The books shown on the left are by Rich Leder. Click on the cover to order.

This interview was conducted by Daniel Ryan Johnson on April 15, 2025.

Today I am interviewing  author Rich Leder.

Daniel Ryan Johnson: Thanks for graciously agreeing to do this interview with me!

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  What was the original inspiration that got you started on this idea for a novel?

Rich Leder:  No idea. Really. Inspirational origins are hard to pin down. Suddenly there’s a vague idea in my head. Could be any crazy thing coming in from any crazy place. I have many, many of those on a daily basis. I can’t stop them from coming, though I usually don’t know where they came from. If a wild-hair vague idea finds a neuron and sticks to it, it might grow into a more full-fledged idea. The longer it sticks around up there, the better chance it has to become an actual story. Such was the case for Extraterrestrial Noir. Film noir can be fun and funny and dark. Lovely combo. And extraterrestrials are off the hook. So what if a space alien came to Earth and became a film-noir star? What if it became two different film-noir stars? What if it/they seduced a family into a crime spree? Yeah, that’s how it starts. Years later, here’s the book.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  You go into some pretty specific scientific detail at several points in the book. Did you have to do extensive research, or do you have a scientific background that helped draw you to the subject matter?

Rich Leder:  I was useless at science in school. So extensive research was (and is always) a necessity for me when it came to this book (and every book).

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  Why did the alien crash through the Devine’s house rather than come in for a smooth landing? Was it just their first act of random destruction for their pleasure?

Rich Leder:  I don’t think crashing through the Devines’ roof was a first act of pleasurable random destruction. I think it was its first time to the planet and had never experienced a New Jersey cul-de-sac Colonial or a roof and just went through it as if it were another part of the atmosphere it had already rocketed through. It does, as you might recall, come if for a soft landing when it’s time to actually land in the basement.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  Do you have a particular relationship to the suburbs, or was it just an ideal setting for an alien to cause disruption?

Rich Leder:  I grew up in the northeastern New Jersey suburbs, so, yes, I have a particular relationship to that locale. I remember the places and the people and the vibrations by heart. And so I was hard-pressed to come up with a more ideal setting for an alien to cause some serious dark-comic disruption. If you’ve lived in the suburbs, you know what I’m talking about. It’s been happening there for generations.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  What is your writing process? Did you carefully plot out each chapter of the book before getting started, or just get the general idea of the story in your head and start writing?

Rich Leder:  I’m a plotter, not a pantser. It’s my Hollywood training. Screenplays are page-driven. No room for meandering around edges. Detailed Beat Sheets are industry standard. I have decades of that mindset in my soul. It’s in my blood to beat-sheet it out before I start writing. But once my map is drawn, I understand and look forward to the fact that maps are meant to be broken. New roads are meant to be discovered and explored. I’m not at all opposed to detours. I like surprises. If I get lost, hey, I have my map to guide me home. Anyway, in the end, it’s my characters who are driving the story bus, not me. I’m along for the ride.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  While the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake space alien was particularly fond of using alliteration at times, there was a lot of additional alliteration throughout the book. Was this a conscious literary choice or more of a spillover from writing for this character?

Rich Leder:  Alan/Veronica was having fun with the rhythm of human language, the silliness of English. Maybe he heard me writing. Maybe I heard him talking. Hard to know.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  The alien visitor did not seem to have to nudge very hard to get Maggie and Connie to go over the edge and plunge into the mayhem and violence. Was the alien manipulating them in any other manner beyond promising them the things they wanted, or were they just desperate enough to take any out?

Rich Leder:  Maggie and Connie were already over the edge; they just didn’t know it. Desperate and weak in the knees, in the heart, in the bones. Alan/Veronica simply pulls it out of them with sex and crime and violence. When you’re a super-sentient, billions of eternities old, space-alien psychopath, manipulating uber-desperate human beings is probably not as tough a task as you think it might be. And then, of course, it’s too late to turn back once its got you.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  Your biggest noir influences in the book seem clear with the characters of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, but what were your biggest sci-fi influences?

Rich Leder:  So many. When I was a kid, Lost in Space was the bomb. Who didn’t want to be Will Robinson? Also as a kid, I read everything by Bradbury, Asimov, Herbert, and others. Star Trek. Star Wars. All of them. If it was outer space, I was hooked. I’m still hooked. Alien, Aliens, all the Predator movies, totally hooked. Jeff Bridges as a space alien. Hooked. Pudgy little ET. Hooked. And in for all of it, every book, film, and television show. And in all my decades of sci-fi captivation, I never once encountered a space alien like the boot box in Extraterrestrial Noir.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  How powerful was that flashlight?

Rich Leder:  Ha! As you know, in empty space, light travels indefinitely…until and unless it encounters something that scatters or absorbs it. So maybe it was a powerfully lucky flashlight. Yeah, that’s it. A powerfully lucky flashlight SOS.

Daniel Ryan Johnson:  Thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me.