Welcome to 7 Questions from the Serrulata Saga Desk, my blog feature that boosts fellow indie authors! This week, I chat with Talli L. Morgan, who is not just an amazing author but a fantastic pal! Pen Name: Talli L. Morgan Pronouns: They/Them Book Series/Latest Book Published: Faded Moon Introduce your current favorite character – who are they and why do you prefer them above all others at the moment? I wish I could say it was hard for me to pick favorites among my characters, but… it’s not, haha. Currently it’s Cyrus, the main character of my vampire book. The youngest in an elite family of vampire hunters, he’s the black sheep of the lot since he (gasp) doesn’t really want to hunt vampires, nor is he very good at it. As for why he’s my favorite right now –– other than simply because I’m working on his book –– I think what compels me about Cyrus is how multi-faceted he is. The grumpy, pessimistic, prickly persona he often exhibits is a vast contrast to his true inner personality, which is fiercely driven by hope. But he’s so terrified of losing that hope that he’s reluctant to fight for it, so he runs from the plot until it (literally) bites him. It’s not until he finds something worth fighting for –– because to him, his mere life isn’t reason enough –– that he really steps into the protagonist shoes, and that’s been super interesting to explore. Who is harder to write – an interesting hero or an interesting villain? An interesting villain, for sure. I fully admit this is one of my weak points in my writing; I forget to make the antagonists dimensional! The best villains, in my opinion, are the ones with so many conflicting layers and nuances to them that you find yourself understanding them even if you ultimately disagree with them. That’s truly not easy to accomplish, especially in books –– like I tend to write –– where the antagonist isn’t directly interacting with the characters all that much. You’re trapped in an elevator with your main character. What are you discussing? I think I would end up giving Cyrus a much-needed, long-time-coming therapy session. We’re stuck there, he’s got twenty-one years of crap to work through, and he can’t run away. What better time? What is the most challenging aspect of writing for you? How do you conquer it? Honestly, battling the doubt. Yes, there’s aspects of the craft itself that trip me up with every draft, but overall the hardest part is ignoring the imposter syndrome. I’m still trying to get better at being unflinchingly proud of my work rather than constantly worrying if it’s good enough. I have a few little rituals that help with this: one is my final read-through after publication, which I think of as a sort of farewell to the book now that it’s truly finished and out in the world. I use this time with it to reflect on how far I’ve come with the story, and I intentionally let myself be proud of it. Another tradition I started with my first book is writing a “love letter” to the book the night before its release date. It’s another way to reflect on my journey with the story and characters and sort of wish it good luck. If you could write a cross-over with another book/series, what would it be and why? (Or, if cross-overs don’t interest you, why?) Someday Rita Rubin and I will write a crossover of The Windermere Tales and Chronicles of the Guardians and it’ll be chaotic and beautiful. Our series have perfectly complementary vibes with high-fantasy settings, grand adventures, cursed artifacts, and to top it all off, disaster characters. It’d be so much fun. In your opinion, what is the purpose of storytelling? Oh, gosh, this one is hard. I feel that stories are meant to take us somewhere. Whether that journey is physical or emotional or both, I believe we’re meant to leave behind our lives for a few hundred pages and step into a different world –– even if that world is just a different angle of our own. The best books I’ve read have been the ones whose worlds and settings and characters seem so viscerally real that I forgot where I was while wrapped in their pages. Ok, last but not least… Tell us a bit about what made you want to become a writer and why you write what you write. I don’t remember if there was a specific moment when I decided I wanted to be a serious writer, but once I started I knew I never wanted to stop. My first foray into creative writing was through fanfictions, which were born because I couldn’t get the characters out of my head and I needed to give them more stories than what the source material provided. In a lot of ways, that’s still what drives my writing: characters chattering away in my head until I get their stories out of my brain and onto the page. I also don’t remember consciously choosing fantasy; some of the first original fiction I wrote was actually contemporary. But then in high school I started writing a sort of portal fantasy, where the main character fell from our world into a magical one, and I guess I never left the magical worlds behind after that! Here's where to find Talli: Website: https://tallimorgan.com Instagram: @tallimorgan.books Are you an indie author who wants to be featured on 7 Questions? Send me an email!
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