The Evening and the Morning were the Third Day

How long have you been writing?

I've been telling stories since birth. My sister and I would play these games where we would play several people each and...act out the story. But the worlds and storylines got so very, very complicated and I generally thought them up and remembered them. There were personalities and preferences and limitations and abilities for each character and.... She grew out of it and I never did.

I've been actually writing since I was nine - for the last nine years. I started off literally copying Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe although I didn't realise it was copying then, and then I started a Space Story. Which was rubbish but...

When I was about eleven, I began to write poetry. Was I good? Hardly. Nursery rhymes. Limericks. I won first place in a national contest against older kids when I was twelve - and that helped me keep writing.

About two years ago I started writing short stories in reality. I began posting - and writing - more fanfiction than just poetry, and that's when my prose writing took off.  I had written stories before but.....I don't know. I was always rewrite it seemed.

I've never stopped telling stories. I tell stories. Give me something and I will weave you a story of it.

Why do you write?

To live.

When I first started writing with my Space Story, I wrote because it was a dream about a person - it was literally from a dream. I wanted to remember it.

 Then I grew older. I wrote poetry to feel. I couldn't feel anything - or I felt too much - so I wrote. 

Then I wrote prose and I did the same thing I did in poetry. 

I write to reach others, to show them something, to explain myself. I write to try to reach out - to speak.

I twist phrases, paint a picture. I try to explain myself through another. I try to....live. To learn.

I write for the pleasure of others. If one other person enjoys a story, it is completely worth writing.

What are your favourite types of books to write?

....finished?

Good gracious.....

I like character based fantasy. The fantasy yes - I adore world building - but I focus on the people, the characters, the motivations, the....people.

I write about honour, about loyalty.

Why does this character do this? What motivates them? What do they care for? Who do they care for? Why? What choices would they make again? What do they regret?

I tend to write...grey books. Books where people obey bad rules for good reasons, break good rules for good reasons, do wrong by societies standards for a good end goal, do good by societies standards for bad reasons......

I try to use....thought. To point out that everyone has a motive, has a good goal. Most people believe in something for a reason - even the Joker liked Chaos. But everyone has a point of view, and not all point of views agree. Sometimes what we've been taught is wrong is actually right (praying in schools, for example; or sheltering Jews in the 1940s); and sometimes what we've been taught is right is so terribly, terribly wrong (anti-semitism in Europe....)

I don't like it when people don't think for themselves - when they don't allow others to think for themselves. I want people to learn to check facts, to decide for themselves. To not simply accept things 'because it is'.

How many books have you completed as of now?

Ha.

Ha. ha.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

None. Let's put it that way.

Well, unless you count rewrites..... Then I've finished seven. The problem is that I overhauled all of them and they haven't been rewritten yet so.....

And there is the Mafia Universe that has enough words to be a novel at least once now, and probably more once I catch up with my planned stories. I would love to use that universe of stories. The characters and themes and messages are dear to my heart and....it is one of the few writings that I generally agree with the few that have read anything when they say it is wellwritten. Unfortunately, due to some technicalities in inspiration, I can't use a single word of it.....  *sighs* Figures.

Anyway, that one is sort of finished - but that one is also more of a collection of short stories. It's a story about a man's LIFE. Not just a part of it.

What are three things you Hate about writing?

 Um.....me, myself, and I.

I hate my overactive imagination, I hate my love for worldbuilding, and I hate the passion and time I pour into my writing.

I can always think up new story ideas - but I can never. seem. to finish. any.

I hate this.

Others finish books. Others finish stories. And I....can't.

And it's worse if I TELL anyone about that story because then it's doomed.....

What are three things you Love about writing?

WORLDBUILDING! CHARACTER STUDIES! TELLING STORIES!

.....yes. everything I hate about writing I love about writing - thus why I love them, and thus why I hate them.

It's a grand example of circular reasoning.....

I write fantasy. I have forty-five novel ideas for the Portal Universe. That means I have at LEAST twenty planets and forty cultures. I love building them. I love making cultures. I love making myths. I love making legends. I love making traditions. I love making clothes. I love....EVERYTHING.

One of my other favourite things to do is to take an item or a few word prompt and create a massive new story. Well, 'new story' at least....  The 'massive' part is usually accidental... It's just that I will start building the characters, and I need to develope the characters and the background for characters and the background for the background and.......

It gets out of hand quickly.

But I adore it to no end.

I blame it on Tolkien.

What story are you working on Right Now?

The Mafia Universe.

And the Detective Assassin story.

This is where it was probably a bad idea to get involved in this camp.....  I mean, the point was to focus on 'obvious good vs evil', right?

HA!

neither of those stories fit. The Mafia story is probably my worst morally as it is literally about a bunch of thieves and womanisers and murderers. Well, not womanisers - but one person that acts like one at least....... Complicated. But I never redeem them in that story - they break the law and they are fine with it. But the story focuses on the PEOPLE. On the tears and the laughter and the families and the love and the heartbreak and..... Humanity. Life.

The Detective Assassin story (no, I don't name my stories before they're finished.....) came completely from a dream. It's more about someone that is good that looks bad that TURNS bad but does good and then ends up good and nothing is really as it seemed AND LOOK AT ALL OF THE POISONS I GOT TO RESEARCH FOR THIS ONE! This one focuses on brothers. Completely.

There's also a Dystopian one I have all planned out and REALLY want to write where words are counted - you have to purchase amounts of words to speak per week. There are police and punishments and governments and systems and it is the PERFECT example of LOOK I DID TOO MUCH PLANNING AGAIN!!

......

I actually really like the dystopian story. But I've only worldbuilt it so it probably doesn't count. But it will focus on brothers, families, loyalty, honour vs loyalty, truth vs loyalty....  And of course my perpetual theme of 'no one and nothing is as it appears'...

I basically never write romance. I have marriages and stuff but..... it's not what I focus on. Ever. Basically.

What is your favourite time to write?

When I'm breathing.

If I'm not writing it on paper I'm writing it in my head.

If I'm not awake I'm dreaming.

I honestly don't know how to stop - and I don't want to....

Do you write short stories? Children's books? Novels?

Mostly Poems, Short Stories, and Novels. The short stories were completely by accident, and poetry is through long practice and imitation. I love poetry - it's so easily spun.....

the novels are sort of by accident too given how easily things get out of control....

Do draw inspiration from, or are you influenced by any particular writer?

Tolkien. C.S. Lewis.

.....that's about it.

In all honestly though. Lewis was the one that made me love reading, Tolkien inspired me to write.

OH!!  And this one poet that wrote......

Middle Earth and Beyond Wallpapers

I always forget....them. Whomever wrote them.

Middle Earth and Beyond Wallpapers

Alright, so many many years ago I found a music video on youtube that was a freestyle poem about Eowyn with clips of Eowyn set to the song Lascia Chi'io Pianga. I loved the poem. It was....it added to canon. It added to the books. And I wanted to be able to do that - to add to written words, to pay tribute to things and writers and lives so much greater than mine. I wanted to be able to write something and show a stranger something that would help them, that would uplift them. I wanted to be able to let people escape into new worlds and old worlds.

So that writer? Whoever they are? Tolkien and Lewis inspired me to use mythology, to fill in ages of backstory (seriously. I completely blame Tolkien for that because APPENDIXES!!), to plan out characters with deeper meaning. But they didn't originally inspire me.

That was someone that wrote a poem for Boromir and a poem for Eowyn and showed me that writing could be...more than nursery rhymes or selfish dreams. Writing could be done in the modern age and could be done by young people.

(I've failed just about every single thing I was inspired to do but.....)

Do you write trilogies and/or series?

YES!!

First? Forty -five stories all set in the same universe. MOST of them are connected.

Second - I have a ten book series, a trilogy, two trilogies, a set of books that aren't directly connected by have the same inspiration so.....

In short: yes. I do.

Have you experienced Writer's Block?

HA!

HAAAAAHAHHHAAAAAHHAAAA!

EVERY BLOODY TIME I WRITE SOMETHING I CAN'T FOCUS ON THAT BLOODY THING I GET DISTRACTED BY shiny!!!!  Oh, look over here another question..... Let's work on that first!

(Yes, I consider this writer's block because - although I can still write! - I can't work on what I'm supposed to.)

What was the fastest you wrote a book?

One month. Fifty K words in the Mafia Universe. The sad thing? THAT was supposed to be  SHORT STORY!!  *bangs head on desk* I just....give up.

My novels never finish.

My short stories never end.

Do you hope to be published one day?

.....I want people to enjoy my work.

Technically, my fanfiction is published, and some of my poems are on a free site - but I doubt that's what you meant.

I just want people to enjoy stories. I want to share stories - to help and please people. If I give the stories away free, that's fine. I doubt people would buy them anyway - even if I did ever finish anything.....

What are some things you hope to share through your stories?

Different points of view. Basically. Not all villains are heartless psychopaths, not all heroes have good intentions, not all heroes ARE heroes, not all of the losing army is bad, not all of the winning army is good....

Black and white isn't black and white - it's an awful lot of grey.

Oh, don't get me wrong: there's still good and evil. Still right and wrong. But.....  How they show up in the world?

We don't have evil doppelgangers - we ARE the evil twin as much as we are the good twin. We have the ability to do good and ill - and we daily use our ability to choose to do both!

Life isn't simple. Choices can't be simply brushed aside.

I also wanted to write about people. About mental and mood disorders. About abuse. About manipulation.

About things no one likes to talk about.

I don't like blinders. Do I know anything? Nope. My writing is probably so far off the mark that it would insult anyone that read it. Will I stop? I don't think I can......