Author Interview, Excerpt & Giveaway - Yours Truly, 2095 by Brian Paone

Yours Truly, 2095

by Brian Paone 

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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.

 

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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.

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Talking with author Brian Paone!

 

 

What is your writing environment? 

-       My environment, when I was writing “Yours Truly, 2095,” was my dining room table in Japan. I lived in Japan the entire time, from the incarnation of the idea, all the way down to its release date in print. Now that we have moved back to America, I have my own office, so when its time to tackle the 4^th book, I’ll be doing it from the comfort of my first legitimate office.

 

Who is your perfect hero/heroine and why? 

-       Someone with a ton of flaws and has a lot to learn. I love when characters show personal growth and are almost a different person by the end of the story. Whether it’s the loss of innocence, redemption, acceptance… someone who is flawed and has a ton of room to grow, and they actually DO grow. All 3 of my books, my main character is redeemed somehow or fixes a major flaw in their life. Imperfect heroes are my favorite.

What authors have caught your interest lately and why? 

-       Randy Blazak, Kim Loraine, Stephanie Carroll, and Douglas Esper. Randy Blazak’s debut novel, “Mission of the Sacred Heart” came out in 2012, and it took me two days to read it. I hadn’t fallen in love with a book like that in a long time. Its like a cross between High Fidelity, The Commitments, and K-Pax, if you can imagine. He’s been posting online that the sequel is almost finished, and I’ll be the first to buy it. Kim Loraine is the author of the Golden Beach series. I have read the first 2 books in the series, “Restoration” & “Renovation.” From what I hear, the series story arc is going to consist of 4 novels and a novella. They are romance, but with teeth. Quick paced and never “supermarket Fabio romance.” I’m looking forward to reading the other 2 books in the series once they are released. Stephanie Carroll wrote a gothic historical fiction novel called, “A White Room.” I stumbled on this book completely by accident, and it turned into one of those gems that I raved and told everyone about. Douglas Esper has a book out called, “A Life of Inches.” I read this on the plane from Japan to America in July, and I usually don’t like sports stories, but I thought this was fantastic because the sporting story was just the foundation. The real story is how hard it is for us always compare ourselves to people who we can never be like. I thought it was a great peek into the ugly side of jealousy.

 

What type of book have you always wanted to write? 

-       The kind that makes its way onto the big screen! Ha!

 

Top 3 things on your bucket list? 

-       Buy a DeLorean

-       See Electric Light Orchestra live in concert

-       Drive to said ELO show in my DeLorean

 

How did you get the idea for this particular 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.

 

What is your favorite scene in your new release? 

-      I don’t want to post any spoilers, but the club scene on the moon. There is a club in the city on the moon called the Shangri-La where bands play. A major incident and turning point of the book happens inside that club during a concert. Making the scene feel claustrophobic, and moving my characters around the club to put them in the right position for the “hand over mouth” moment of the book, was a lot of fun for me to flush out. That scene, and the scene inside a hallway during a Fourth of July block party, where everything that happened prior in the book, comes to a head inside that hallway. That’s all I’m going to say.

What are you working on now and when can we expect it to be available? 

-       I will begin outlining my 4^th book in a few months. Tentatively untitled, it’s going to be a comedic-military novel, almost in the style of the film Mr. Mom with Michael 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.

 

What do you like to do when you are not writing? 

-       Music. Music is really my life. I am a musician. I have released 7 albums over the last 20 years. If I’m not writing a new song, or playing a show, or working on a new album, then I am listening to music. And football. I am a football junkie. I live and breathe professional football.

What is one interesting fact about you that readers don’t know?

-       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.
 

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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.

 

www.BrianPaone.com  

www.facebook.com/BrianPaonesNovels  

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=brian+paone&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Abrian+paone

 

 

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GIVEAWAY:

 

Brian Paone will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.  Follow the tour HERE

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway