Interview with Author Tone Milazzo

 

1. What really inspired you to write your book, to force you from taking an idea or experience and conveying it into a book?

A lifetime spent consuming superhero comics, and a personal quest to produce something that matters. I started reading comics around the age for 5 or 6. Some of my earliest memories are of comics. Fishing through boxes full of Silver Age leftovers at the thrift store, while my mom searched for the ugliest outfits for me to wear to school. As it is for obsessive comics fans, my head was filled with trivia and possibilities the genre offered. Someday, I’d write my own superheroes. Then Marvel took over Hollywood. Superheroes are not only known, but mainstream, so I had to take all that energy and put a new twist on it. The Faith Machine takes many of these superhero tropes, and recasts them as superspy tropes.

I write fiction because writing code left me empty. A career spent working on projects that never saw the light of day, or were replaced within a year wasn’t rewarding. Even if my books aren’t a success, they’re out there and someone’s read it and it changed them, just a little bit. That’s more than I can say for most software and websites I’ve built for corporate America.

2. What is it about and whom do you believe is your targeted reader?

As far as I can tell book marketing is built on a single principle: “This book is like that best seller.” If this book bares a 75% similarity to a book that was an established hit, that’s your audience. Since there aren’t many books out there like The Faith Machine, I just have to keep pushing it out there and hope the right readers find it.

3. What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book? What should remain with them long after putting it down?

That the Intelligence Community is neither monolithic, nor evil. I did a lot of research on the history of traditional espionage; the CIA, KGB, corporate espionage etc. as well as the strange stuff from the 70s and 80s; MKULTRA, Stargate Project, the First Earth Battalion, etc. And it’s just as faction-ized as any other bureaucracy. They have personal agendas, and they have bosses they have to answer to, like everyone else. The CIA’s done some bad things, sure, usually under the orders of bad people in the Executive Branch, but that doesn’t mean that the CIA’s full of bad people.

4. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers?

There’s already a lot of advice out there for writers, and even the best of it isn’t necessarily for you. Pick and choose what techniques work best with your nature.

5. What trends in the book world do you see and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading?

This question is hard enough before the pandemic. Now, you’re guess is as good as mine. I’m working on the sequel to The Faith Machine and I’m wondering if I should set this in before, after or during the lockdown.

Call me a cynic, but I don’t think this is going to be good for independent bookstores which won’t be good for the industry.

6. What great challenges did you have in writing your book?

Managing a lot of protagonists.

I started out with a team of five. Then decided I should have a character die at the end of the first act for pathos and to show the stakes. That was Gabby, but Gabby grew on me so I didn’t want to kill her. So I created 97:4 to die. But she grew on me too, so I stopped adding characters and no one gets sacrificed for the feels.

Now I had a cast of seven. This book originally opened with a ‘getting the team together’ sequence. But I was throwing too many characters at the reader at once. This is fine in a visual medium, but harder to pull off in prose. So I added a cold opening, 15 pages with just Park and Ainia, the team leader and his right-hand woman, and a series of character dossiers as the agents were activated. From what I’m hearing it seems like I’ve pulled it off.

7. If people can only buy one book this month, why should it be yours?

If you’re looking for something that moves at a good clip and offers something different than the norm.

Tone Milazzo is the author of Picking Up the Ghost, The Faith Machine, and the ESPionage Role-Playing Game. Stories have always been Tone’s first love. When the first hunter told another about the one who got away, stories made us human. Stories lead to understanding. Fiction, religion, biographies, gossip, gaming, and history, it all goes into the slow cooker and out come stories. To those ends Tone’s been around, professionally speaking. Marine, taxi driver, teacher, assistant to scientists, and coder. This breath of experience has given Tone a little knowledge about a lot of things, good and bad. For more info, please see: https://tonemilazzo.com.

Recent Posts

Overcoming The 9 Stages Of Authors Marketing Books

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/overcoming-9-stages-of-authors.html

 

Authors Should Pitch Stories Based On These Upcoming Days in The Rest Of 2020

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/authors-should-pitch-stories-based-on.html   

How Do Authors Find What Works In Book Marketing?

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/how-do-authors-find-what-works-in-book.html

Simplifying Book Marketing So That Anyone Can Do It

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/07/simplifying-book-marketing-so-anyone.html

How Should Authors Promote Books During A Plague?

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/05/how-should-authors-promote-books-during.html

 

10 Tips For Pitching Books To The Media Now

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/05/10-tips-for-pitching-books-to-media-now.html   

The Right Social Media Strategy For Authors 

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-right-social-media-strategy-for.html

Are You Really Ready To Write, Publish & Market Your book?

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2020/05/are-you-ready-to-write-publish-market.html   

Powerful 2020 Book Marketing Toolkit -- FREE

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-2020-book-marketing-pr-toolkit.html  

The Bestseller Code For Book Marketers & Authors

https://bookmarketingbuzzblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-bestseller-code-for-authors-books.html

Brian Feinblum, the founder of BookMarketingBuzzBlog, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com.  His insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are the product of his genius. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2020. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo.