Wanted and Wired {+ Giveaway}

It’s a pleasure to be participating in the tour for author Vivien Jackson’s new release, WANTED AND WIRED, the first installment in her new Tether series.

In celebration of the tour, I have one copy of WANTED AND WIRED to giveaway. Please see the end of the post for more details.

 ◊ Title: Wanted and Wired

◊ Author: Vivien Jackson

◊ Series: Tether, #1

◊ ISBN: 9781492648161

◊ Pub date: April 4, 2017

◊ Genre: Science Fiction Romance

A rip-roarin’ new snarky, sexy sci-fi paranormal romance series with the perfect balance of humor, heat, and heart. Now that Texas has seceded and the world is spiraling into chaos, good guys come in unlikely packages and love ignites in the most inconvenient places…

         

Rogue scientist • technologically enhanced • deliciously attractive

          Heron Farad should be dead. But technology has made him the man he is today. Now he heads a crew of uniquely skilled outsiders who fight to salvage what’s left of humanity: art, artifacts, books, ideas—sometimes even people. People like Mari Vallejo.

Gun for hire • Texan rebel • always hits her mark

Mari has been lusting after her mysterious handler for months. But when a by-the-book hit goes horribly sideways, she and Heron land on the universal most wanted list. Someone set them up. Desperate and on the run, they must trust each other to survive, while hiding devastating secrets. As their explosive chemistry heats up, it’s the perfect storm…

Vivien joins us now to answer, “In what ways is our world not so different from the futuristic world of the Tether series?”

Tomorrow Is Just Like Today

When I started writing Wanted and Wired, self-driving cars weren’t a thing. An email came in and a blinking light on my BlackBerry alerted me. (I still miss that itty bitty keyboard!) “Selfie” wasn’t a word in the dictionary yet, man-buns weren’t even a blip on the horizon, and I still wore my super-comfy flower-print pink pants. Out in public. I mean, we’re talking about the dark ages of 2012.

I know you’re snorting at what old-fashioned fuddy-duddies we all were, about how much has changed, but … has it? I mean, really? For most of us in the Western world, things are pretty much the same. I mean, sure, we have a new president in Washington, a new Pope in the Vatican, a Brexiting UK, and probably an uptick in our daily WTF moments. But we still get up, go to work/school, come home, and do our very best to entertain ourselves until we have to repeat the same old slog tomorrow.

And that’s kind of the case for the world in Wanted and Wired. Yeah, 2059 looks substantially different from 2017, but a lot of stuff is going to feel familiar, too.

1. It’s still hot in the southwestern U.S. Sure, it’s always been on the warmish side, but anybody living in these parts right now knows it’s gotten worse in our lifetimes. Wildlife-killing droughts are peppered by unexpected and violent storms that don’t do much more than cause flooding and mudslides. It already feels like we’re living the apocalypse here, so we should all be used to this mess by 2059. It ain’t getting better.

2. Big Brother is watching. Cameras on the street corners, NSA peeping up our iPhones, bored folks trawling Google Earth in search of naked backyard sunbathers, employers sifting through old Facebook posts. The brand

names might change and the tech might have a different look and feel (more on that later), but Big Brother will always be the creepiest.

3. Hot cars are sexy. You know, it’s possible that our future will see the eradication of privately owned land vehicles, and everyone will travel via environmentally responsible public transportation. To that future vision I say blech. In my future, hot cars will continue to be hot. Hot cars with shielding and badass weaponry even more so.

4. You know how your mom always encouraged you to learn a foreign language because the world was “getting smaller”? She was right. Right now, if you live in Texas and don’t know both Spanish and English, you’re limiting yourself. I can’t see the need for multilinguialism to lessen in the future. In Wanted and Wired, the United North American Nations doesn’t have an official state language, but it does include huge populations of native speakers in at least three languages. And you want to talk to them.

5. But you’re wanting to hear about the tech, right? About how we’ve glued our eyes to our phones lately and that’s a good thing because we will always be completely dependent on the net, the link, the cloud? Well, probably. In Wanted and Wired, people still can’t get through a dinner without checking their com. Only, in 2059, people don’t buy phones at the Verizon store. They get a big-ass shot in the arm with a syringe filled with nanites, and the phone-type thing I call a com grows right there in their arm, embedded. All so that when the world starts going to hell around you, you can still message Mom and let her know you’re okay.

6. Which leads me to this, the future prediction I am most comfortable saying out loud and the thing that will make it all okay: people do not and will never like being alone. We’re pack animals. We seek family, connection. Love. Even when technology or world events encourage us to become solitary and sad, human beings have a knack for finding each other, for coming together. This need is the thing that has always made us human, and I don’t see any technological advances ever changing it.

Thanks, Vivien for sharing this insight. Now for those who aren’t familiar with Vivien, here’s a bit of background on her.

Vivien Jackson_ photo by Korey Howell

VIVIEN JACKSON is still waiting for her Hogwarts letter. In the meantime, she writes mostly fantastical or futuristic or kissing-related stories.

When she isn’t writing, she’s performing a sacred duty nurturing the next generation of Whovian Browncoat Sindarin Jedi gamers, and their little dogs too. With her similarly geeky partner, she lives in Austin, Texas, and watches a lot of football.

For more on Vivien, visit her website and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

WANTED AND WIRED is available HERE.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

I have a print copy of WANTED AND WIRED by Vivien Jackson to giveaway. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. only and will end at 12 a.m. (EST) on Wednesday, April 19.

To enter the giveaway, just click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instructions. The widget may take a few seconds to load so please be patient. A winner will be selected by the Rafflecopter widget and I’ll send an email with the subject line “Thoughts in Progress Giveaway.” The winner will have 72 hours to reply to the email or another winner will be selected. PLEASE be sure to check your spam folder from time to time after the giveaway ends to make sure the notification email doesn’t end up there. If you win and you’ve already won the book somewhere else or you just decided for whatever reason you don’t want to win (which is fine), once again PLEASE let me know.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Do you think tomorrow will be just like today?

a Rafflecopter giveaway