Neurogarden by Bryon Vaughn an Interview
Give a warm welcome to Bryon Vaughn, Author of Neurogarden. Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, a Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate. Psstt.. don’t forget to enter the Rafflecopter at the end of ttis post. Let’s find out a little about Bryon and his Science Fiction, techno-thriller.
What are four things you can’t live without?
Like most people, I am attached to my mobile phone. I can’t imagine life without it. Since my life revolves around computing, I would also have to say my MacBook Pro, though any computer would do. I absolutely must have paper notebooks and a good pen. Sure, I can take notes on a computer, but it just doesn’t feel like it matters unless I write it with my own hand, plus it is a pain in the ass to sketch or scribble with a keyboard or a trackpad.
Finally, though I don’t consider them to be things, I would we lost without my family. They are my touchstones to reality, and always keep me grounded and focused on what is truly important. In fact, despite what I said earlier, I could actually do without all of those things as long as I had them.
What is your favorite television show?
With streaming, I just watch whatever shows up in the lists, but I can say the last show that I remember being must-watch appointment television was Dexter. I adore that show, and despite the main character being a sociopathic serial killer, I think I identified with Dexter more than any other character that I can recall.
If you could be any character, from any literary work, who would you choose to be? Why?
I’m sure if you asked me this question every day for the next week, my answer would change, but in the moment, I would say I would like to be Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451. He was a simple man, incurious, and good at his job, which sadly was burning books. What makes him so interesting to me is how he comes to love the very thing that he is trained to destroy. In this day and age where books can be found in boxes on the side of the street, discarded to make room for a new television, or some other electronic device, it is inspiring to picture a place where people would risk their lives to protect the written word.
What have you got coming soon for us to look out for?
Neurogarden is the first book in the NeuralTech Corporation series. Book two is well underway, and the working title is Necrogarden. The world has taken a dark turn, and the stakes are even higher in the second book. I can’t wait to hear what readers will think of this one.
What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
I read a lot of different genres, and while I tend toward science fiction and horror, I also like the literary classics. I studied English at U.C. Berkeley, so I have a foundation in the canon, such as Shakespeare, Joyce, Milton, but I also like more modern classic authors such as Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood.
As for influence on my own writing, I would say that I draw from writers like Clive Barker, William Gibson, and maybe a little Blake Crouch.
Now tell us a little about Neurogarden.
Where can you run when there is no place to hide?
Brenna Patrick is a brilliant technologist specializing in neural-cognitive functions and AI. She has cracked the code to solve one of the most troublesome problems in the field, and turned that into the multi-billion dollar NeuralTech Corporation.
Working quietly with the U.S. Department of Defense, NeuralTech is poised to leapfrog the competition with a revolutionary system for tracking people, starting with the world’s most wanted terrorists. But there are only so many terrorists in the world, so who’s next?
When a pair of Columbia graduate students, Jenny and Leo, stumble on the dark secret of NeuralTech’s success, it kicks off a tense game of cat and mouse. As they fight to defeat the powerful forces arrayed against them, nothing less than the fate of humanity hangs in the balance…
NEUROGARDEN is a roller-coaster ride of a thriller, one that will have readers pondering the nature of memory, and of reality, long after they’ve read the last page.
How about a sneak peek between the pages of Neurogarden?
Halfway through her coffee, Brenna’s usual routine of morning news about the weather or the latest political storm was interrupted by a story on the previous day’s event at NeuralTech.
“According to sources, yesterday, in an impressive display of technical wizardry, the notorious Ethiopian strongman, Azim Dibaba, was eliminated by the U.S. military in partnership with NeuralTech. Stay tuned for exclusive video footage from the NeuralTech facility coming up after the break.”
With a dismissive wave of her hand, the television powered off, and she downed the last of her coffee. Explicit rules about keeping cameras from the Observation Deck were put in place to stop this kind of leaked footage, not so much to keep it a secret, but to control how the message was released. There was no way NeuralTech would have built such an elaborate display of lights and gadgetry if the world was never going to see what they were doing. The fanfare was all a show, a carnival for the masses to distract from the visceral heart of what they were witnessing. Hell, they used to run the ops from a small conference room in the basement of NeuralTech HQ with two laptops and an iPad. The spectacle was created for virality, but she wanted the first glimpses to be better than some shaky cell phone video from a reporter behind glass.
Buy Links:
Amazon Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Neurogarden-NeuralTech-Corporation-Book-1-ebook/dp/B08F7BWCDZ
About the author:
Ever since reading Douglas Adams back in my formative years, I have had an interesting relationship with humor, science fiction, and technology. My first computer was a TI-99/4A, so yeah, I’m old, but only until scientists have cracked the code on transplanting our brains into shiny new vessels.
My body may be showing signs of wear, but I’m keeping my brain tight.
When I am not dreaming of far off worlds and writing, I am living a semi-normal life working in New York City, and watching movies with my wife and her spastic cat, Moss.
Social Media Links
Web site: https://www.bryonvaughn.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/bryonvaughnauthor
Instagram: https://instagram.com/bryonvaughn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bryonvaughn
It’s been great having you with us today. Good luck with Neurogarden!
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged Bryon Vaughn, neurogarden, Science Fiction, Techno Thriller by Tena Stetler with 11 comments.
Interview with B. Davis Kroon Author of Trap Play
Give a warm welcome to B Davis Kroon , author of Trap Play.
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, a Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out a little about B. Davis and her Trap Play.
- What do you want your readers to take away from your books?
Trap Play is a complex story about complicated people—an ex-NFL player who thinks he has CTE, a woman who scrapped her academic future to help her family-owned sports company become a world-wide sports conglomerate, and a former sports model who has committed blackmail, arson and murder in order to set herself up as the next CEO of that same sports conglomerate. Ben and Mimi struggle to be recognized for their abilities, to regain control over their lives, and most of all to stay alive long enough to catch a murderer and expose a massive criminal enterprise.
I’ve enjoyed getting to know Ben, his courage and love for his father; and Mimi, who rises above the pain of being the discounted and overlooked child of an over-achieving and narcissistic father; and even Anna, whose method of resolving conflict is to destroy anything that gets in her way.
I hope my readers will see glimpses of themselves in Ben’s willingness to sacrifice himself and in Mimi’s determination and bravery. Perhaps my readers will even recognize themselves in Anna’s impatience, snarkiness and ultimately her dark side. I know I did.
- What inspired Trap Play?
A life-long lover of football, I’ve been saddened by reports of traumatic head injuries and how CTE has ruined the lives of athletes and their loved ones. My husband and I follow a college team. Our season tickets put us right on the 50-yard line. We bring our binoculars, we shout, we slap five at touchdowns… Over the years, more and more it has seemed like football officials were doing an uneven and sometimes miserable job: missing calls they should make, making wrong calls, sometimes even having trouble figuring out the yards they should deduct because of a penalty. For a while, we (including the people all around us) joked about what we might do to encourage the officials to do a better job. Our fantasy violence made us laugh for a while but it didn’t satisfy my need for the guys in the striped shirts to get it right.
I couldn’t let go of the injuries that players suffer. For example, what happens to the guys who are forced out of the game (and their really, really big-deal careers) because of those head injuries we read about? I’m not interested (or qualified) to write about chronic traumatic encephalopathy itself. But fiction is fiction, right? And a story that might capture the imagination of regular readers might be a good thing. So, what kind of a story? Well, what if one of those guys with a head injury discovered the loss of his career and even the possibility that he had CTE was not the worst thing that happen to him? What if someone he loved was murdered? Of course, you expect a murder in a thriller. But what motivated this particular murder? I say, the victim was killed to cover up some other crime. And that leads directly to the beginning of a story.
- Do you find it easier to write from a male or female point of view? Why?
The plot for Trap Play presented me with two questions—how to handle the multiple points of view, and how to convincingly stand in the skin of protagonist Ben (a 6’4”, ex-NFL football hero who believes he has CTE), and protagonist Mimi (tiny, a former gymnast and these days, a big-time computer geek) and the villain Anna (a corporate executive who’s also a martial-arts master). The challenge was not only managing that male point of view, but distinguishing the points of view of two women.
Yes, it was more of a challenge to write from Ben’s pov. But my process helps a lot in that regard. I don’t begin the story with my focus on the protagonist. I begin with the villain, the crime and the why of the crime. I include the protagonist’s action, motives, reactions, etc. in that first draft but I don’t sit in his skin until I have that crime and the complicated mid-section and resolution of the story mostly worked out. With the first draft pretty solid, then I do a separate revision for each point of view character. Each pass through of Trap Play (one for Ben, one for Mimi, one for Anna) brought me closer to the motivations, fears and strengths of each of the pov characters.
I’m following the same process in my current suspense/thriller: (1) step sheet, (2) draft the villain’s story, (3) draft the protagonist’s story and (4) finish up with the complex interface of the protagonists and villain.
- Three things we’d find if we looked under my hero’s bed. My heroine’s bed.
Ben (before the murder): 1. One torn and moldy raincoat, belt missing
- Sports Section of the New York Daily News
- 6-page search printout: “Seattle, bars, taverns”
Ben (after meeting Mimi): 1. a half-eaten mega-pack of peanut butter cookies,
- “Computer Programming for Dummies I”
- “Everything You Need to Know About Investigation”
Mimi (in Minneapolis): 1. size 4 slippers neatly parked on the left side of the bed
- a single vitamin D capsule that the cleaning lady missed
- the sales slip from the purchase of Tracy Kidder’s non-
fiction book “Strength in What Remains.”
Mimi (in Seattle): 1. size 4 running shoes with a curl of pale gray socks
tucked in the top
- “Strength in What Remains” by Tracy Kidder
- a printout of Frank Leit’s notes on Rex Sports’ antitrust
crimes.
Tell us a little about Trap Play.
Set in Seattle, suspense/thriller Trap Play is a mash-up of corporate espionage and family conflict and a touch of football. The story introduces one of the snappiest wicked women to hit the page in a long time. Anna Thorsen, martial arts master and former beauty queen, is the kind of villain that moviegoers long for. And taking her on is Ben Leit, the NFL’s golden boy quarterback until a concussion took him out of the game permanently.
As Ben struggles to cope with his wrecked life, his father is murdered and it’s up to Ben to do something about it, because the Scottsdale, AZ cops are not. Once he goes into action to lure his dad’s killer, he meets Mimi Fitzroy, a computer geek who stumbled on the crimes the killer was trying to hide by killing Ben’s dad.
Start to finish, it’s the manipulative and dangerous Anna who literally kicks off the action and keeps it going—from Scottsdale to Minneapolis, to the waters of Seattle’s Lake Washington.
After one concussion too many, Ben Leit is done as the NFL’s golden boy quarterback. Then his father, who was about to expose a bombshell sports scandal, is murdered. While Ben sets himself up as the killer’s next target, Mimi Fitzroy, CIO for Rex Sports International, panics when she discovers somebody was using Rex to stalk the recently murdered Frank Leit. Worse, she finds thousands of stolen emails that prove Rex is breaking a ton of federal laws. Ben and Mimi find a connection they didn’t want and weren’t looking for. As for whether they can trap the killer before the killer takes them out? The three of them are headed for an explosive showdown in Seattle…and not everyone will walk away.
Buy Links!
Amazon Powells Books Barnes & Noble Goodreads
How about a sneak peek between the pages of Trap Play?
Ben drove the six miles from the hospital to his dad’s house convinced he’d find blood, busted furniture, punched-out walls, and who knew what else. But he had to see for himself what happened.
Turned out, the desert scape yard was no different than when his folks had it laid out five years earlier. If he hadn’t known better, he would’ve figured his dad was home pulling together another piece for the website. He walked up the driveway, swung a leg over the crime scene tape and, with no patrol cars in sight, unlocked the front door and stepped in.
His dad had been gone over seven hours.
The house smelled like the day after a week-long frat party. Maybe his dad still had a glass or two of wine when Ben wasn’t there. But his dad had never liked beer. And after the trouble in Seattle, his dad refused to have it around.
Ben shut the front door, headed down the hall and bumped the air system on high to blow the place out: house, garage, even the attic. Once he’d hit the lights and scanned the place, he realized what he’d missed when he’d first walked in. Tagging, thick as a railroad yard full of freight cars. Could kids do that to his dad? And where were the signs of a fight? And—hold it— the front door lock had worked just fine. Would it, if somebody’d forced it? He checked. Not a scratch on the front doors, nothing on the French doors, meaning his dad must’ve let his killer in. And he wouldn’t have let in a stranger, not his dad, not a stranger.
About the Author:
Davis Kroon fell in love with football watching games with her father. During her university years, she wrote the book and lyrics to the musical comedy, The Lady’s Game, and subsequently spent several years acting and working in theatre as a producer/director. To support her theatrical life, she worked in law (where she did technical writing, trial work, and designed and built databases to support complex litigation). -+
Davis Kroon has published numerous poems in literary journals, as well as one section of the book of poetry, Millennial Spring. She and her husband remain dedicated football fans and travel extensively to support their favorite college team. Trap Play is her first suspense novel.
You can find her at:
Facebook: facebook.com/bdaviskroon
Twitter: twitter.com/@daviskroon1
It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with Trap Play!
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged B. Davis Kroon, Damaged Hero, football, Mainstream Thriller, Psychopath, Seattle, Techno Thriller, Trap Play by Tena Stetler with 14 comments.
