Phones, Clones, and Takeovers!

I'm super excited to bring you Tara Tyler taking time to talk tech (holy alliteration batman!). For those of you who don't already know, Tara is celebrating the release of her third book and the second in her Detective Cooper Series. I've been reading it, and it's a great techno thriller with feels similar to Asimov (in the imagining a world with technological advancements) but with modern style and story telling. And with that: Take it away Tara!

Look into the Future!
I love finding useful new gadgets. It's also part of my job to come up with plausible future technology - like from the movie, ROBOTS, "See a need. Fill a need." So from time to time I like to see what the techie geeks are working on for our future needs or enjoyment! Here are some of my faves from this article - they have more photos.

Holographic phone - the "Apple Black Hole"
It's similar to my Compucenter Imager! A desktop 3D, touchable phone.

Clear phone
A glass, see-through phone. Not sure why, but it looks cool.

Wrist PC
It's got a giant screen, for a watch, but still so tiny to work with, I can't imagine it being useful. And you have to remove it to use it. Keep trying, guys!

Fitness @ Work
Now that's something I could use. Exercise in my chair while I work. I love it!

And the best for last...

The Mercator
This is the closest I've seen to my QV wrist imager in Pop Travel and Simulation - the concept is tres cool! Would love it to happen!

That's a bout it. They had some other cool looking, futuristic items like clock radios, lamps, bikes, chargers, etc. But it's all mainly aesthetics or combined gadgets we already have, not really enhanced functions, yet.

What I can't wait to see is a really cool robot that does housework. Roomba is a start. But I need a Rosie! In my lifetime? Probably not.

What useful gadget would you like to see in real life?


Thanks for letting me visit, Rena! I can't wait to help you with your release!! (Make sure you tell me when!)

SIMULATION
by Tara Tyler
Release Date: Sept 14, 2015

In 2082, androids are an essential part of daily life. Some are helpful, some would make better toasters, and some are so human-like they're creepy. Back in Atlanta, Detective Cooper's latest client has him searching for her boyfriend who she thinks was replaced by a simulation, an illegal clone android. The guy also happens to be a popular new congressman.

As if the case wasn't frustrating enough, Cooper keeps crossing paths with his ex, FBI Agent Geri Harper who's looking for the same guy. As Cooper closes in, Geri is kidnapped. But when she resurfaces in Washington and goes on a killing spree, he knows it isn't her. Now under suspicion himself, Cooper must find the real Geri to prove her innocence, not to mention hunt down the powerful villain behind it all. Never a dull moment.

SIMULATION delivers more technology, more intense action, more humor, and more, distinct new characters. Come along for the ride.

Available Now!

Amazon ~~ Barnes & Noble ~~ Kindle

Goodreads giveaway!

Tara Tyler writes sci fi and fantasy action-adventures from her little corner of the world in Ohio as she tries to keep up with her three boys and coach husband. Always making time to write, she sometimes puts off chores and lets laundry pile up... hence, she's also the Lazy Housewife, offering advice and tips to other gals out there trying to do it all without going crazy. She and her housewife friends blog at The Really Real Housewives of America.

tara tyler talks and tweets and facebooks

And don't forget the Rafflecopter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Writing and remodelling, the late night edition

Things get lost in the media sometimes

Sometimes, reality gets lost in the media. The news about the county next door was tracking on the national news for a couple days. To be clear, when you live in my part of California, your county is never on the news for a good reason, and Lake County has spent much of the summer attempting to burn itself to the ground. And succeeding. The fire started on Saturday, quickly grew to enormous, and then went straight to absurd. If you don't want to sleep peacefully again, I recommend watching some of the videos people posted on YouTube. On Monday, it was all over the national news. By Tuesday it was in the side bar of the news (and on Tuesday the fire was growing, forcing different people to evacuate, burning more buildings to the ground. By Wednesday it was three pages back. It makes me think about how the last thing we saw on the news from Nepal hadn't done much followup on that enormous earthquake. How the coverage of Japan after the tsunami was focused almost entirely unbelievable footage, but that we cut out only after it looked like the nuclear reactors weren't going to cause a complete meltdown. How much of the story are we missing because the draw of news is to cover the bigger stories, the more unbelievable the better. Just some food for thought, but it doesn't look like the news cares about follow through. If you want to know the whole truth, there isn't a venue for that because we consume awe and shock and fear. Sometimes I wonder that as we are consuming the media, it is eating us as well.

Just a little something for the Monday

Absolutely one of my favorite things as a writer is getting to have other writers on my blog.

Especially when it's a RELEASE DAY!!!

Tara Tyler's latest book, Simulation is here!

After Pop Travel, Geri convinced Cooper to move back to Atlanta, but for familiar reasons, things didn't work out... In Simulation, Geri is fighting her way back to full-fledged, solo agent status, but first has to deal with one more annoying sidekick on an equally annoying case. Meanwhile, Cooper takes his mind off Geri leaving him by throwing himself into his work, investigating an illegal clone android simulation operation. Sparks fly when Cooper and Geri's cases lead them down the same path. Of course Hasan wants to help them with their cases, and connives a plan to get them back together in the niddle of all the chaos!

SIMULATION delivers more technology, more intense action, more humor, and more exciting new characters. Come along for the ride.

SIMULATION
by Tara Tyler
Release Date: Sept 14, 2015

In 2082, androids are an essential part of daily life. Some are helpful, some would make better toasters, and some are so human-like they're creepy. Back in Atlanta, Detective Cooper's latest client has him searching for her boyfriend who she thinks was replaced by a simulation, an illegal clone android. The guy also happens to be a popular new congressman.

As if the case wasn't frustrating enough, Cooper keeps crossing paths with his ex, FBI Agent Geri Harper who's looking for the same guy. As Cooper closes in, Geri is kidnapped. But when she resurfaces in Washington and goes on a killing spree, he knows it isn't her. Now under suspicion himself, Cooper must find the real Geri to prove her innocence, not to mention hunt down the powerful villain behind it all. Never a dull moment.

Available Now!

Amazon Print ~~ Amazon Kindle ~~ Barnes & Noble
Goodreads giveaway!

Tara Tyler writes sci fi and fantasy action-adventures from her little corner of the world in Ohio as she tries to keep up with her three boys and coach husband. Always making time to write, she sometimes puts off chores and lets laundry pile up... hence, she's also the Lazy Housewife, offering advice and tips to other gals out there trying to do it all without going crazy. She and her housewife friends blog at The Really Real Housewives of America.

tara tyler talks and tweets and facebooks

And don't forget the Rafflecopter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stupid silly fan girl moment

So, I've been slowly becoming addicted to subscription boxes (to be clear, slowly was, one month I had one subscription box and the next month I realize I'm signed on for four, and contemplating a fifth--No, I don't have a problem, why do you ask?)

I signed up because I've been suffering from a bit of apathy when it comes to reading. Sometimes, books really strike a cord and I  love them. Sometimes, books that I feel like I should really love are just sort of "meh."

I ran into too many of the "meh" books--and these books sold really, really well, that I was starting to doubt my whole "reads enough to consider being a writer" thing. It was bad.

So I made sure that one of my subscription boxes was for books (two of them are for books, but that's a longer story).

Subscription boxes are expensive, so I laid out some rules:

Rule 1. I would read everything they sent me.

Rule 2. If I couldn't be bothered to read it, I'd cancel the subscription.

Rule 3. If I liked it, I'd make sure to tell others about it and rate the book on Amazon and Goodreads.


How'd it go?

So a couple weeks ago, I got my first box. It was a Lit Cube box



Inside was the book Spelled, by Betsy Schow. And it was a blast. It was light hearted, fun, adventurous and a retelling of a fun favorite bit of story. It had enough hints of the original Wizard of Oz books that it kept tickling the old memories from when I was a kid, and it was just fun. I had a hard time with the first couple chapters, but then everything was smooth sailing after those first bits of chapters. I'll be posting my reviews up on Goodreads and Amazon soon. In the mean time, it was a fun read, and I enjoyed it.

IWSG: a little something

Insecure Writer's Support Group is brought to you by the concerted efforts of The NINJA Captain, Alex. This month he's roped Julie Flanders, Murees Dupé, Dolorah at Book Lover, Christine Rains, and Heather Gardner into cohosting, so be sure to visit their blogs and give them a high five for patrolling the neighborhood.

I am not gonna lie: I had a super deep and meaningful post lined up. But sometimes, deep and meaningful isn't as important as a laugh (or even a smile). So without further ado, I unleash upon the internet my first comic!

Feel free to repost, pin, whatever, but please link it back to me.

One breath at a time

I haven't been blogging as much as I like.

I haven't been sleeping as much as I like.

Let me be clear on this point as well: I haven't been writing as much as I like.

My life feels like it exploded. I'm half moved into a house that's half done (and 3/4 left to do!). I'm working overtime at the day job because construction is expensive.

I've passed the end of the rope. Last week I averaged 5 hours of sleep a night for the whole week. This is not Rena at her best.

I start making poor choices. Things seem bigger than they are. I react more.

I react.

In short, I'd be a terrible character in a novel.

So I unpack a box. I fix a hole in the wall. We replaced a broken window. One foot in front of the other. A blog post here. A short story there. Life will return.

There's a saying that I sums up the determination to keep moving forward when I'm overwhelmed and can barely function in the reality of my own life: If you have to walk through Hell, why would you drag your heels while you're there?

So I unpack another box. Grout more tile (more??? And we're not DONE YET???). Hey Rena, is that cement in your hair?

Don't judge me.

Also, that grout has sparkling glass pieces in it. That's not cement, it's jewelry (also, it's the stain proof grout, so that's not coming out without bleach).

IWSG - A rose by any other name would be 13% less awesome

This month's IWSG is co hosted by Nancy Gideon, Bob R Milne, Doreen McGettigan, Chrys Fey, Bish Denham, and Pat Garcia.

OF course, you should always hop on by the Ninja Captain's secret camp and jump on the linky. 

Right on to the main event. 

I don't know if anyone else saw this, but here it is. This article makes me want to cry. 

Go ahead, go read it. 

A lot of people are saying that it doesn't mean anything. A lot of people are saying that it just means that agents are nicer to men because they figure women can handle the truth but men need to be coddled. 

I'm afraid it does mean something. It's the truth. In academia, they did a similar experiment with applicants to work in science labs across the country and found that male applicants were seen as 13 percent more competent when the only difference in their resume was whether it was a girl's name or a boy's name. 13 percent. The author of this article quotes much higher numbers, ~ 33%, but it's the bias that is important to understand. It's important to note that the lab technician experiment had exactly the same bias across both sexes. Well respected, women scientists rated the boy's application higher than the girl's and the only difference was the name.

I've struggled with sexism in my writing before. It is so pervasive that the first comments out of people's mouths when I pitched a particular book with a woman protag who needed to go save the world was "but who's going to watch her kids?"

No really, that was the feedback I got. Nevermind that the mom is going out to SAVE the World and therefore HER KIDS! Everyone wanted to make sure she was raising those kids right. Oddly, when I changed the pitch to make sure that the kids were responsibly being watched, they feedback was, "but how can she leave her kids to go fight a war?"

This always upset me. Women leave their kids to go fight wars. They have always done so. In recent days, they have done so in the US Armed Forces. And we don't have a lot of fiction that captures how they feel absolutely torn inside about how they want to be the ones tucking their kids into bed at night, but someone has to protect and serve our nation. 

No one asks Superman who's watching his kids, he just has to save the world. This sort of sexism and bias has hurt me in many ways, probably ways I'll never realize, so this article about a woman changing her name makes me want to stop fighting. It makes me want to close down my blog, delete my FB and twitter accounts and set up shop as Guy Fasseless. 

So, I'm insecure because I already know that just having my name on the book means it's already seen as at least 13% not as good as if I wrote as Robert Rocford. 

Thoughts? Comments? 

(also, I totally reserve the right to delete comments that are just nasty, as this is my blog and all)

Moving and intermittent availability

Sweet mother of the seven plots, I am so tired. I'm also moving, and no, that doesn't mean I'm finished remodeling. I get closer everyday.

Somewhere over the last year, I stopped doing weights. Now that i'm schlepping boxing around, I can honestly say: BAD IDEA. On the plus side, I'll get a few weeks of carting around my library boxes prior to the main event: Moving my baby grand piano!

In renovation news, well here it is, a warning not to cut corners at the end. 

A pile of broken dreams or a steel wrecking ball?

I came across an old bit of a post that I'd saved but never published. (remember, we aren't supposed to write about querying, despite the fact that it's one of the hardest things writers do, just after submissions, reading bad reviews, getting dropped by publisher and having agent leave the business).

Anyhow, what I found amazing was how much this feeling doesn't seem to change. Enough prologue, here's a clip from a bit of a distant post that's only now seeing the light of day.





I'm not gonna lie to you: my heart has been broken.

My dreams have been crushed.

I've seen what it looks like when everything I've dreamed has been burned down to the bitter ash. It ain't pretty.

But, as they say, Life goes on. Life doesn't care that your heart is shattered. Life doesn't care that you were broken. Life goes on, with or with out you.

And the frightening thing, is that all aspects of life go on. I got off the querying horse for a while. I needed a break, like for real. Sure, I have a ton of books just ready to hit go, but I needed to step away because sometimes publishing is crazy. Every book I've queried has broken my heart in some way or another, and now I'm back at that point where I'm trying to screw up my courage and do it again.

I'm back to reading agent bios and interviews, a pass time I'd sworn off. As I read, I find myself falling in love with them, my mind painting a picture of what my life would look like on the other side of finding the agent who will take me on.

I've been here before. I've stood on this shore and watched those waves come in. I always dream they'll be the waves to launch my boat, but instead, they eat away at the base of the cliff. It has always ended the same.

Like a fool, I find that there is still hope, and I wonder how? 

Where did you come from, hope? Did you not see how this ended last time? What about the time before? And the time before that? Why are you the one without reason, Hope? How did you survive the pyres on which I burned my last dream? How are you still alive, letting me fall in love again?

So, as you can see, I'm an idiot. My heart has taken leave of its senses and somehow--magically, for I had nothing to do with it--has reassembled itself to the point of feeling like an indestructible sphere of annihilation. 


But then I hesitate. This hurt last time. Am I ready to have this dream ground under the heel of a business model? Is my heart as indestructible as it pretends?

nope.

But it's too late, I've already jumped.

The current is faster than I remembered.

Sink or swim.

Just a late post about revising and remodeling

I'm in revision hell right now.

I'm also in remodeling hell.

They are eerily similar.

And a bonus post!

Yes, two posts in one week (remember when I posted three times a week? I was crazy!!! Today I have Tara who's showing off her brand new cover for Pop Travel! Take it away Tara!





So happy to be here at the Doc's! Dr. Faerie Godmother, that is! Rena is the best! I've been enjoying this woman's sarcasm and scientific jargon for ages! Thanks for helping me out, woman!

AND Rena is also one of our newest authors at Curiosity Quills! Her hilarious book, ACNE, ASTHMA, AND OTHER SIGNS YOU MIGHT BE HALF DRAGON (I mean, just the title, ha!) is due out in November. And Rena, make sure you let me help you with your release!

Well, I'm going on a little rant today (don't worry, it's got a happy ending, all my stories do!)

Rena's book makes me think I could be half dragon with all my skin problems. Wouldn't that be cool?? But since it's not true, it's just kinda sad and annoying. It also makes me wonder. Has anyone else noticed how rampant allergies, autism, and even vitiligo (white spots where the skin pigment dies) are with kids these days? They're epidemic! Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the extended amount of time we all spend inactive indoors on screens. We are all connected all the time. You know you feel naked without your phone!

this is where my boys are headed...

So here's my crazy theory: All this inside idleness is causing our immune systems to weaken, causing our pigments to be unnecessary to protect us from the sun, causing our brains to turn to mush, and our bodies to flab - ever see WALL*E? My point! I don't believe in the big bang theory (great show tho!) but I do believe in evolution as in survival of the fittest and adapting and changing over time... things that make me go HMM! Or it could all just be my overactive imagination!! I am a writer, after all!

Thanks again, Rena for letting me rant and for letting me show everyone my new POP TRAVEL cover - it's eye-catching! And the re-release has a sneak peek at the first chapter of SIMULATION which comes out Sept 14th!

POP TRAVEL
by Tara Tyler
Re-released July 1, 2015

In 2080, technology has gone too far for private detective J. L. Cooper. He thinks he can avoid pop travel teleportation, until he stumbles onto a video of a pop traveler who turns to dust.

Sparking a series of murders, attempts on his life, and threats to his brother, Cooper wants to pass off the evidence but knows he’s being watched and can’t trust anyone. And who would believe him?

With help from the neurotic genius “Creator” of pop travel and a beautiful Southern charmer, Cooper must expose the deadly glitch and shut it down or die trying. No problem.

Amazon ~~~ B&N ~~~ Goodreads

Tara Tyler has had a hand at everything from waitressing to rocket engineering. After living up and down the Eastern US, she now writes and teaches math in Ohio with her three active boys and Coach Husband. Currently, she has two series, The Cooper Chronicles (techno-thriller detective capers) and Beast World (MG fantasy) She's an adventure writer who believes every good story should have a moral, and a few laughs!

Twitter ~~~ Facebook ~~~ Blog

Also by Tara Tyler, MG/YA Fantasy series, Beast World,

Book One: BROKEN BRANCH FALLS

a Rafflecopter giveaway

IWSG: Writing is like Iris hybridizing? But I thought it was like construction??

And here we go, another installment of writer's support group. Say "Hi" to the Ninja Captain and hop on the Linky. Also drop by our co-hosts, Charity Bradford, S.A. Larsen, AJ, Tamara Narayan, Allison Gammons, and Tanya Miranda! This blog hop has gotten huge, and we need all the wrangling we can get.

This week, I’m taking care of my mother’s Iris habit. No, really, we’ve reached addiction level, and to make matters worse, she has started breeding them. Last year, she made somewhere between 500 and 1400 seeds from her various crosses. Of those, some 300 or so sprouted and are currently building up enough gumption to bloom (but probably not until next year).

And out of these hundreds, it’s likely only one or two will ever be taken to an Iris show. Hundreds of possible genetic combinations, and only one or two will get to go to the show to compete against the one or two brought by the other dozen hybridizers in the region. Of those, only a handful will go on to the next level of shows―if you’re into writing and publishing, I bet you know where this is going.

To start with, those seedlings, the original crosses are new genetic material, the likes of which the world has never experienced before. So are the thousands of novels cranked out by writers every year. No one else has a novel like yours. Sure, it has some similarities, but it’s a new creature altogether. And of the books that get published, well, only a few of them will do well in any given year.

As I’ve been watering those hundreds of seedlings (did I mention it was 110 today? I’m wilting just thinking about it), I keep thinking about how much writing is like those Iris. Some of those plants are going to make Iris blooms. Bright lovely blooms that look just like every other Iris introduced twenty years ago. Sure, the flower is pretty enough, but that’s not enough. If it looks just like the other flowers, it’s got nothing.

Almost as bad are the hideously ugly ones. Sure they have the form of an iris, but they come out looking like someone painted a flower using manure. No joke, dog doo brown is a common color in the iris world. But at least there aren’t a million other people introducing a flower called Hero’s Duty (my mom would probably say that’s because everyone else had the sense to throw out the plants that looked like the dog crapped on top of the stem).

But that’s part of the problem, with writing too. Your story might be amazing, but how much room is in the market for a book like yours? Worse, is that book really in the Poo Parade? Our society sort of romanticizes the idea that hard work pays off, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, you work really hard, you have a great book and a great idea, but all the hybridizers were crossing romance and sci fi this year and your book is suddenly elbow deep in competition.

So am I insecure? You betcha. I’m one of the seedlings yet to make a bloom and come to my fate (my mother has promised me she’ll ruthlessly destroy the unwanted flowers to make room for the ones she likes). And I feel, increasingly like there’s a lot riding on the outcome of this book.

I’m told nerves are part of the game.

Deep breathes.

Just a quick weekend post (with a video!)

These past couple weeks I've been away from writing in general because I've been working on my house. A kind commenter asked for a vlog about remodeling and writing, and here it is:

Something we don't talk about: publishing is more business than dreaming

Hey writers, you know that dream you have? You know the one. It's that one where you sell your book and it magically goes from manuscript to book and everyone buys it, and in the mean time you write your next masterpiece without so much as a care about the rest of the world? Yeah, that's a lie.

I know I'm not the first,  but I sort of feel like it should be mentioned that there's a reason most people only put out a book a year and it has nothing to do with all the time it takes to write a book. It's because of everything else. There's the writing--of course--then there's the editing. Then there's the crafting a pitch (long, medium, short, and super short), the author bio (I hope you've been working on that cause there's nothing more nerve wracking than explaining yourself in third person to complete strangers), marketing material, editing, editing, editing, proof reading (both the MS and the Galley), then there's the promotion, the chasing down leads, the helping other people because if you don't have friends and support, how are you going to get the word out there when it's your book's turn?

And that takes a lot of time. I mean a lot of time.

 I had hoped to be up to drafting my shiny new idea by now, but suddenly, there's a big line in front of it. It's stuff like "read manuscript One. Last. Time." and "Write Bio." and "Do I write the acknowledgement now or later?" (pro tip, if you have to ask, now is the time; you can always edit it later!) Then there's the "prep manuscript for submission," task and the "prep other manuscript for querying based off of recent feedback."

These things all take time, and not one of them is in the "write and edit the original book" category.

And the funny thing is that so many writers talk about this, but until you're in the midst of it, you can't see it. I remember reading about Shannon Messanger talking about this stuff. Beth Revis talked about it, too. I really looked up to them, but when they went on about the business side, I sort of wrote that off under the "must be nice" category.

And it is.

But I haven't written a new word in months, and that's not healthy for me or my writing. My goals all along were to get back to writing by the end of June. Do you know what month it is? Do you know what it's not looking good for?

Admittedly, most of my last 18 days of crazy stem from tearing out floors, walls and ceilings (vlog to follow soon, I hope), but it's still a real thing. I'm still not up to writing the next book. 

A wise person would set aside the writing, finish working on the house, and get back to writing when the house is in a livable state.

Let us be clear, my friends: I am not a wise person. I'm also not superwoman, so it's time to adjust some goals, and maybe recognize that the drafting isn't going to happen. (or maybe I can find a way to sneak in some minutes on my lunch break... Yeah, that's healthy, work ten hour shifts and spend my thirty minute lunch writing a novel, that's totally reasonable!)



And what about you all? How do you handle the crazies that come with the business side? How do you balance the "simple" things like having a family and writing?!