's problems in ways only a goddess would. With this benevolent goddess acting as a
global panacea, it's only a matter of time before political and corporate entities seek to stop her by any means
necessary. But how do you assassinate a goddess? This tale is a pleasure from start to finish, and even though it kind of
works in the same territory as Garth Ennis and Phil Winslade's Goddess (1995), it's still very much its own entity,
refreshingly free of cliched citysmashing superhero throwdowns. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"La Muse." Publishers Weekly, 24 Nov. 2008, p. 43. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA190052737&it=r&asid=420089020eaabac0c71d149ad6bd66c3.
Accessed 11 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A190052737
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HER NIGHTLY EMBRACE by Adi Tantimedh
HER NIGHTLY EMBRACE
From the "Ravi P.I. Series" series, volume 1
by Adi Tantimedh
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Not that you’d know it from a casual glance, but Book I of the Ravi P.I. series is actually a cycle of four interlinked stories about a high school teacher–turned–unlicensed private eye working for a London agency where some crisis is always just around the corner.
In the title story, the first and best of the four, supermodel Louise Fowler visits her boyfriend, Rupert Holcomb, the Conservative MP for Haddock West, an average of one night a week for a sexual interlude—something that would bother the up-and-coming politico, who’s being groomed for higher things, a lot less if he hadn’t buried her seven months ago. Roger Golden, owner of the Golden Sentinels Private Investigations Agency, puts newcomer Ravi Chandra Singh on the case, and Ravi’s almost buried under the skeletons that come tumbling out of the couple’s closet. Talk show host Delia McCarthy engages Golden Sentinels to find out who’s trashing her new book and her personal life online in War of the Sock Puppets. Ravi and his colorful colleagues take on a more traditional and considerably less mystifying assignment in The Hideaway Bride when Shazia Ibrahim runs away from home shortly before a marriage her father has arranged with Pakistani arms dealer Nabeel Langhani’s playboy son, Samir. “The Leaky Banker” gets underway when investment banker Jack Higglesworth overcomes his fear of heights long enough to leap from his high-rise office window, sending Sandra Rodriguez, his recently fired colleague, and Golden Sentinels into an escalating series of setups and double crosses. Long before the fade-out, you can see why Ravi, whose home life is equally chaotic, compares himself to Kali, one of several gods he regularly sees in times of stress: “I think I blow up people’s lives.”
Tantimedh’s bright dialogue and breakneck pacing tend to obscure the difference between legitimate and bogus surprises and even between developments that do and don’t make sense.
Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 2016
ISBN: 9781501130571
Page count: 288pp
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1st, 2016
'La Muse' Review
0
by MIKE BARON31 Jul 20090
Twenty-four year-old Susan La Muse has god-like powers. Actually, her powers surpass those of God since she can reconstitute dead people from scraps of debris and restore them to full health and cognizance. She waves her arms and AIDS disappears from Africa. Every internal combustion engine changes to electric (although the question of what is generating this electricity is never answered.) She makes disparaging remarks about being a “white girl” while celebrating every other race. And she solves most of her problems through sex.
Straight sex, gay, bi, group, it doesn’t matter to the sexually omnivorous Susan whose libido knows no bounds. In her most asinine encounter, which becomes key to “world peace,” Susan pulls a train of skinhead Nazis who quickly see the light, accept their “bi-curious” strains and copulate with her and one another. Thereafter, anyone who views her sex tape becomes one with the world and all living things. And “Kumbaya” was heard in the land.
La Muse intends to be a serious look at the consequences of absolute power but views the world through a politically-correct lens that sets your teeth on edge. People naturally fear and hate her. After one of numerous assassination attempts, La Muse’s Boswell, her sister Libby, writes, “It was another bunch of zealots trying to kill her. Jihadists, anti-abortionists, anti-gay activists (though she’s not gay), intelligent design fanatics, the KKK, Neo-Nazis, you name it, they want her dead.”
Who’s missing from the above laundry list of traditional liberal bugaboos? That’s right. Liberals. No liberal ever wants anyone dead (unless it’s Rush Limbaugh or Clarence Thomas.)
Libby’s an agent for a big shot talent agency. Naturally La Muse becomes an international celebrity and cover model. There’s a lot of inside industry talk. La Muse does interviews. Someone asks if she believes in God. “Really, I just don’t believe there’s a guy in the sky with a beard who hates gays.” At least not since the last time the Ayatollah Khomeni took an airplane. Chapter 2 is called “Enter the Haters.”
La Muse goes on the lecture tour. “Let’s get rid of predatory capitalism, not capitalism per se. There hasn’t been a free market for decades! The corporations have been fixing it! Decapitalization is the way to go! Rewrite capitalism so it works properly! Wealth gets redistributed by the market!” Once again a deep thinker betrays a lack of understanding about basic economics. It’s easy to rail against evil corporations-and so fresh! But where is the understanding that all modern blessings, the miracle drugs that prolong life, air-conditioning, television, the Internet, cars that allow us to cross continents in a few days, the wealth that permits government social programs, are all generated by the private sector? Has our culture become so debased that young people automatically absorb the smarmy assumptions of the liberal sea in which they are forced to swim?
I believe writer Adi Tantimedh is English, so I don’t hold him responsible for his lousy education. England seems to have gone the way of the Dodo bird. Tantimedh does have some good ideas and some good lines. La Muse’s decision to declare herself an independent country inspires thousands of others. That would be great if the focus were on individual rights and liberties, but La Muse only addresses tribes. Her parents show up and turn out to be inscrutably evil aliens.
Susan has only two speeds: full-bore overbearing alpha, and sob-sister. Neither personality is particularly appealing. The key to compelling fiction is to create sympathetic characters with whom the audience can identify.
Artist Hugo Petrus is a mixed bag, good with faces and often quite engaging, as in the full page spread of La Muse stopping a charging taxi on page 33. Elsewhere he fails to provide establishing shots and many of the characters begin to look alike.
Remarkably, the publisher and editor, Big Head Press (they are also my publisher,) are committed Libertarians! Editor Scott Bieser admits he anticipated a conservative backlash to the book, but that should not dissuade readers from seeking out their other publications, including The Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas by L. Neil Smith and Scott Bieser (who is a terrific artist,) and The Architect by yours truly.
Read More Stories About:
Big Hollywood, Clarence Thomas, Independent, Rush Limbaugh