Blog Tour + #Giveaway: Triptych By J.M. Frey @scifrey @GHBTours

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Blog Tour + #Giveaway: Triptych By J.M. Frey @scifrey @GHBTours

Triptych

By J.M. Frey

Published By Dragon Moon Press

Genre- Sci Fi, Time Travel, Alien Invasion

IN THE NEAR FUTURE, humankind has mastered the arts of peace, tolerance, and acceptance. At least, that's what we claim.

But then they arrive. Aliens--the last of a dead race. Suffering culture shock of the worst kind, they must take refuge on a world they cannot understand; one which cannot comprehend the scope of their loss.

Taciturn Gwen Pierson and super-geek Basil Grey are Specialists for the Institute--an organization set up to help alien integration into our societies. They take in Kalp, a widower who escaped his dying world with nothing but his own life and the unfinished toy he was making for a child that will never be born.

But on the aliens' world, family units come in threes, and when Kalp turns to them for comfort, they unintentionally, but happily, find themselves Kalp's lovers.

And then, aliens--and the Specialists who have been most accepting of them--start dying, picked off by assassins. The people of Earth, it seems, are not quite as tolerant as they proclaim.

Author Interview-

What inspired you to write Triptych?

Triptych began with an interesting thought in a strange place. I firmly believe that the natural habitat of the common plot bunny is the bathroom –that’s why so many people get their Eureka moments in the bath. My Triptych Eureka moment happened on January 21st, 2007I know this because it was my mother’s 50th birthday, but I wasn’t at the party. I was on the far side of the planet, enjoying the public baths in Futsukaichi, Japan, near where I lived.

I was soaking, pointedly and wondering what my Mom’s party was like. I started to think about 50, and what I might be like then. Then I realized that I was exactly half my mother’s age. I began to wonder, what was 25 year old mom like? If I had the ability to travel back in time and meet her, would we like one another? In the end, I concluded that 25-year-old me and 25-year-old Mom would get along fine. But then that damned plot bunny swam along and nipped my ankle and I thought, “But what if we didn’t?”

When or at what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I started reading fanfiction around age 11, and started writing my own at 15 or 16. I wrote it all through highschool and into university, along with plays and screenplays, and around age 20 I decided I would like to try to write a whole original novel. It took years to complete and edit, and in the end I knew it was unpublishable. I started a new novel in 2007, and decided after I’d finished my MA that if I’d sold this book (or another) before I was 30, I would forgo doing my PhD and be a novelist. Triptych came out when I was 28, so I succeeded! It was only just this year, however, that I was able to leave the dayjob and write full time.

What is the earliest age you remember reading your first book?

I always loved the day our class got to visit the elementary school library! The first book I really remember picking on my own and bringing home was the Whisper the Winged Unicorn series (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021260884090/). After that I devoured all of Jean Craighead George’s work, adn worked my way up through Piers Anthony to Anne Rice.

What genre of books do you enjoy reading?

I literally just finished reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which was the last of her six published books I had on the list. I’ve read Lady Susan, and part of the fragment of Sanditon that exists, and I still want to read her complete collected letters and the Juvenilia.

I also just finished Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey, for obvious reasons. I’ve recently really gotten into non-fiction books that take a look at subjects through a cultural lens, and liked Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth Century Britain by Lucy Lethbridge, The Kissing Sailor by Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi, and Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.

What is your favorite book?

I have to pick just one? Okay, The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. It’s thoughtful, clever, witty, revisionist, queer, and the poetry-prose is just gorgeous. I love how she took the 11th Labour of Herakles, changed “arrows” for “eros” and got a whole different tale. And as a Classics student, I adore the tongue-in-cheek pokes at the way academics discuss translations and discoveries.

You know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?

Jane Austen, hands down! I think Jane is a fascinating writer, and one of the foremost feminists of her day. She really loved reading, and she didn’t “elevate” or “evolve” the novel so much as saw what else the format of a novel could do outside of shrieking maidens and haunted abbeys, and really showed what novels could be capable of in terms of storytelling.

If you could travel back in time here on earth to any place or time. Where would you go

and why?

I am facinated with mythology and cultural rites, so being able to attend a wedding in a whole bunch of different ancient cultures would be really facinating. Definitely on the list would be Japan, Rome, Kenya or South Africa, Mezo-america, New Zealand/Maori, Inut, and Celtic.

When writing a book do you find that writing comes easy for you or is it a difficult task?

It honestly depends on what section I’m writing, what kind of day I’m having, whether I’ve eaten or done my physio yet, and if there are other things on my mind. I find I write best when I’m sitting in my recumbent-exercise-bike desk, things seem to flow better, but I have a harder time concentrating completely so the sections I write on it need heavier editing. There are days where I do 10k words, and there are days when I do 1k and have to fight for every word.

Do you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?

I had a miniature schnauzer named Nikki all through my childhood, and she passed away when I was in university. I’d like very much to get another one, or another hypoallergenic terrier, but right now I’m in no position to properly take care of one. Someday soon, though, I hope. I look forward to having the excuse to get up from my computer and take long, contemplative walks with my pup!

What is your "to die for", favorite food/foods to eat?

I love a really nice dry Brut Sparkling Wine, and I will never say no to cheese.

Do you have any advice for anyone that would like to be an author?

READ. Read things like what you want to write, but read things nothing like what you want to write. Read textbooks cover to cover. Read more than what the teacher assigns. Read nonfiction books. Read editorials. Read the New York Times, and read The Reader’s Digest. Read pop-science and pop-culture. Read Westerns if you dislike them. Read Harlequins. Read plays. Read screenplays. Read things that are so different than what you love that you have no idea what to expect. When you’re a well-rounded reader, you’ll find wonderful new inspiration everywhere, and you won’t fall into the echo-chamber of only reading and writing the same genre, and tropes, and stereotypes over and over again.

About the Author-

J.M. is an actor, voice actor, and SF/F author, fanthropologist and professional geek. She's appeared in podcasts, documentaries, and on television to discuss all things geeky through the lens of academia. She also has an addiction to scarves, Doctor Who, and tea, which may or may not all be related. Her life's ambitions are to have stepped foot on every continent (only 3 left!), and to perform a duet with John Barrowman.

Her debut novel TRIPTYCH was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards, won the San Francisco Book Festival award for SF/F, was nominated for a 2011 CBC Bookie, was named one of The Advocate's Best Overlooked Books of 2011, and garnered both a starred review and a place among the Best Books of 2011 from Publishers Weekly.

Her sophomore novel, an epic-length feminist meta-fantasy titled The Untold Tale, (book one of the Accidental Turn Series), debuts December 2015, followed by two more in 2016. The Skylark's Song, book one of The Skylark's Saga, a steampunk action novel about a girl vigilante and her mysterious rocketpack, will be published in summer 2017.

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