Extraterrestrial Noir by Rich Leder | A Darkly Comic Sci-Fi Detective Tale
“When aliens crash suburbia, chaos gets cinematic.”
🌟Welcome to today’s spotlight!
If you enjoy dark humor, quirky detectives, and an alien twist on classic noir storytelling, Extraterrestrial Noir by Rich Leder will keep you hooked from page one. This genre-bending adventure blends sci-fi, crime, and comedy into an irresistible ride through the absurd side of humanity—and the galaxy.
📖 Quick Summary
When down-on-his-luck detective Lenny “Crash” Callahan takes a case involving a missing alien artifact, he has no idea he’s about to uncover a conspiracy that’s truly out of this world. With cosmic assassins, corrupt officials, and a femme fatale who might not even be human, Extraterrestrial Noir delivers laughs, danger, and extraterrestrial intrigue in equal measure.
🔻 Keep scrolling to enter the giveaway! 🔻
📝 All About the Book
Extraterrestrial Noir
By Rich Leder
Published by Laugh Riot Press on July 2025
Genres: Humorous, Science Fiction
Formats: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 568
An extraterrestrial the size and shape of a boot box crashes into the New Jersey cul-de-sac Colonial of a film-noir-obsessed family on the sharp edge of emotional, marital, and financial insolvency; rearranges its subatomic structure; and presents itself as the couples’ long-time film-noir lust late noir icons Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.
In short order, Alan/Veronica displays an appetite for suburban debauchery, depravity, decadence, and destruction and seduces the family into its psychopathic criminal orbit with irresistible film noir panache, alluring sexual charisma, and inconceivable intergalactic powers.
Twelve-year-old genius daughter, Mike Devine, figures out fast that Alan/Veronica’s plan is to implode the planet. Can she save the world, not to mention her family? She’ll need the only armament in the universe that can subdue the extraterrestrial, and she’ll have to shoot it point blank. So it’s questionable at best.
📜Excerpt from Extraterrestrial Noir
Just when the quiet suburban night seems perfectly ordinary, everything changes. In this scene from Extraterrestrial Noir, a group of neighbors witnesses something streaking across the sky — and realizes it’s coming straight for them.
“Maybe it’s a missile, or a rocket,” Emily said. “Jesus, it’s really moving fast.”
“Is it me?” Carol said. “Or is it coming right at us?”
“It’s not you,” Maggie said.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Lisa said.
“Do meteors split off from the flock?” Carol said.
“I don’t think meteors travel in a flock,” Maggie said.
“It’s like somebody aimed the thing right here,” Emily said.
And then they were silent, watching whatever it was shoot toward them. A fireball, they were now realizing, that was going to hit New Jersey any second.
“Jesus,” Lisa said, and the women dove to the ground. There was no time for them to think of their husbands, who, as it happened, were face down on Peter’s green, or their children, who were unaware that some kind of cataclysmic crash was about to occur.
No time even for their lives to flash before their eyes because the thing was low in the sky now and not aiming for New Jersey or Bergen County or Paramus. Aiming for The Stars. And not just for The Stars, for Hope Circle.
With a blinding blast of flame and a supersonic swoosh, the thing shot over their heads and hit the Devines’ roof at a forty-five-degree angle on the front side. There was a smashing sound that was oddly muted and echoless, though the original crash was followed by three successive lightning-quick crashes, and then there was nothing.
Maggie got to her knees first and followed the black, smoky, fast-dissipating trail over their heads to her house, where smoke was wafting around the hole in her roof where whatever it was had gone crashing in.
“Oh no,” she said, “My kids.”
📚 Where to Find Extraterrestrial Noir
Available on Amazon
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🖋️ Guest Post by Rich Leder
Writing might be a solitary pursuit, but living as a writer rarely is. In today’s guest post, Extraterrestrial Noir author Rich Leder shares a thoughtful, often humorous reflection on what it takes to balance creativity with the realities of everyday life. From love and work to the simple act of breathing, Rich offers a grounded look at how he’s managed to keep his artistic spark alive while navigating the chaos that comes with both the page and the world beyond it.
⚖️Balancing Life and Writing
Ah, the age-old issue of learning to live a somewhat normal life while cohabiting that sane soul with the artist in you that defies all things normal. Countless writers, musicians, actors, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, and creatives of all stripes ad infinitum have wrestled with themselves until they either found common ground upon which to stand tall like an everyday human being going about his everyday human-being business and an artist living the life of who in the world knows what, or have wrestled themselves into the dark ditch of frustration, aggravation, and disillusion.
We have all, if I may speak for a moment on behalf of artists as a species throughout time, been there.
So how does one go about finding footing in the storm?
I can tell you how I did it. If you find that instructive somehow, fantabulous. If not, I wish you nothing but great good luck as you wrestle beside the ditch.
Love is a force. Marriage, children, significant others, family, friends, day jobs, night jobs, side gigs, hobbies, nature, volunteering, the list is long. And finding a way to love just one of these things if not more of them can help you balance the scales of your life. The commitment to love a person or an action outside of your writing and then the actual loving of that person or action is where balance can be found.
Work is a force. I mentioned loving some kind of work that isn’t your writing just right there in the paragraph above this one. But first you have find the work and do the work and do it like you mean it, like it’s an important part of your world, of your very existence, like it matters. The intensity with which you approach the work you do is another tip-top place to find balance.
Breathing is a force. If you don’t make time to breathe, then you are not consciously living in this astral plain. You are not a full human being, a complete human soul. So how do you breathe? Giving to others is good way to start. The joy with which you breathe is a wonderful place to find balance.
Your writing is a force. I don’t have to tell you how powerful it is to feel like you have created original art—original in the sense that it sprung from the blood of your heart—that belongs in the world. Talk about balance.
So, yeah, love, work, breathing, writing. The four legs of the table I call my life. Been working for me these last four decades. Maybe it works for you. Worth a shot if balance is what you’re looking for.
✍️ Meet the Author
Rich Leder has been a working writer for more than three decades. His credits include eight novels for Laugh Riot Press and 19 produced movies—television films for CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark and feature films for Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Longridge Productions, and Left Bank Films.
He’s been the lead singer in a Detroit rock band, a restaurateur, a Little League coach, an indie film director, a literacy tutor, a magazine editor, a screenwriting coach, a wedding consultant (it’s true), a PTA board member, a HOA president, a commercial real estate agent, and a visiting artist for the UNCW Film Studies Department, all of which, it turns out, was grist for the mill.
Connect with Rich Leder:
Website | Amazon | Goodreads
🌟 Closing Notes
Thanks for stopping by my spotlight on Extraterrestrial Noir! Rich Leder’s unique blend of satire, suspense, and sci-fi flair makes this a one-of-a-kind read. Don’t forget to enter the $25 Amazon/BN gift card giveaway using the link or embedded form below, and be sure to visit the other tour stops for more interviews, guest posts, and book fun.
💫 Happy reading — and watch the skies!
🎁 Giveaway!
Enter below for your chance to win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card —courtesy of the author.
If the raffle box above is hidden, enter here to win a $25 Amazon/BN gift card.
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