Props for Contract of Defiance from a man who knows his military scifi. Nice! Thanks, Scott.
All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.
The lovely and talented mystery author Susan Spann tagged me last week in a blog train called “The Next Big Thing.” The idea is to tell everyone about your current writing project. Because everyone loves spoilers! Okay, kidding. I may be the only one, but that’s not surprising given that I have been known to unwrap Christmas presents that were unwisely left under the tree before Christmas (and rewrap them to hide the evidence). Um...(Mom and Dad don’t read my blog. I hope.)Anyway, I released my first novel, Contract of Defiance, earlier this year and will be releasing it’s follow-up, Contract of Betrayal in spring of 2013. Here is a bit more information about it.
What is your working title of your book?Contract of Betrayal, the follow-up to Contract of DefianceWhere did the idea come from for the book?Writing a military science fiction novel like Contract of Defiance necessarily requires a solid thinking through of the socio-cultural and political foundations of the time and culture one is writing about. Thus, Defiance evolved as a story about a possible future that was too big to be contained in a single book (and, if I’m being honest, took too much time and effort to think up to want to forget about after a single book. Every author knows how invested we get in our stories and characters; it’s the ultimate in codependent relationships). With a juicy history and social order, and a number of fun and crazy characters, the setting Defiance naturally lent itself to further development and adventures, and I started penning ideas and a rough outline for Betrayal before Defiance was complete (having to remind myself everyday not to get too attached to the new storylines yet because I wasn’t sure who would survive the first one). Thankfully, the ending of Defiance left itself wide open for a sequel.What genre does your book fall under?Military science fiction. To be technical, however, one could easily make the argument that it is anti-military sf.Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?Oooh, I love this question! And since many of my character ideas come from characteristics and attributes of a variety of film characters, it’s an easy one to answer.Aly Erikson ~ Dina Meyer (think Starship Troopers)Karl Strahan ~ Karl Urban (think Doom)Janós Rajcik ~ Dwayne Johnson (think Doom)Venus ~ Lori Petty (think Tank Girl)Bodie Murdock ~ Gerrard Butler (think him with lots of facial hair)David Erikson ~ Martin Henderson (just think...mmm...)Patrick Brady ~ Josh Brolin (because he's been awesome since the Goonies)Kellen Vilbrandt ~ David Tennant (squirrely, yet clever)Bomani Desto ~ Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (just a bad ass)Eleanor Vitruzzi ~ Claudia Black (think Pitch Black)Kurasawa T'Kai ~ Ken WatanabeRob Cross ~ Rob Morrow (think Numb3rs)Quantum ~ John Lequizamo (c'mon, it's John Lequizamo. Think anything because he just rocks.)Doug Mason ~ Jason Statham (given the wide range of characters he plays, er...)Fuller Thompson ~ Toby Kebbell (think RocknRolla)Jeremy Lahoud ~ Keith Hamilton CobbWhat is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?When the Admin’s tyranny is no longer limited to hunting down criminals and vagabonds but spreads to threatening everything Aly, her crew, and the settlers of Agate Beach have built, they must decide whether to run or finally stand up and fight, maybe to the end.Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?I’ve had a lot of success publishing on my own and plan to continue the experiment.How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?About a year. The editing process...let’s just say, slightly longer.What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?Anything by Heinlein or the Honor Harrington series by David Weber.Who or what inspired you to write this book?I owe most of my writing inspiration to Stephen King—no one builds a set of characters like the King—but my scifi love comes more from movies. Everything from James Cameron’s Terminator and Aliens, to Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner, to Joss Whedon’s Serenity.What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?Based on some of the feedback I’ve received, one of the things that people have enjoyed about the style of Defiance, which carries over to Betrayal, is the closeness of perspective—the sense of being in the action—that the reader experiences from the story being told in the protagonist’s first person POV. The intent of this series is to keep the reader riveted by taking them on a wild ride through the fringes of space, hence making the action, danger, and suspense N.O.N.S.T.O.P.As you all know, I'm an action girl, but some of my favorite writers happen to be in categories far removed from the fringes of space. Yours may be too. So, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to these fabulous writers and encourage you all to visit their blogs to find the Next Big Thing!Molly GreeneDale Ivan SmithCari ZMartha BourkeStephen WoodfinA message for the tagged authors and interested others:Rules of the Next Big Thing*Use this format for your post*Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)*Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.Oh, and speaking of Christmas, i just got the BEST EVER pre-Christmas present. Please observe ~~> (Thank you, Mark C.!)
All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.
Great news to wake up to this morning. Contract of Defiance is named a top 5 Finalist in the 2012 Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Contest for Science Fiction/Fantasy. Yay! Nothing makes writing more gratifying than getting a good review and being highly ranked in a contest. It's incredibly validating. My friend and stellar contemporary fiction/mystery writer, Molly Greene, recently did a two-part blog series on how and why to enter contests that are well worth the read, here and here.So hats off to myself and the four other finalists! The winner will be announced in October, but as far as I am concerned, we were all winners when we entered the contest.SCI-FI/FANTASY…Bypass Gemini by Joseph LalloContract of Defiance by Tammy SalyerDremiks by Cassandra DavisThe Darkening Dream by Andy GavinWool Omnibus by Hugh Howey
All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0W__FNIGwA]We all have our peccadilloes; some people have too many cats, some people eat only white food. But I think most people agree, one of the strangest groups out there has to be roadies. In my annual homage to the Tour de France, which begins June 30th, here are a few reasons why "normal" people think roadies are weird.
On group rides, we think to ourselves things like, "wow, that guy has a nice set of cranks," or "that woman has one sexy saddle," and we're not referring to their bikes.
We feel naked in "normal" clothes because they don't cling like our cycling shorts.
No one can sit down in our offices because our bikes are leaning against the chairs. It's not like we're going to leave our babies outside.
Instead of things in our houses being fixed with duct tape, they are simply wrapped with old tubes.
During most rides, we clearly hear Phil and Paul in your head as they narrate our progress and prompt us to unpack our suitcases of courage.
Instead of an extra shirt in our gear bags, we have extra sets of arm and leg warmers.
We don't have friends. We have training partners (and this applies to all endurance athletes).
When faced with tough choices, we ask ourselves, "What would Lance do?"
We LIKE ice baths.
We have more cycling apps on our smart phones than we have numbers in our contact lists.
We find nothing strange about having around twenty things from which to drink out of in our kitchens, only two of which aren't bike bottles.
It seems perfectly reasonable to eat a pint of strawberry ice cream for breakfast on long ride days.
We consider it a personal insult when we are passed.
We find two-tone skin very appealing.
Our senses of propriety and taste are deeply wounded when we see handlebar tape that clashes with a paint job.
Full carbon makes us salivate.
We test different positions on downhills to see if we can bend the rules of physics to increase our terminal velocity.
Squirrels and other darting rodents terrify us.
We can eat three pints of strawberry ice cream after a ride and still be at a calorie deficit.
Our snot rockets could seriously injure small children.
We plan vacation schedules around the Giro and Le Tour.
We automatically call out "on your left" when passing other shoppers at the grocery store. (via wejazz)
When we compliment someone on their flashy jersey and they say, "bright colors make you faster," we take some time to seriously consider the possibility.
We don't think this or this or this are too high a price to pay for a good ride.
We no longer crack a grin at the brand names "Syn Lube" and "DZ Nuts." Lubing properly is, after all, serious business.
We can barely lift a bowling ball with our upper-body strength, but we could easily lift a Mini Cooper and its Sumo wrestling driver with the strength in our quads alone.
We buy or rent houses based largely on the length and quality of our bike commute to work.
We even shave your arms.
Strawberry ice cream.
We have a pet named "Cadence."
There are always empty Gu packets in our washing machines. (via wejazz)
Dan Wuori (@dwuori on Twitter) cracks us up.
We find ways to work exciting anecdotes about today's stage of whatever race into EVERY conversation. Thus, we're left to spend a lot of time talking to ourselves.
We buy new bikes instead of replacing our dead kitchen stoves. Whatever, we still have our barbequeuers.
We wanted to name our firstborn "Thor." (You know who you are :))
We hate gravel with the intensity most people reserve for brutal dictators or the guy who buys the last box of Honey Stingers.
Our partners have learned to preface simple requests of us after a long day of riding with "if you're not too tired..."
We read pedaltowardsdeath to be reminded of our mortality.
Our bike trainers have their own rooms.
And then of course, there are the Rules. (Thanks to wejazz for telling me about these.) Any and all who understand the above, feel free to add your own!**Just a heads up: I'll be doing a promotional free giveaway of my novel Contract of Defiance for Kindle and Kindle app owners on July 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Swing by Amazon to get your free copy!
If you read the other two posts in this series, particularly this one, you're aware of the many avenues and bits of software I explored in order to create my first ebook. After considerable trial and error since--I've put out a couple of shorter stories as standalones and my debut novel, Contract of Defiance--I can safely say that I've narrowed down the process to three specific tools. If you have these, you will be able to create your own ebook relatively easily (I'll mention again, I've created all my ebooks on a Mac).
The last post contained a bit of railing against Adobe InDesign as an over-robust tool for a ebook file generation, and that is true. You don't really need it once you are familiar with the required files that an .epub is comprised of. However, since I have it, I find it a useful and quick option for generating my .epub folder structure.The real gem here is KindleGen (er, maybe that's what they should have called it?). There may be wide variance in public opinion about the megalith that is Amazon depending on who you ask, but one thing they can claim nearly all credit for is almost single-handedly laying the foundation of epublishing--at least in the sense of making it available and accessible to us wordophile masses. Their KindleGen .epub converter is easily the most user-friendly and explanatory tool I've seen.I have only used KindleGen in connection with the Kindle Previewer, which I prefer over the Adobe Digital Editions viewer for two reasons: often, I'll find that graphics do not display in ADE correctly, whereas I have not had that problem with the Kindle Previewer. The other reason is simply that the Kindle Previewer is a better, more intuitive user interface. The best news of all, is that once you have both the Kindle Viewer and KindleGen properly installed, when you open your .epub in the Kindle Previewer, it automatically creates a separate converted file as a .mobi. However, if there is anything wrong with the .epub, the application generates a lengthy and explicit detail of what exactly went wrong (down to the line number of whichever file threw your error). You can then fix that in your .epub, and re-convert. It really is an excellent tool for creating both versions of your ebook.For the sake of brevity, I'll just summarize the biggest takeaway for .epub creation, and that is, there are many ways to do it, but take it from someone who's tried a proportionately large number of them, the three tools above are all you need to get you where you want to go the fastest, and hopefully with the least amount of headaches. If anyone has questions about tools, or conversion steps, I'm happy to help. Feel free to send me a tweet @TammySalyer or comment below.
All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.
Wow, I don't really know what else to say, except that my novel, Contract of Defiance, is finally out. This little labor of love has been a work in progress since December 12th, 2005 (yep, I remember the day I started working on it), and has gone from a red-faced screaming infant, to a well-mannered (sorta), groomed, and presentable adult. Please visit my blog page to read more about it. For an insider peek at what the process of writing this novel has been like, my very good friend and mystery author, Susan Spann, has posted a conversation/interview between us on her amazingly informative blog. We study the ideas that form and differences between science fiction and speculative fiction, and take a deeper look into genres and how to make them fit.It's a great day! Hope everyone enjoys it and has the time to sink your teeth into whatever it is you love to read!
All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2008-2013 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use short quotes provided proper attribution is given.