Fiction Fridays: Interview with YA speculative novelist, JC Morrows

My mother made me do it. LOL! Actually, she did convince me to start writing down my stories, crafting them into novels. I’ve always been a storyteller. For the record, I am exceedingly grateful to her – for her faith in me, for her encouragement, even for her prodding me to write when I really wanted to give up.

“A Reluctant Assassin” is a what-if type story. What if you were deserted at a young age; left on the streets to fend for yourself? What if a man, who belongs to a shadowy underground resistance organization, rescues you from life on the streets and brings you into that same organization? What if the organization that has trained you, sheltered you, and taken care of you for seven years – assigns you a mission so dangerous… so desperate… so daring… that it might just be impossible? And what if you go to the palace in an attempt to complete that mission, only to find yourself falling in love with your target?

I’d tell you the answers, but that would spoil the story for you.

My writing process is very messy, unpredictable and somewhat random. A story pops into my head, and I dive in. I outline some as I go, but that’s more for reference as I’m working on later books – because I tend to write series. I don’t work from the outline and I don’t resist changes that may pop up unexpectedly or twists and turns my characters throw at me. Some days I sit down and write 1,000 words and some days I pop back and forth – ending the day with 5,000 words +. The only real constant is the fact that I rarely write when my kids are awake. Every once in a while, inspiration will grab hold of me and I simply can’t walk away, but mostly it’s first thing in the morning or late at night for me.

Well, my kids asking me constantly how many words I’ve got for the day helps a lot, but the major motivation for me is God’s will… God’s plan. He has led me down this path and He has given me the story, the inspiration and the desire to tell His story!

Oh… I don’t know that I want to go there. With a movie, I would lose control of so much. A movie studio would change the story… the outfits… the world… even the relationship between the Prince and Kayden. I can’t say much more about that or I risk dropping a spoiler, but trust me when I say that the only way I would agree to a movie would be if I were 100% in control of the final product and… since I don’t see that happening, chances are slim we will ever see Kayden on the big screen – which is sort of a tragedy because fans of sci-fi, fantasy and dystopian fiction would go nuts over my world on the big screen.