Heather Lee Dyer's Blog, page 4
June 4, 2018
10 Days until the End! Release of Talia’s Planet book 5
June 4, 2018
Not every ending is a closed door. Talia’s Planet, book 5 in the Recycling Humanity series is the end of our Earth’s survivor’s journey to a new home, but not the end of the Recycling Humanity universe! I will come back one day and continue the adventures by these amazing people.
Where this book wraps up one story, it allows another to be told. At the end of Talia’s Planet you can read the first chapter in my next YA SF series. The first book in that series will be released in August 2018.
So I hope that everyone who reads and loves my Recycling Humanity series will love the next one as well. More details will come closer to August.
If you’d like to know more about me or my writing or my fan girl episodes around conventions or space museums please go to my website and sign up for my newsletter!
Heather Lee Dyer’s a word junkie website
-Heather
June 3, 2018
YA SF Talia’s Planet 11 days until the End #booklaunch
June 3, 2018
It’s going to be bittersweet releasing Talia’s Planet book 5 into the world. It’s the end of the Recycling Humanity adventures, for now. 
June 2, 2018
Twelve days until YA SF Talia’s Planet book launch!!
June 2, 2018
Today is the kind of sunny, gorgeous blue sky day that makes it hard to sit inside and write at my computer.
But I’ve learned perseverance over the years, to keep on writing no matter what. It’s what got me to this point where I’m launching my fifth published book!! While working full time and battling Lupus.
I’ve developed my “why” over the years. I know this is the newest buzz word, but it works. You figure out your why- why are you doing what you’re doing- why you’re working so hard for it- then you’ll have your reason to keep going when life throws you a full moon, an illness, or family issues.
My why is two fold. First my health is such that I need to be working from home. This is a major goal and motivation for me! As a full time writer I’ll be able to work from anywhere in the future. My couch, my bed, a warm beach somewhere. 
June 1, 2018
Book Launch countdown for Talia’s Planet #recyclinghumanity book 5
June 1, 2018
In thirteen days Talia’s Planet will be out in the world !! This fifth book of the Recycling Humanity series wraps up many of the questions readers have had along the way.
There’s been many obstacles faced by the strong female heroines throughout the series’ adventures. There’s been romance, awesome spaceships, and normal teens doing extraordinary things!
One of the first questions I get is why I chose to have different main characters in each book.
Answer:
The first three books in Recycling Humanity each have a different main character because I was inspired to do this after meeting and talking with Marissa Meyer who wrote The Lunar Chronicles. She has a different main character in each of her books (which I love!) but they eventually all interact in the Lunar world. She made it work, and I loved getting to know all of her different characters.
I like a challenge so I decided to try it. It was amazing fun creating my different characters!
For books 4 and 5 however, I decided to keep Talia as the main character in both. I fell in love with her perseverance and confidence in her abilities despite the odds against her.
Midpoint Station, book 4 is already available on Amazon and starts Talia’s journey.
Watch for more fun details and updates on the upcoming book 5, Talia’s Planet.
As always, if you’ve read and enjoyed any of the Recycling Humanity series please leave a review on Amazon so others can discover these amazing adventures!
–Heather [image error]
May 16, 2018
MIDPOINT STATION New Release!
I’m so excited for Recycling Humanity #4 – Midpoint Station! Books 4 and 5 both star Talia Jade, an amazing young woman in an ordinary job, living an extraordinary life. Midpoint Station is set a generation after the first three books, Recycling Humanity, Starlight Max, and Biolab Zeg.
I’m especially excited because Midpoint gets the Migration and its ragtag remnant of humans closer to their new home planet. There’s hope, there’s adventure, and of course there’s a bad guy (gal in this case). And cameo appearances by some of our favorites from the earlier books!
One of the questions I get as an author is how much do you put of yourself and your life into your books? As a fiction author (especially science fiction) it’s easy to say nothing. Right? I don’t live in space, and I was definitely not a kick-ass seventeen year old like my main characters. I wish I had been. So maybe that’s a small part of what we as authors put into our work – parts of us we wish had been.
But in my case there’s more to it than that. I grew up in diverse communities – my mom worked for the Apollo program and kept me in computer programming classes – and we also lived on a hippie commune in the mountains of Montana (after hitchhiking across country selling jewelry). I was a child of two worlds. Hippie child and space geek. So there’s a lot of the people I met, the cultures and ways of life I experienced, and the many ranges of human sanity that I’ve run into. I’m actually writing a non-fiction book on creative writing that tells more about these diverse experiences and their affect on my writing life. Look for that later in the year.
For now – start with Recycling Humanity first, if you haven’t read it yet – the ebook will be on sale next week for 99 cents from May 22 – 26, 2018. And look for Recycling Humanity #5 – Talia’s Planet – in June!
Here’s to all of our diverse, stuck-between-two-world lives, and amazing adventures!
Heather
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May 4, 2018
May the 4th Be With You! Happy book birthday Recycling Humanity!
May the 4th Be With You! It has been three years since I published my first book, Recycling Humanity. It has been an amazing journey I hope to continue for as long as I live. My dream is to be able to do this full time someday – for writing and traveling to become my full time job.
But in the meantime I’m still having a blast. I love of course the creative part of writing a book. Making up characters and worlds, going on adventures I never would or could in real life. It’s been therapeutic, relaxing, and exciting at times. I laugh and cry with my characters and space travel is never far from my mind. Even at a my day job as a legal assistant, one of my friends made me a Star Trek quilt for one whole wall in my cubicle!
It’s also been a steep learning curve. Not only are authors always learning and growing their art (they should be anyway), self-published authors like me have to learn and master business and marketing. That also is a never-ending learning experience. Marketing is not my favorite subject, but necessary for a small business. So I’m listening to podcasts, taking classes, getting mentored online and in real life. I’ve learned who to listen to, and who to just smile politely at and not take their advice. The business side of writing is an art in itself.
And editing. I hated, hated, hated editing when I first started. It was awful, I just wanted to get on with the next project. But I was blessed to have several amazing editors who showed me the editing process doesn’t have to be drudgery. I have learned to love editing, that in those extra passes over the words is where the magic happens. That’s where I can refine my words, add more quirky details, and make the transitions smoother.
This year I will also be publishing Recycling Humanity books 4 and 5! Midpoint Station comes out May 2018 and Talia’s Planet in June 2018.
So, Happy Birthday Recycling Humanity! May the force be strong with this one. (I know, big nerd!)
And May the 4th Be With You and may you write lots everyday!
-Heather
Go on over to my Facebook page and leave me a Star Wars meme to celebrate!
April 26, 2018
It’s been a rough few weeks. Thank goodness for my B2W gr...
It’s been a rough few weeks. Thank goodness for my B2W group!
The Born to Write Community Facebook group (B2W) has inspired me, kept me going, and become a great support on my new journey into non-fiction. I started this journey with an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone. While I write YA SF usually, this idea of writing a book to encourage others to also write kept niggling at the back of my brain.
Now that I’m into it about a third of the way through, the doubts and imposter syndrome is kicking in. Kicking in hard! I’m at that point where I want to give up. After all I’ve got two new YA SF space opera novels waiting for me to start them. And of course there’s the Lupus flare that is also kicking me down.
But I won’t quit. How can I when this is exactly the point in writing a book this always happens to me, AND this is exactly what I’m writing about in my non-fic book. The universe is laughing loudly at the irony.
So, I will push through this week to get the draft done. It needs to get out of me, it needs to be on paper. Then I can edit it into some sort of sweet awesomeness.
Thank you B2W community and especially Azul Terronez and my accountability partners.
Now back to writing!!
Heather
March 21, 2018
Stepping out of my Comfort Zone: Writing a Non-Fiction book!
You know that feeling when you’ve finally found your passion, and you put everything into it? You wake up in the morning excited to write, draw, create music, mentor youth, play sports, build a house – whatever your creative passion is. It’s the best feeling in the world. Creativity colors and brightens our every day. And despite certain failures, naysayers, the car breaking down, family drama, or your day job, you keep working on your passion. You keep going. This is how you know that you have truly found your passion.
And if you haven’t found yours yet, keep trying everything until you find your thing. Everyone is born with creativity. Everyone.
I’ve always loved reading and writing, but it wasn’t until I turned 40, my babies were teenagers, and my health took a nose dive, that I realized I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to be doing. My day job as a legal assistant wasn’t fulfilling anymore. I felt like I used up all my energy during the day not making a difference, not being creative, and not contributing to the world. By the time I got home I was too exhausted physically and mentally to do anything.
Then one day I entered a poetry contest on a whim and won! This was a small step toward working on my creativity. It felt good to not only write the poem, but have the acknowledgement that it was good.
Then I discovered NaNoWriMo and have done (and won!) each year since. I needed the competition, support, and feeling of accomplishment that the contest provided. NaNoWriMo and everyone running it and participating in it rocks!
I have published three YA SF novels since that poetry contest years ago, with five more slated to be published this year. I thoroughly enjoy the writing process (I’ve even made friends with editing, which I absolutely HATED in the beginning) and it has filled my creative well, given me a purpose to get up each morning, and kept my health on track. I have truly found my passion.
Then I listened the Front Row Factor podcast with Jon Vroman episode #95 last year (I love podcasts!) and heard Azul Terronez being interviewed. Azul is a book coach, author, TEDx speaker, podcaster, and co-founder of the Authors Writing Academy. While I was listening to Azul and Jon talk I was thinking-I’ve already written a book. Several fiction books. But something creative sparked within me, and an idea for a non-fiction book was birthed. Azul talked about our why as authors. Sure, my fiction books I want to entertain and transport youth and adults to a life outside of our solar system (I love science fiction as well as space science – so my YA SF is space opera). But I realized I wanted my readers, especially young adults to find and protect their own creative passions. With schools focusing so much on grades and tests, spelling and grammar – our natural wild imagination and creativity is lost, bent, devalued, and destroyed in many cases.
As I got to know Azul through his Authors Writing Academy and 5 day writing challenge, he showed me that although there are a ton of other writing and creativity books out there, there’s only one me. My unique story and experience would make my book different and interesting.
So, I’m publicly stating that I’m committing to the (to me) scary thing of writing a non-fiction book. By the end of May 2018 I will have a draft of this book. Not only is it a challenge because I have two other fiction books I’ve got scheduled to write in this same time period, but this book has already turned out to be highly emotional for me to write. I’m using stories from my past, so that in itself is bringing up events and emotions I had forgotten about, but it’s emotional as well because both my parents passed away years ago so I don’t have too many relatives to help fill in my memory gaps.
So, here’s to an interesting twelve weeks ahead! I hope to give updates as I go along, maybe some of the road blocks or things I learn along the way will help someone else in their creative journey to keep going!
What are your creative passions? How do you protect your time with your creativity? How has your creativity made you whole/healthy/happy?
-Heather
December 1, 2017
Born to Write – Coach Azul’s Podcast
I love podcasts. I listen to podcasts about writing, editing, creativity, entrepreneurship, or ones that are purely inspirational. I use the time getting dressed and the commute to and from work each day to listen. Some days that is almost two hours of podcast listening time!
My current favorite podcasts are:
The Creative Penn Podcast
The Front Row Factor
The Self Publishing Podcast
Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod
NPR TED Radio Hour
Smart Passive Income
The Tim Ferris Show
Tribe of Mentors (the new Tim Ferris podcast!!!)
Writing Excuses
AskALLI; Self-Publishing Advice
The Author Hangout
The Portfolio Life – Jeff Goins
Sell More Books Show
The Writer Files
The Intronaut
And now I’ve discovered a new podcast, Born to Write by Coach Azul Terronez! The episodes released so far are powerful and inspiring. The first three guests are an impressive line up: Pat Flynn (Smart Passive Income), Jon Vroman (The Front Row Factor), and boss-mom Dana Malstaff.
Azul Terronez uses his skills as a writing coach and educator to ask his amazing guests about their writing journeys. He starts with asking how writing was like for them as kids. Jon Vroman, like a lot of kids, didn’t enjoy writing, feeling like it was something he was forced to do in school. Others, like Dana Malstaff excelled in school, but didn’t set out to write a book. But writing the book ended up helping her to focus on her strengths and her Boss-mom brand.
Azul talks with Pat Flynn about the process of coaching him through writing his book. As a coach and a podcaster, Azul has a natural talent of asking the right questions to draw out the ideas and stories from writers.
I look forward to many more episodes of Born to Write, and working with Coach Azul on my first non-fiction book! As a YA Science Fiction writer I said I would *never* be able to write a non-fiction book. Then I heard Coach Azul on a podcast and little seeds of ideas for a non-fiction book started niggling in the back of my brain. Now I’m working through Coach Azul’s Authors Writing Academy and trying to narrow down the focus of my book.
I’ve included a lot of links in this blog post, so I hope you check out these amazing podcasts. Are there other podcasts that you like to listen to that I don’t have listed here? Leave a note in the comments and let me know which ones are your favorites!
-Heather
September 29, 2017
8 Minutes Award-Winning Short Film @manhattanshort
Last night I went to our local indie movie theatre in Boise, Idaho and watched the Manhattan Short Film Festival. It’s amazing how many passionate directors, producers, screenwriters, and actors are out there that are unknown (at least here in the US) but producing great work. It was an amazing and enjoyable evening!
Typically I’ve been a Hollywood-only kind of movie watcher. Big blockbuster films and films made from books I’ve read are my favorites. But then at WorldCon I got to know a screenwriter for several indie films. As I’ve helped here and there in the process of editing the English subtitles and copy for the short film 8 Minutes, I’ve seen how creative, passionate, professional, and persistent the crew is. I’m humbled and honored to have been able to watch the process of bringing their vision from paper to screen. I hope they go far and make many more movies, as they are a talented group destined to do great things.
-Heather
@manhattanshort
