Interview with Tamara D. Taylor, author of 'Believers: Truth in Deception'
Tamara D. Taylor was born and raised in the East Bay of
California until she moved to Omaha, Nebraska
to attend Creighton University.
Today, Tamara still resides in Nebraska
where she and her husband, John, are raising their five young children.
A life long lover of all forms of the written word, Tamara
is an avid reader, and has been writing short stories and poetry since
elementary school. After watching her son struggle with succeeding in school,
she decided to finally write the novel she had been thinking about for years in
an effort to show her son that no dream is too big to achieve.
Her latest book is the YA, Believers:
Truth in Deception.
For
More Information
About the Book:
Mary lives in a world of the future where an anti aging drug
has torn society apart, creating an insurmountable divide between the wealthy
and the poor. Her life is thrown sideways after she receives an unsolicited
promotion at work, which leaves her as assistant to one of the most notorious
Mary struggles to find solid footing in a world that
drastically conflicts with her humble upbringing. Her moral compass is tested
as she finds herself falling in love with a man she knows she should not trust, compromising
her relationship with her childhood sweetheart.
After her life is threatened, she fears for her safety and
that of her family. Will she be able to guard her own secrets to prevent even
further danger? Will death be the consequence of falling in love with the wrong
man?
“This is a great book. It contains
a world that is dark and focused on the comforts of the select elite and a
world of hope and love for those less fortunate... all coupled with action and
anticipation. Great combinations in my opinion! I can't wait to read the next
book!”
-- California
Mom
For More Information
- Believers: Truth in Deception is available at Amazon.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book
has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we
begin by having you take us at the beginning? Where did you come up with
the idea to write your book?
Being the mother of five kids it is easy to get caught up
with trying to be the best mother to each of them. To simply focus on making
their life perfect and enriched with crafting, sports and their education. It’s
important to me that I mold my little people into creative, sensitive
outstanding and independent adults. I have shifted my life to make this happen
and with time being limited,the first thing I had to give up was my own dreams.
I had been kicking around several ideas for a book in my
head for months, the one thing that always stopped me was fear, fear of
failing, fear of looking silly to others and the fear that I would not be able
to follow through and finish what I started. It was time to stop limiting
myself with possible failure and start believing in my own success and to show
my children that obtaining dreams through hard work is possible.
Early adulthood is magical, there is heart pumping emotion
and energy we all long for as we grow old. So I wondered, what would happen if
someone invented a drug that would enable us to stay in our twenties forever?
What would happen if only the wealthy could afford it? What would happen to
society if the wealthy had an endless lifespan to create wealth while the poor
still had to struggle with the reality of illness and death? These questions
where the spring board for my book. After I had those questions in place it was
easy to layer on other hardships such as, global warming and the loss of
Religion which is often the only comfort that is afforded by the poor.
This new world swirled around in my mind a perfect storm of
current social issues taken to a new extreme, one with intrigue, drama and
forbidden love. My book was born, fictitious lives created, in this imaginary
future I could make anything happen and my new obsession to write this book
began.
Q: How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have
any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other
writers?
Like many things in life often we are our own biggest obstacles
in accomplishing our own dreams. It was important that I set aside the fear of
failing and just start writing. A good friend of mine gave me a great piece of
advice, “Don’t doubt yourself, don’t worry about making every word perfect.
Focus on getting the words on paper there will be plenty of time at the end to
go back and fix it.”
So as I wrote I decided I wouldn’t look back, I would not
torture myself with every word I typed, it was important to keep moving
forward. If I had anguished over every scene as I wrote it I don’t think that I
would have been able to finish. I knew I had a great story, I just had to
believe that I could write it. There were many times I sat at my laptop as I
wrote and reminded myself not only could I write a book, I was writing a book
and I needed to find the joy in that to encourage myself to keep going.
Q: Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did
you self-publish?
For the past ten years I have dedicated my life to my
children, sure I went to collage, I had even started a career before I had been
blessed with the opportunity to be a stay at home parent. My hiatus from the
work world left my current resume short of any relevant accomplishments in the
field. After all agents and publishers don’t consider one handed diaper
changing in the dark while half asleep in under thirty-seconds a characteristic
of an aspiring writer.
Everything that you are to list on your queries seemed
almost laughable to me,for example: How many people follow your bog? My answer
was simple, zero (because when do I have time to write a blog)? How many
twitter followers do you have? Twitter? Hmmm let me see.(Isn’t twitter for
famous people, large corporations and teenagers?) The only thing in my life
that I could possibly list was a young authors award I had won back in middle
school.
Still, I had to try right? So I scraped together my meager,
sad query letter and I started to send them out. It took me a few months to
realize that I was never going to get a response and that was ok. The only
other option was to self publish, a great avenue for amateur writers to get
their work out there. Once again I had to remind myself over and over again
that I was not going to let anything get in my way of my dreams, so I pilled up
my courage yet again and decided this was something I could do on my own and I
wasn’t going to let a little snag like the lack of an agent or publisher stop
me from making my dream come true.
Q: Is there anything that surprised you about getting your
first book published?
You would think that coming up with a story worthy of
writing a book would be the hardest part. For me that is where I found the most
joy, the creative side, letting the story sweep you up and take you for an
unexpected ride. It wasn’t till I had finished the book and started to edit it
that I realized the real work was in the details. Without a publisher all of
the fine tuning is up to you and hopefully you are lucky enough to have a group
of friends that are willing to roll up their own sleeves and help you trudge
through it.
The things that you have to worry can quickly become
overwhelming,there are so many choices that you have to make from Cover to font
style that can make you go prematurely grey. It’s enough to make any sane
person want to give up and just throw in the towel. This is the point that it’s
once again important to pick yourself up and keep going. The finishing stages
right before publishing are a lot like the last hill climb at the end of a
marathon, you have two choices. You can give up because you are tired and worn
down, or you can remind yourself that all the hard work you have put in till
this point will just be thrown away if you don’t will yourself up that final
hill.
Q: What other books (if any) are you working on and when
will they be published?
Believers is the first book in what I hope to be a three
part series. In the beginning of Believers: Truth in deception you are
presented with the death of the creator of Xenvie,( anti aging medication
afforded only by the wealthy). Through the first book you follow the characters
on a journey to solve the mystery behind his death, the questions will slowly
be answered throughout all three books however you will not find out who the
killer is and why it happened till the end of the third and final book.
I am hoping to release the second book of the series in fall
of 2015 followed by the final book in the fall of 2016.
Q: What’s your favorite place to hang out online?
Inspiring blogs always have a way of catching my attention.
I am a sucker for true underdog stories. Anything that can give me a good cry
and make me feel inspired at the end of it has a way of capturing my attention.
Q: Finally, what message (if any) are you trying to get
across with your book?
You never know what story a person is carrying around inside
them. It is so easy to divide the world into black and white, the good and the
bad and of course the winners and the losers. Often it’s just not that easy, most
people live in a state of grey, navigating the world as best they can. There
will always be exceptions in life, circumstances that force us to make tough
decisions, unless you live in that persons skin, it is important to withhold
judgement based off of appearance or social gossip. Everyone one has their own
unique past experiences that builds their personality and contributes to their
decision making process and creates their moral character. This is why we are
all different but often can find common ground with the most unlikely of
friends.
Q: Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any
final words?
In the famous words of a very famous fish and one of the
most powerful life lessons that I have ever heard, no matter what “Just keep
swimming”.
Thank you Disney and Pixar, for that gem of advice.
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