Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Tanya Miranda | Author Interview

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A Selfish Moment : 

Jubilee Ray wakes up Saturday morning in a strange bed with a handsome guy asleep at her side and no memory of how she got there. Everett Salerno wakes up ecstatic about the incredible night he spent with Jubilee. She can’t wait to get out of his apartment and he can’t wait to start their romance. Jubilee is a blackout drunk. Everett is drunk with love.  

Their one-night-stand ends almost as quickly as it began, however fate has other plans in mind. In the next three days filled with impossible coincidences, humiliating moments, and mouthwatering recollections, Everett can’t find the right moment to express his intentions and Jubilee can’t let go of her past long enough to really give Everett a chance.
Neither Jubilee nor Everett can let go of that first night together. Was that one perfect evening a fluke, or was it a preview of something greater than they ever imagined?
eBook available at:  Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, Nook Paperback available at: CreateSpace (Amazon), Amazon


Dramani:

The Dramani orphans live among us. They were discovered decades ago and have been kept secret ever since. They look and sound human, and have similar DNA, so you would never suspect them. They have been raised as normal human beings, and have gone their entire lives without knowing their true origin.
They will never know the truth, unless they encounter one of their own.
In a city inhabited by over 8 million people, the chances of two aliens of the same species meeting are astronomical, but Sarah and Darren beat the odds. When their paths collide, their lives are altered forever.

eBook available at:  AmazonSmashwordsAppleKobo, Nook, Sony
Paperback available at:  AmazonBarnes & Noble, CreateSpace (Amazon)


Author Interview :  



Author Bio:
My name is Tanya Miranda. I am a writer of science fiction, romance, suspense...I still haven't settled on a specific genre yet. In a former life I was an I.T. professional in the retail industry. On the side, I build websites for small businesses and startups. But, at the heart of it all, I am a stay-at-home mother of two incredible children.

What inspires you to write?
Writing is something I’ve done since I was very young. I wrote poetry and short stories for as long as I can remember, but I never shared them with anyone except a few writer friends in high school.
Flash forward fifteen years after graduating college… work got more political than I’d expected and I found myself working late night and weekends with no reward. It was mentally, physically, and emotionally draining. This propelled my decision to take some time off to spend with my young children while they still thought I had magical powers.

A month after I quit my job, my daughter and I found a long letter that I had written to her before she was born. While I read it, she and my husband laughed and told me that it was really funny. Then she said, “Mommy, you should be a writer.” I haven’t stopped writing since.



What are you reading now?
Right now I am re-reading Ender’s Game as part of getting my daughter into science fiction novels. Her and my son both love sci-fi movies. After watching an adaptation of a novel, I tell her the parts that the movies leave out. This got her thinking about reading the original novels before watching the movies. 
She read the first few chapters of Enders Game and had a couple of questions that I could not answer because the details have been long forgotten. So I just picked it up this weekend in order to help her out.

For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
All the time! I play the roles out in my car, as I’m driving to pick up my son from kindergarten. Sometimes I forget the kids are in the car, and they catch me creating dialog. My daughter once asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was “writing”.

What advice would you give other writers?
Writing takes time and patience. Take your time to write the story you want to write, and be patient with the process. I rushed Dramani, my first novel, and had to go back and re-edit several times before the final version was released. My second novel, A Selfish Moment, was easier and more fun to write once I established my process.

How did you decide how to publish your books?
Dramani was a great learning experience. I got great feedback from my friends and family, as well as a few other people who read the earlier edition, but I couldn’t successfully pitch the idea it to an agent or directly to publishers.  So I thought, why not just self-publish? I have heard so much about it that I thought it would be a stepping stone to grabbing an agent. I rushed the production and was up on Amazon in November of 2012.

During a revision of A Selfish Moment, I established my process. Once A Selfish Moment was done and I sent it off to a professional editor. I re-read Dramani’s first chapter.  To my utter humiliation, I realized that Dramani was nowhere near being production-worthy, yet it was out in the market for the world to reject. And reject the world did. Aside from several orders by friends and family, the book didn’t sell. My rushed edition was just not up to par. (I wrote a full post about this on my blog.)  I re-edited the novel as if I was starting with a first draft using my new process.  I released an improved version in Spring of 2013 on Amazon, Smashwords and CreateSpace. I finally have sales from people I don’t know.

This made me more determined in publishing A Selfish Moment the right way, and on my own.  So far, it has been selling modestly, and received its first 4-star review on Goodreads.com. My editor, during an email exchange about her status, had let slip that she was enjoying the story. It gave me some reassurance that choosing to self-publish, and not begging for representation, was the best choice for me.

What do you think about the future of book publishing?
It’s unpredictable. Look at Hugh Howey and Maria Murnane. These folks are making moves people never dreamed of as self-publishers.

What genres do you write?
So far, I have written science fiction novel and contemporary romance novel.  I have a paranormal story in the idea mill, probably to start once I finish the first draft of Voyaran, the sequel to Dramani. I have a few short stories in other genres, but I love writing about life-and-death situations, events that intensifies relationships and help us value the things we take for granted.  Science fiction opens up more possibilities, and allows me to hit topics that are somewhat taboo in today’s world. I can make you “understand” the antagonist’s point of view from a scientific, logical, cold, inhumane perspective. Whether you agree with it or not is a whole other story.

What formats are your books in?
In all formats available today: paperback via CreateSpace, Kindle, Nook, Sony, Kobo, Apple iTunes, and all formats available on Smashwords (pdf, txt, etc.)

Website(s)
 



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