Brian Paone will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn host.
Yours Truly, 2095
by Brian Paone
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. What or who
inspired you to start writing?
-
I think
that is a dual answer. It would have been a handful of teachers starting as
early as 7th grade up through senior year in high school who
encouraged me to write short stories. But it wasn’t until I read my first
Stephen King novel, The Dark Half,
when I started thinking about long form writing. I tried to write a novel in
high school in 1991, which even though I finished at 350 pages, it was
terrible, and I went back to strictly short stories again. That’s where I’d
stay until 2006, when I wrote what would actually be my first published novel.
2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?
-
Time-travel
stories tend to lean toward one of two directions. First, there is what I call
the “whirring lights” time –travel stories, where there is a concrete time
machine that flings people through time. Think of everything from The Time Machine to Bill & Ted’s to Back to
the Future. Then there are more avante gaurde time-travel stories where its
more ambiguous how it happens, such as The
Jacket, Riding the Metro, and The
Time Traveler’s Wife. But every once in a while, there are stories that try
to bring some science into the explanation, like Timeline, 12 Monkeys, and A
Sound of Thunder (and even, to some extent, Interstellar). These are the time-travel stories that I felt were
necessary in order to tell my story properly. I didn’t want the big lavish
sci-fi spinning machine, but I also didn’t want the abstract ZIP and the person
has traveled without some explanation. So in Yours Truly, 2095, time-travel is possible through the real-life
quantum theory of entanglement. I used the science-based fact of what happens
to particles at the molecular level when they are entangled, and then
separated, to make time-travel viable for my characters.
3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?
-
One of
my favorite albums of all time, is Electric Light Orchestra’s 1981 concept
album, Time. Somewhere in my late teens / early twenties, I thought that
the storyline of the Time album
should be flushed out either as a novel or a movie. I knew, at the time, that I
was nowhere NEAR talented enough yet to take on such a task as writing the
adaptation of the album. After publishing two novels, one in 2007 and the other
in 2010, I believed that I was ready to tackle turning the plotline and
story-arc of ELO’s Time album into a
full length novel. I began working on the outline in February 2012, and the
first step was to take the lyrics of all 16 songs, and dissect their meaning
(both literally and figuratively) and put together a cohesive linear storyline.
I wanted to do what The Who’s Tommy,
and Pink Floyd’s The Wall movies did
for those albums… but just in novel format. The Time album has a very concrete characters and storyline (as does The Wall and Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) but
there is enough unsung moments in the progression of the story, that I knew I
had to fill in the gaps of the lyrics with my own literary license. In the
lyrics we are told, flat-out, that the main character (Jeff) is from the 1980’s
and wakes up in 2095, with no idea or explanation how he got there, that there
is a woman who is a perfect robotic replica of his wife (Julie) from the 80’s,
he wants nothing more to return to his wife but there is some issued that need
to be resolved in their marriage, that he takes a one way trip to the Moon to
find his way back, and there are multiple new organizations controlling the
world’s power. These are very specific lyrics that move the album forward.
After pulling out the lyrics that could not be disputed, I then went through
line by line and interpreted the lyrics that could be left up to the
imagination of the listener of what the lyrics meant, and how I was going to
make it a concrete part of my book. For instance, there is a lyric in the album
that says: “Someone has broken out of Satellite Two, look very carefully it
might be you!” That was pretty ambiguous inside the song, so I had to make a
decision to what exactly Satellite Two even WAS, who the “someone” was, why it
might be a clone of someone else… and then I had to try to make it work inside
the storyline around it. The album is 16 tracks, and just shy of 50 minutes in
length. The book took me almost 40 months to write because I wanted to stay as
true to every single word on the album that I could.
4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?
-
With
this book, the fact that Electric Light Orchestra is one of my favorite bands,
and I have been listening to, and studied, the Time album in great detail, but also, I did about four months of
research on the theory on entanglement and entropy, which is the “how” of my
time-travel. I read multiple books on the theories, watched hours of lectures,
and other studies, before I even started writing.
5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?
-
I grew
up living on the grounds of a funeral home, and I have webbed feet. And oh, I’m
a police officer and have been in law enforcement since 2002.
6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?
-
I will
begin outlining my 4th book in a few months. Tentatively untitled,
its going to be a comedic-military novel, almost in the style of the film Mr. Mom with Micheal Keaton. This will
be about the true adventures I had when my wife, who is an Officer in the Navy,
left me alone with our two toddlers when she got deployed for 8 months, and the
learning curve and craziness that ensued during those months. I’m hoping to
have a 2017 release schedule for that. I also have a short story coming out in
October in an anthology of authors from all over the world called, A Matter of Words.
7. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?
-
Blazak:
because he’s the owner of the hippest nightclub on the Moon!
8. Can you give us a sneak peak into this book?
-
The
book is billed as a time-travel romance mystery, because on the surface, that’s
what it is. But what you don’t know, until you start reading, is that the main
character isn’t who you thought it was during the first 150 pages. Its only in
the last 200 pages that you realize that the main character is someone else,
and the book is less about time-travel and more about artificial intelligence
being able to develop a soul and free will. We all love the M. Knight Shyamalan
plot-twist as much as the next guy, but my plot twist happens so slowly, that
you don’t realize that I’ve pulled a classic plot twist on you until you reach
the end of the book. That was the hardest part of writing the book… trying to
get that just right for the reader, so the shift in focus felt natural and the
reader didn’t realize that they were actually empathizing with the wrong
character right from the beginning.
10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?
-
My
career as an author would never have happened, or at least to the success that
I have had, if one of my best friends hadn’t died in 2005. At first, that’s
going to sound like a terrible statement, but you’ll see what I mean. Up until
2006, I had only been writing short stories (except for that terrible attempt
at a novel in 1991 when I was sophomore in high school). My friend David, who
was the lead singer of the industrial-rock band God Lives Underwater who
enjoyed some commercial success in the 90s, had been struggling with drug
addiction, depression, and the throes of the music business since I met him in
1995. We became fast friends, and I was one of the few people who stuck with
him through all his highs and lows. When he passed away in 2005, I didn’t know
where the put my grief. I just couldn’t find a healthy outlet for how I was
feeling about losing him. It was suggested to me to write a memoir about our friendship,
but in novel format so it read more like a story than a journal. My wife was
the biggest advocate of me using my grief to write my first novel, and recant
all the good and bad times that come with being close to someone who struggles
with addiction, and someone who was on major tours, on MTV, and all over the
radio. He was a multi-dimensional person, and our friendship was trying and
rewarding all at the same time. I started writing what would eventually become
my first novel, Dreams Are Unfinished
Thoughts, in January 2006 and it was published in October, 2007—on the
second anniversary of his death. The book sold above and beyond anyone’s
expectations, and that’s how I got into writing novels.
11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)
-
Best
advice I ever received: Don’t write while drinking!
-
Worst
advice I ever received: Don’t write while drinking!
12. Do you outline your books or just start writing?
-
All 3
books were done a little different from each other. My first book, Dreams Are Unfinished Thoughts, was
outlined more in journal format before it went to narrative. My second book, Welcome To Parkview, had no outline. I
wrote stream of consciousness and just let the story take itself where it naturally
wanted to go. Then when I was finished, I had to go back and almost write it a
second time now that I knew how everything played out. With the new book, Yours Truly, 2095, I did the most amount
of outline, but it was done on a poster board with different colored Sharpies,
tracing the character’s time travel journeys back and forth to make sure none
of the lines crossed and created paradoxes that I couldn’t explain. When I was
done, I could hold the poster board up and see the whole book in the form of
Sharpie lines crisscrossing and making a graft that then needed to be turned
into words.
13. How do you maintain your creativity?
-
Music.
I seem to get more ideas for plotlines by a single line of lyric from a song
I’m listening to. And then I let it mull around in my head for a bit, and next
thing I know, I have a story arc and characters. This happened just recently
with Jethro Tull’s song “Rock Island.” I was listening to it and I got this
whole lengthy plotline that far extended the lyrics of the song. It might be
something I will return to at a later time and try to develop into something
substantial.
14. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?
-
I have
2 answers for that. The character that, if were a real person, I would want to
hang out with the most, is Bruce. He is the co-researcher who invented
time-travel and is the only one in the book who really knows what’s going on
with everyone and the truth behind all the time travel conspiracies. But on top
of being an incredible genius, he is the “partyer.” He enjoys being in the lab
just as much as he enjoys getting drunk at a concert. Bruce is kind of like a
living version of a mullet haircut: business in the front and all party in the
back. Now, as the author, the character I had the most enjoyment writing and
developing, was Rael. She is a triple threat vixen that can seduce you in one
minute and then crush you the very next. She’s sweet and sour at all the same
time, and I had the most fun interjecting her into scenes and watching her
light the place up.
16. Anything else you might want to add?
-
Yours Truly, 2095 might be inspired and based on a concept
album from the 80s, but it is every bit my own creation as it is developed from
those lyrics. Even though it is a time-travel story on the surface, I believe
that it is a romance novel about a couple’s redemption at its core. The book
may take place in the distance future, but all the conflicts are struggles that
we deal with in our relationships in our everyday lives in the here and now. I
believe that this book can be enjoyed just as equally by fans of straight up
science-fiction time-travel stories, as well as fans of romance mysteries. The
science-fiction jargon is not crammed in your face, nor is the romance angle
shoved down your throat either. It’s a nice blend of both, allowing the story
to ebb and flow on its own, as Jeff slowly figures out what is truth and what
is a lie.
BLURB:
Jeff
Blue-the victim of a time-travel conspiracy-wakes up trapped in the year 2095.
The only familiar face is J0; a robotic copy of the wife he left behind in
1981. But can she be trusted?
J0 could be the only key to unlock
Jeff's journey home, but it will require her to do something against her
programming-something human.
During Jeff's perilous journey
through the future, he will have to discover the truth about J0's origins, and
solve the mystery behind how he wound up in 2095, in order to uncover the
reality of his own destiny.
Armed with a one-way ticket to the
moon, Jeff must race against the clock to seize what might be his last chance
to return home to his time. A time without hover cars, Justice Computers, or
TeleSkins-a time over one hundred years ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
The
Xanadu moonliner taxied to the launch pad. I didn’t realize how terrified I was
until that moment. This was really happening. I was gripping the arm-rests so
tightly that my knuckles had gone ghost-white. I tried to loosen my grip, but
my palms would not let go.
“How
long is takeoff?” I asked in a whisper.
“About
eight minutes.”
“All
right. I think I can handle eight minutes.”
The
Xanadu moonliner propelled us heavenward toward a frontier I could have never,
in my wildest dreams, imagined I would be visiting. Takeoff was smooth and
effortless. I had experienced worse turbulence when I would let Julie drive the
Thunderbird back in 1981 than I did from blasting through the Earth’s
atmosphere in the moonliner. During the time it took for us to get from the
ground to outer space, passengers were going about their normal business just
like any other commute. I slowly allowed my knuckles to regain some of their
natural color.
As
smooth as liftoff was, I could still tell when we broke through the exosphere.
Outer space! Even though I was strapped in by my five-point harness, I
immediately felt the weightlessness of my body hover slightly in my seat. Bruce
made eye contact with me just long enough for him to smile. This was it. We
were really going to the moon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Brian Paone was born and
raised in the Salem, Massachusetts area. An award winning author, his love of
writing began through the medium of short stories at the young age of twelve.
After almost 20 years of consistently writing short stories for only his
friends and family to read, Brian’s first full-length novel, a personal memoir
about his friendship with a rock-star drug addict entitled, “Dreams Are
Unfinished Thoughts,” was published in 2007. Brian’s second novel, “Welcome to
Parkview,” was published in 2010 and is a macabre journey through a
cerebral-horror landscape. Brian’s latest novel, “Yours Truly, 2095,” was
published in 2015 and follows a man who wakes up one morning, trapped in the
future, to discover he’s been the victim of a time-travel conspiracy. Brian is
married and has 3 children. Brian’s wife is an Officer in the US Navy. He is
also a self-proclaimed roller coaster junkie, and his favorite color is
burnt-orange.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
Brian Paone will be awarding
a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour,
and a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn host.
RAFFLECOPTER CODE:
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1147">Enter
to win a $25 Amazon/BN GC - a Rafflecopter giveaway
