Reality Gold Tiffany Brooks Published by: Dunemere Books
Publication date: May 22nd 2018
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
“There are only two ways to survive Internet infamy: drop offline and play dead or give everyone something bigger and better to talk about. I’ve tried the first strategy. Now it’s time to try the second…”
A year and a lifetime ago, Riley Ozaki was just an ordinary high school junior in San Francisco, stressing over boys and grades. But an ill-conceived editorial in her school paper brought her an internet avalanche of public-shaming and ruined her life.
Now Riley’s on a helicopter dropping into a deserted island with nineteen other teens, to star in a reality show that will be her redemption. She has no other choice. National attention was what got her into this mess, and only the same level of exposure can get her out. Besides, Riley has a few tricks up her sleeve.
With a cast of vivid characters who will stop at nothing to win the show, a cursed island setting, and a priceless treasure waiting to be discovered, Reality Gold will drop readers right into a scheming web of lies, love, and betrayal.
1.
Did you always know you wanted to
be a writer or did you want to be something else?
I always knew I wanted to do something
with books. I was what my family called a professional reader—I read fast, and
it was normal for me to visit the library, leave with a stack of books and then
return the next day and repeat the process. On Facebook or whenever I run into
an old friend from growing up they will always mention how they remember me
with a book.
2.
How long does it take you to write
a book from start to finish?
I have some projects sitting in folders on my computer that I’ve
spent a couple of years on and they’re not even close, but it took about a year
to write Reality Gold.
3.
How do you come up with themes for
your stories?
I read once that all authors are simply writing the same story
over and over but in different ways, and I think that’s true for me. I have a
couple of themes I’m really obsessed with and I know at least one of them will
show up in every book. I love the idea of perception, of looking at things in
different ways. I like wondering ow our own life experiences and view affects
our actions, and thus the events that we choose to participate in, and that
theme is present in Reality Gold. The other concept I think about constantly is
how small decisions can change the trajectory of our lives. I’ll see a car
accident, and wonder what if one of the drivers had left their house a few
seconds before or after, would the accident have still happened? Or would those
few seconds have placed those cars far enough out of reach from each other? I’m
a huge fan of things that explore this--like the movie Sliding Doors, and these
books are some of my favorites: The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, Life
After Life by Kate Atkinson, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.
4.
Do you have a schedule of when you
write?
Yes, and right now I’m imagining my
family’s answer: a crazy one. I would really love to be one of those people who
wakes up early and gets typing right away but that rarely happens. Instead I
find myself doing the most work from 10pm to 1 am, or even later.
5.
How are you able to balance other
aspects of your life with your writing?
Oh, I find this the hardest part. First of
all, to really accomplish anything, I need to be hyper-focused and really sink
into the work. That’s hard to do with a family, plus I run a small business. I
find myself getting very, very cranky with the things that tear me away from
writing, so I have to work on managing my expectations and being realistic
about when I can submerge myself and when I need to be present and thinking
about the other things in my life. I’m not always successful. We order a lot of
food in our house because the fridge is often empty, the laundry piles up,
packages go unsent, things like that.
6.
What elements do you think make a
great story line?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this
lately, because I just finished a book where the writing was not that great and
the characters weren’t fully realistic, but I really liked the book because the
story itself was so interesting. I think there are really two parts to creating
any book: the story, and then the actual writing. For a long time, I worked on
the craft of writing. I had all these beautifully written single chapters
stored on my hard drive, but they never went anywhere because there was no story
to back them up.
7.
What was the hardest thing about
writing a book?
Actually forcing myself to sit down and
write it every day. It’s hard writing a book because the end goal is very far
off in the distance. You can’t write a book in a day, so accomplishing a daily
page allotment can sometimes feel…unfulfilling. There were days when I’d say to
myself, just take the day off, what does it matter? You still won’t finish for
months whether you write today or not. So I had to be very strict with myself
and set small deadlines—a certain number of pages per day, per week, etc.
8.
How many books have you written so
far? Do you have a favorite?
In some ways, Reality Gold is my favorite
because it is my first finished, published book. But on the other hand, I have
some stories floating around in my head and I love them—and right now they’re
full of potential because they haven’t been committed to paper yet. So in some
ways, those stories are my favorites because I don’t quite know yet where
they’ll go.
9. Where do you write?
This is another one of those
questions that I want to answer one way but the truth is a little different.
I’d love to say I write at my desk, or in a specially created office, or in a
favorite reading nook but honestly I write in bed. I like to be comfortable
when I write and for me, that’s my bed.
10. Have you gotten feedback from
family about your book(s)? What do they think?
I’ve
gotten feedback from family members that’s everywhere from “It’s amazing!” to
“I don’t hate it.” Honestly, I would have found it a little suspect if they all
gushed over it, so I preferred hearing about the parts they didn’t like, and overall
their opinons were really helpful even if they weren’t always positive. But
overall yes, they do like it!
11. What kinds of things do you
like to do outside of writing?
Definitely read, that’s number one. I am never
not reading. After that, I’m a little obsessed with my cats and my dog, and I
tend to torture my family with an endless stream of photos of our pets doing
cute things all day. The kids hated it when I started working with photoshop
because I like to make memes and I know they’re terrible, but it’s fun.
12. What kinds of advice would you
give to someone who wants to start writing?
The best
advice I’ve ever gotten, and really, it’s the only advice any new author needs:
write. Actually write. Put words on a page every day. One of my writing
teachers explained it like this: authors are artists, and our medium is words.
You need words so that you can shape them into something, and until you have
them on the page to work with, you can’t effectively create.
13. What is your favorite book?
favorite author? Do you have an author that inspired/inspires you to
write?
I am
crazy about Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy. It’s amazing—so creative. I felt
like he wrote it just for me, a child who walked around opening random doors
and hoping that would be the one to finally lead to Narnia. The books are so
funny, yet the stakes are high. I love every word. I could pick them up and
flip to any page and be engrossed for hours.
14. Do you have any go to people
when writing a book that help you with your story lines as well as editing,
beta reading and such?
Yes,
definitely. The key is to find readers whose opinions you trust, which is
harder than it sounds. The people around you—family and friends—might be the
most available, but not the most helpful. My husband read the first chapter of
Reality Gold and asked if there would be any car chases…hmmm. A deserted
island, a treasure hunt, a bunch of teens—the answer was no. I think(?) he was
joking, and he might have had great insights but I’ll never know because every
time he offered them all I could think was, this was the guy who wanted a car
chase on a deserted island.
15. Are you working on anything now?
I’m
working on two different series, both of which are connected to Reality Gold.
One of them is a series that follows other characters from Reality Gold as they
go off on new adventures. The other one is a series that plays with the idea of
characters challenging their reality.
16. Tell us 5 things that make you
smile:
Ben and
jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, getting a great book recommendation, the movie
Groundhog Day, anytime something crazy happens in the news and people run to
twitter to make fun of it, my cat when she sleeps with her paw over her eyes.
17. Tell us 5 things that make you
sad:
When
my dog asks for another treat but I’ve run out, when I get in my car and the
gas gauge says I have 4 miles of gas but I’m fifteen minutes late already to
wherever I’m supposed to be, when I come home and see a “sorry we missed you”
UPS notice on my door, when someone eats all the Phish Food but leaves the
carton in the freezer, when I come downstairs in the morning, open the kitchen
door, and remember I forgot to buy coffee the day before.
18. If you could travel anywhere in
the world to visit a place so you could use it as a background for a book,
where would it be?
Italy.
100% Italy. I spent a semester there in college and I’m constantly scheming
ways to get back there.
Author Bio:
Tiffany Brooks lives in San Francisco with her family and a bunch of pets, who luckily don’t object to being featured on her Instagram. The best thing about living on the west coast is she can find out what happens on Game of Thrones three hours ahead of air time. That, plus not having winter weather, means she’ll never move back east, although that doesn’t stop her New England family from asking when she’ll be moving “back home” to NYC or Connecticut. Reality Gold, her debut novel, kicks off the Shifting Reality Collection, a YA trilogy.
