The spark was my high school chemistry teacher who taught our class about the orbital properties of large elements, and that superheavy elements might exist and have unique properties. Others have had this idea with the hope of superconductivity, but I went to time travel. From there I imagined scoops of the past naturally jumping forward hundreds or millions of years via lightning strikes, and why no one had noticed.
Sean Ryan – 9 March 2024
The Back Flap
Viviana Papadakis needs to tell you something. Dinosaurs are still alive. Don’t freak out. Sometimes extinct animals pop into the present – long story how. Viv’s family business is wrestling them into submission (not literally, she’s tiny) before they eat anyone…or go viral. From a homemade underground complex in Nevada, her team dashes around the world, keeping triceratops and dragons from the public eye. (Dragons are real, by the way.)
Viv doesn’t need her life to get more interesting…but it will. A college flame, Ethan, has joined the team. Challenging missions – from Japan to Mexico to Ukraine – will pit her against the largest creatures that have ever walked the earth. A legend from the old West will appear …and he’s not bad looking. The most dangerous figure of all, though, is someone from the distant past with a plan to destroy the world in order to save it.
About the book
What is the book about?
In one word: dinosaurs.
In more than one word: I’ve always enjoyed the sense of wonder some books give you from time to time. Sometimes it’s the world-building at the beginning, sometimes it’s a reveal at the end, sometimes it’s a character you can’t imagine not existing once you’ve read them. With this book I was hoping to extend that sense of wonder for the entire book, believable people doing unbelievable things.
When did you start writing the book?
In 2011, with the goal to finish it before my first child was born. Man alive, that didn’t happen. It took COVID to find the time to finish it.
How long did it take you to write it?
11 years, from 2011-2022. Hopefully the sequel won’t take as long.
Where did you get the idea from?
The spark was my high school chemistry teacher who taught our class about the orbital properties of large elements, and that superheavy elements might exist and have unique properties. Others have had this idea with the hope of superconductivity, but I went to time travel. From there I imagined scoops of the past naturally jumping forward hundreds or millions of years via lightning strikes, and why no one had noticed. That led to someone cleaning up these occurrences and why they would do so in secret. Suddenly I had 100 different stories to tell.
Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?
I had a few sections where I knew the plot, but had trouble finding a way for the characters to say the necessary things and do the necessary actions. Through brute force I took a week and came up with solutions for these, feeling at the time that this was embarrassing placeholder garbage. I read it through after putting it aside for a while, and the sections don’t feel tonally different from the rest of the book at all. Hopefully readers don’t even notice where they are.
I’m also not a paleontologist. I didn’t want to people to read this and think either “that guy’s never even seen Dinosaur Train” or “that guy gave me every known fact from the fossil record and now I’m in a coma.” I tried to balance what we know about dinosaurs with enough imagination to make them alive, and to add a few unexpected details.
What came easily?
Some of Viv and Ethan’s dialogue flowed quicker than I could type it. The kernels of ideas behind missions are incredibly fun to think about.
Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?
I tried to not borrow from people I know – I don’t want anyone to get insulted. But anything clever or well-put that I hear goes in a big mental box, and sometimes that’s what a character will later want to say.
Viv is many things I’m not – female, short, a person of color, stuck in a secretive family business with an absentee tyrant for a father – but we share the same instinct to clean up the mess other people make. Similarly, all the characters are some aspect of me: they’re impossible not to be.
We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?
When I read an author I like, I can’t help but emulate what they do stylistically. If I read Neal Stephenson, I’m going to lean toward data dumps for the sheer joy of well-phrased data dumps. If I’m reading a thriller that forces you to turn page after page, I try to figure out exactly why I’m turning pages so quickly and steal whatever I can from it.
Do you have a target reader?
I think most regular fiction readers, adults and teens, should enjoy this.
About Writing
Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?
My writing time is early mornings. After 7:00 AM I’m busy with non-writing parts of life. I’ve been able to write past 7:00 on some weekends, but it’s a rarity.
Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?
I had a road map in my head, not much more. I uselessly would write lines of dialogue that would come up 100 pages from when I was currently writing. It’s like setting one piece of train track in Utah when you’re back in Kansas building the railroad, and when you come to Utah you’re five miles from that one piece and it’s pointed sideways. You can either make a monumental effort to shift the entire book five miles away just for that one decent sentence, or abandon it. I don’t recommend it.
Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?
Edit constantly, rewrite older passages constantly, never stop tinkering until it’s out of your hands. I’m still tempted to go back into Triassic Tango and make tiny little word changes, maybe change the name of a town. Viv’s last name was different until a week before this was published.
Did you hire a professional editor?
No. I had a few great beta readers look through it, and I used most of their suggestions.
Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?
I get distracted by music. Once a year I remember to try classical, which lasts until I pause it for a phone call and don’t remember to unpause.
About Publishing
Did you submit your work to Agents?
As a first-time author who isn’t well known and has no publishing connections, I wasn’t expecting success through that route. But yeah, I tried some.
What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?
Kindle Unlimited seems like the easiest way to get the book in front of readers. I’d rather have it for “free” for that crew than to have paper copies for $20 each and make more from fewer readers.
Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?
Found a designer on Fiverr. I had the idea of footprints following a tango dance pattern, but my solo attempts looks terrible. It’s a hadrosaur footprint, if you’re wondering.
Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?
No plans as such for this first book. I’m working on the sequel, and will focus on marketing the series once it’s an actual series.
Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?
I didn’t know anything about Advanced Reader Copies (ARC) before this. I didn’t share Triassic Tango with anyone before launch, so it started with zero reviews for the first few weeks. A little legwork and you can get multiple reviews on the day of launch, which helps your rankings on web site so you can get noticed organically by readers you don’t personally know.
About You
Where did you grow up?
Several states: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania again, and finally New Jersey when I was 12, where I’ve been ever since.
Where do you live now?
West Caldwell, NJ. I can walk to Grover Cleveland’s birth house, so I got that going for me.
What would you like readers to know about you?
I’ve tried to write a book that I would like to read: adventurous, funny, constantly giving you new characters and new ideas.
What are you working on now?
Triassic Two-Step, which might have fifteen different titles by the time it’s completed.
End of Interview:
Get your copy of Triassic Tango from Amazon US or Amazon UK.