| General Fiction posted August 31, 2022 |
  |
World's Most Entertaining Conversationalist!
Interview with Michaela Moore
by Rachelle Allen
Interview A FanStory Writer Contest Winner
Hi, Fellow FanStorians! Thanks so much for joining us!!
INTRODUCING....My sweet and talented, exuberant, expressive friend, MICHAELA MOORE! [*tumultuous applause*]
Welcome to FanStory! I’m so excited to be interviewing you so that everyone who reads this can enjoy getting to know the warm, smart, fun and enthusiastic woman I have been privy to this summer. I’m absolutely loving our burgeoning friendship!
Let’s start with the basics: age, weight, reason for your visit today. Oops, no wait. Sorry; wrong notes.
Please tell us your town and state, how long you’ve lived there, your family roll call, and your occupation!
I have lived in Juneau, Alaska (the capital city), since 2005. Before that, I grew up and lived all my life in Fort Worth, Texas! (I like 'em big!) My husband is also a teacher at the high school with me and teaches choir and orchestra. I teach English and two theatre classes.
For fifteen years, I produced and directed school plays and musicals (three productions a year). It was a lovely time, and I wouldn't go back and change it. However, I lost my identity during those fifteen years because I was Mrs. Moore, teacher, 24-7, surrounded by teenagers constantly and consistently. I could no longer find Michaela. I didn't know who she was and depression descended hard after a couple of years of empty nest.
Last year was the first year I retired from doing the school play/musical productions, and I feel like I am living a new life! I have found Michaela again and am so full of joy and happiness. Writing is a part of Michaela that I have missed achingly.
Until I moved to Juneau, I wrote a lot in my spare time, but I never had an audience unless I chose to share it with my teenage students, who never cared much. : ) FanStory has brought such fulfillment to my life. Not just in having a place to commune with other writers, but also having a place to commune with adults! Re-opening myself up to adult relationships in my community and here on FanStory has been a pleasure!
I have two daughters who are a huge part of my life. They always have been. We are close. One lives and works in Juneau, and luckily I get to see her often. She is also a writer and has joined FanStory but is finding it hard to find time to write. She attends college at night and works full-time as an assistant manager of Compass (a home health aid company). Her name is Aria Moore, and she is 27 years old (look her up on this site if you would like).
My oldest, Shanae'a Moore, is 29 and will make me a grandmother (finally) at the end of November. Funny short story: she is married. She married a man whose last name is also Moore! That was a God blessing because nothing but Moore sounds good with her first name, which is pronounced shanayah (first "a" short vowel sound/second "a" long vowel sound). She is an actress and playwright in Houston, TX. Part of that acting includes doing Anime voiceovers. Such fun!
... Wow! This is way more than any of you probably wanted to know. But, well. I am a writer and once I begin, it is so hard to stop! HA!
Oh, you are singing my song, Michaela, you little whippoorwill!! No wonder we got along so easily right from the get-go. But unfortunately, that answer went so long, we’re now out of time. Ha! Kidding!
How did we come to be the lucky recipients of your talent?
It was Kismet, I believe. Last year, I wanted to obtain another Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and was enrolled and all ready to go. But unfortunately, life happened (as it so often does). Heart-crushingly, the money did not grow on the ever faithful pines in our front yard, and unless I wanted to put on my family a back-breaking debt near the time of retirement for my husband and myself, I needed to withdraw from the program. My husband was so sweet and supportive and was amenable to it if it would make me happy, but I could not do that to us at this time in our lives.
So, another year ticked slowly away in unfulfilled moments mixed with the ups and downs of life. Then, this past summer, the app PocketMags (from which I read some magazine subscriptions) offered me a free magazine from a list of titles. The Writer is the one I chose. The Writer fed my hunger for writing and the writer’s life. In their lists of upcoming contests, I saw a contest from FanStory that I wanted to enter. Thus, my introduction to my new, happy, virtual home of writers and readers of writers began with my first piece published on the site, "Bundles," and I have never looked back.
Ohhh, please! “Bundles” makes me well up just thinking about it! That was SUCH an extremely good story.
Looking at your portfolio, I see that you've written so many pieces already! My personal favorite --um, may I call you "Boot?"-- is the true-story offering entitled, "Slashers, Drunks, and a Boot," which, I imagine, has just made everyone reading this interview drop their jaws in unison. But it's actually a hilarious tale that, just as easily, could have been entitled: "Lucy and Ethel: the pre-quel." Which story or poem is YOUR favorite?
First, you honor me by comparing my teenage follies to Lucy and Ethel. I grew up watching every episode of those shows over and over and over again. It was such a blessing to share the golden show with my daughters when they were old enough to appreciate it, and Lucy has always influenced me and my girls, who have done a fair amount of acting themselves.
But I am off the subject. To answer your question: my favorite story in my portfolio is "Night Tears" because of the lightning strike of experience that crashed into my little world as a pre-tween that I detail in that tale. It is the pivotal moment that, as William Blake would say, brought me from a world of lambs into one of tygers burning bright. And I am so proud that I was able to use a real storm of nature happening that very night as not only the setting but also to personify that storm into the symbolic metaphor that the horrible happenings from that story portray.
Yes, “Night Tears” was the first piece of yours that I read. I immediately said to myself, ‘I have to get to know this woman better. She is extraordinary.’
My favorite poem in my portfolio is "Augite Drapes & Alabaster Leaves." The words from this free verse poem are my very soul laid bare for the whole world to see. It is raw and moving. Life can be unimaginatively beautiful and full of treasures and joys; however, it can also be a pit of disappointments and suffocating moments that pass too slowly. Thankfully, for me, when life gets too heavy and dark, what turns on the light are the miraculous words of faith and perseverance and love that through many ages of man’s cruelty and power plays, have stood all tests of time.
I can see why this one stands out for you. I enjoyed it very much, as well, though, as I mentioned in my review of it, I honest-to-gawd had to look up about fifteen of the perfect words you chose for it.
I know you absolutely love to read. Who are your top three authors, and what books were the ones they wrote that hooked you to loving them?
Oh dear, oh dear, how do I choose just three? I will choose the three authors that have influenced me as a writer the most since this site is about the craft and love of writing.
First, Edgar Allan Poe taught me the power of diction: choosing the perfect word that gives the most delicious ingredients to an exquisite baguette of meaning, mood, and magic. Like Poe, I want the emotion of my story to wrap the reader in a trance of stimulation. Like Poe, I want my writing to move the heart and blood and mind into a rapture of experience and thought beyond all explanation.
Second, another author that has greatly influenced me as a writer is Ray Bradbury. Not in the sense of writing science fiction fare, but in how he uses words and figurative language. His style is fresh, unique, and unlike any other writer. His ideas of characters and their relationships and how he goes about revealing insights, conflicts, and agendas of these relationships are beyond compare. I feel like I am eating when I read Bradbury: every word is a morsel that I slowly savor. His use of figurative language is masterful, and I have studied and studied his writing and work to emulate him all I can.
Finally, the third author that has affected me as a writer is Jan Karon. She is a more modern writer who I admire for many reasons. First, she had a full life in an advertising career, never publishing her writing until she retired. That brings me hope most gloriously. Her fictional series about an Episcopal priest and all the inhabitants of a small, sweet village in America called Mitford is delightfully real. Her writing is genuine, and she knows how to craft characters easily and simply. Her dialogue brings so much characterization and meaning, and voice. I work to make my dialogue in the vein of her genius.
Okay, your enthusiasm and syntax remind me SO much of my favorite HS English teacher. I bet your students absolutely love you! (Rachelle, get back on track. Only Michaela is allowed to go off on wild tangents here, not you!)
Do you use an e-reader, yourself, or do you prefer the ink-and-paper form of books?
I read on my iPhone, actually using iBooks or the Kindle apps. I love reading on my phone because I have lots of books with me, loaded and ready to read anywhere at any time. I have been doing this since Kindle and Nook were first on the scene with apps for the phone.
At any one time, I will be actively reading a couple of non-fiction books, a couple of adult fiction, and one young adult fiction (since I am still a high school English teacher.) It is great to be able to open whichever book I am most inclined to read at a particular moment.
Why both iPhone and Kindle? Because I buy when there are deals to be made. I belong to BookBub. If you love to read and are an avid reader, you should become a member. It is a free membership and sends a daily email of all the books on sale for a mere pittance. The sales are offered through Amazon or Apple or both. The best thing about BookBub is that you set up the genres you like to read and the authors you like to read, which are the sale titles you find in your email box.
I couldn’t agree more. I also like e-readers because strangers sitting across from me won’t have insight into what I’m reading. This is one of the few times when technology actually CLOAKS something rather than blasts it out to the world! [Oops; again with the tangents. Where’s my husband? He’s the one in charge of always knowing where to find find my muzzle!]
As an English teacher, what impact have you seen e-readers having upon your students' reading habits?
Sadly, getting the majority of teenagers to read these days seems quite the impossible feat. I teach 10th-grade English honors classes (the top academic scholars at my school), and even 85% of those students do not read. Sigh.
For the past two years, since I teach 10th graders, I have ditched the English canon for this age group and, instead, give the students full choice for their outside reading requirements. Anything goes: fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, plays, poetry. Just read! Please! We talk about why reading is so important for their lives and brains. I prove, through research I have done, how important reading is to their lives and brains. I talk to them and their parents ad nauseam about the importance of a reading habit. I cajole, beg, and talk excitedly and passionately about my reading. I read sections of texts out loud that I find exhilarating, all to no avail.
Social media and game apps on cell phones have really done a number on students’ caring much about reading or learning. But as they say, “Never Give Up! Never Surrender!” I will keep on keepin’ on in the fight to bring reading into the lives of our future leaders until I retire. Oops. I did it again. I haven’t actually answered your question: out of the 15% who do read habitually, most of them still like books. Only about 5% use e-readers.
Oy! Excuse me while I go weep for the inevitable demise of our species with those reading-in-general stats! I applaud your never-say-die spirit.
What are your thoughts on audiobooks?
I adore audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks while in my car (instead of music), showering, and getting ready for work. In the audiobook realm, I have dropped Audible because of the monthly expense and I am now an avid member of Chirp. Chirp is a free audiobook service that, like BookBub, sends you daily emails with extreme sale prices on audiobooks from your favorite genres and authors. Seriously! If you love audiobooks, check out Chirp. I get audiobooks, normally $25 or more, for $1.99-4.99, depending on the title.
But once again, my passion has caused me to digress. I listen to my guilty pleasure books audibly. Right now, my guilty pleasure is murder mysteries. There are many murder mystery writers that I adore (mostly UK writers): Agatha Christy, the Miss Seeton Series, and Sherlock Holmes, of course, along with many others. I also love UK comedy books for pleasure as well: my favorite, that farcical Duo Jeeves, the butler, and his man about town, Bertie Wooster!
Such fun! With Chirp, I have listened to so many authors I have never heard of in the genre of comedy or detective mystery. It is a lovely way to pass the time while doing mundane chores.
Oooh! Thanks for these suggestions! I’m always looking for something good to listen to while I’m driving between lessons or cleaning.
Is there any genre of book you just can't make yourself read?
I will not read horror or the grand dame romance serial novels. I also find it hard to enjoy science fiction, but I love many fantasy novels. Anything else I will read and enjoy many genres. If the writing captures me with its magic, I will read voraciously.
Books that have captured my imagination are the wonderful novels written in all free-verse poetry, multiple-genres, or by different points of view as told piece by piece from differing narrators. Fascinating.
What is your favorite non-book-or-writing extra-curricular activity?
I love walking trails. We have so many in Alaska. I have also started to learn French at home. I am really enjoying it. I can write it and read it really well, but my pronunciation is hilarious. No matter how hard I try, growing up for over 30 some-odd years in the deep Texas South has me sounding like an alien when I try and speak the beautiful language.
HAHAHAHA!! Now I’m going to insist we Skype; my musician’s ear is dying to hear what French, spoken by a Texan, sounds like! I just KNOW I am in for a treat!
I also know that Nonets are among your favorite poetry form. Please give us a Nonet entitled "Michaela Moore."
Buried deep in pits of raw despair,
My dreams lie unfulfilled and dead.
I dabble in light and hope,
Forming and chiseling
Each day into life:
Significant,
Meaningful,
Poignant,
True.
I just knew you were going to blow that one out of the water, Michaela; thank you.
Do you have any long-range writing plans or a goal toward which you are aspiring?
I would love to be able to write a series of novels that a fan base would love. I don’t want to be J.K. Rowling or John Grisham popular. The problem is that I don’t have an idea for a setting, plot, or characters for this dream series of mine. So, for now, I will settle for any audience to read and enjoy my writing.
I love to write. It fills me with such joy and a creative outlet. There is nothing like writing and revising and revising and revising and getting each word perfect: the dance between the writer and the artist within the words. But it all seems meaningless if you don’t have a group to read your creations and be moved by it. I am hoping that FanStory will be my dream fulfilled for now.
If only I could interest more people to read my precious babies that I painstakingly birth. How do popular FanStory authors with many accolades obtain readers? For me, it remains a mystery.
They get their friends to interview them! Duh!
What advice could you offer our seasoned FS veterans here on how they could ease the way for a new girl on the site?
Remember what an honor it is to know that another lover of words and story reads your work and takes the time to comment, to uplift, to encourage, to support. Continue to reach out to various unknown writers on this site and let their art and genius stir and move you.
And remember that we all are artists in our own right. Writing style is subjective and multi-layered and varied. There is no one right way to write a poem or story. Open your mind and your heart to differing brush strokes and colors and ideas.
Let people play and find their way with words. Guide them toward excellence in their authentic selves and don’t try and stuff them into an everyman’s box. If you give unique a chance, it just might stir your soul to new heights.
Any parting thoughts?
I have enjoyed and delighted in my month-long new journey on this special virtual club of writers. For that is what we all are. We are writers! Because we write.
Thank you, Michaela. I have loved every minute of this.You are interesting and engaging and very fun. I predict that you are going to do great things here, and I bet I am not the only one who will be proud to say, “I knew her when!!”
Hi, Fellow FanStorians! Thanks so much for joining us!!
INTRODUCING....My sweet and talented, exuberant, expressive friend, MICHAELA MOORE! [*tumultuous applause*]
Welcome to FanStory! I’m so excited to be interviewing you so that everyone who reads this can enjoy getting to know the warm, smart, fun and enthusiastic woman I have been privy to this summer. I’m absolutely loving our burgeoning friendship!
Let’s start with the basics: age, weight, reason for your visit today. Oops, no wait. Sorry; wrong notes.
Please tell us your town and state, how long you’ve lived there, your family roll call, and your occupation!
I have lived in Juneau, Alaska (the capital city), since 2005. Before that, I grew up and lived all my life in Fort Worth, Texas! (I like 'em big!) My husband is also a teacher at the high school with me and teaches choir and orchestra. I teach English and two theatre classes.
For fifteen years, I produced and directed school plays and musicals (three productions a year). It was a lovely time, and I wouldn't go back and change it. However, I lost my identity during those fifteen years because I was Mrs. Moore, teacher, 24-7, surrounded by teenagers constantly and consistently. I could no longer find Michaela. I didn't know who she was and depression descended hard after a couple of years of empty nest.
Last year was the first year I retired from doing the school play/musical productions, and I feel like I am living a new life! I have found Michaela again and am so full of joy and happiness. Writing is a part of Michaela that I have missed achingly.
Until I moved to Juneau, I wrote a lot in my spare time, but I never had an audience unless I chose to share it with my teenage students, who never cared much. : ) FanStory has brought such fulfillment to my life. Not just in having a place to commune with other writers, but also having a place to commune with adults! Re-opening myself up to adult relationships in my community and here on FanStory has been a pleasure!
I have two daughters who are a huge part of my life. They always have been. We are close. One lives and works in Juneau, and luckily I get to see her often. She is also a writer and has joined FanStory but is finding it hard to find time to write. She attends college at night and works full-time as an assistant manager of Compass (a home health aid company). Her name is Aria Moore, and she is 27 years old (look her up on this site if you would like).
My oldest, Shanae'a Moore, is 29 and will make me a grandmother (finally) at the end of November. Funny short story: she is married. She married a man whose last name is also Moore! That was a God blessing because nothing but Moore sounds good with her first name, which is pronounced shanayah (first "a" short vowel sound/second "a" long vowel sound). She is an actress and playwright in Houston, TX. Part of that acting includes doing Anime voiceovers. Such fun!
... Wow! This is way more than any of you probably wanted to know. But, well. I am a writer and once I begin, it is so hard to stop! HA!
Oh, you are singing my song, Michaela, you little whippoorwill!! No wonder we got along so easily right from the get-go. But unfortunately, that answer went so long, we’re now out of time. Ha! Kidding!
How did we come to be the lucky recipients of your talent?
It was Kismet, I believe. Last year, I wanted to obtain another Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and was enrolled and all ready to go. But unfortunately, life happened (as it so often does). Heart-crushingly, the money did not grow on the ever faithful pines in our front yard, and unless I wanted to put on my family a back-breaking debt near the time of retirement for my husband and myself, I needed to withdraw from the program. My husband was so sweet and supportive and was amenable to it if it would make me happy, but I could not do that to us at this time in our lives.
So, another year ticked slowly away in unfulfilled moments mixed with the ups and downs of life. Then, this past summer, the app PocketMags (from which I read some magazine subscriptions) offered me a free magazine from a list of titles. The Writer is the one I chose. The Writer fed my hunger for writing and the writer’s life. In their lists of upcoming contests, I saw a contest from FanStory that I wanted to enter. Thus, my introduction to my new, happy, virtual home of writers and readers of writers began with my first piece published on the site, "Bundles," and I have never looked back.
Ohhh, please! “Bundles” makes me well up just thinking about it! That was SUCH an extremely good story.
Looking at your portfolio, I see that you've written so many pieces already! My personal favorite --um, may I call you "Boot?"-- is the true-story offering entitled, "Slashers, Drunks, and a Boot," which, I imagine, has just made everyone reading this interview drop their jaws in unison. But it's actually a hilarious tale that, just as easily, could have been entitled: "Lucy and Ethel: the pre-quel." Which story or poem is YOUR favorite?
First, you honor me by comparing my teenage follies to Lucy and Ethel. I grew up watching every episode of those shows over and over and over again. It was such a blessing to share the golden show with my daughters when they were old enough to appreciate it, and Lucy has always influenced me and my girls, who have done a fair amount of acting themselves.
But I am off the subject. To answer your question: my favorite story in my portfolio is "Night Tears" because of the lightning strike of experience that crashed into my little world as a pre-tween that I detail in that tale. It is the pivotal moment that, as William Blake would say, brought me from a world of lambs into one of tygers burning bright. And I am so proud that I was able to use a real storm of nature happening that very night as not only the setting but also to personify that storm into the symbolic metaphor that the horrible happenings from that story portray.
Yes, “Night Tears” was the first piece of yours that I read. I immediately said to myself, ‘I have to get to know this woman better. She is extraordinary.’
My favorite poem in my portfolio is "Augite Drapes & Alabaster Leaves." The words from this free verse poem are my very soul laid bare for the whole world to see. It is raw and moving. Life can be unimaginatively beautiful and full of treasures and joys; however, it can also be a pit of disappointments and suffocating moments that pass too slowly. Thankfully, for me, when life gets too heavy and dark, what turns on the light are the miraculous words of faith and perseverance and love that through many ages of man’s cruelty and power plays, have stood all tests of time.
I can see why this one stands out for you. I enjoyed it very much, as well, though, as I mentioned in my review of it, I honest-to-gawd had to look up about fifteen of the perfect words you chose for it.
I know you absolutely love to read. Who are your top three authors, and what books were the ones they wrote that hooked you to loving them?
Oh dear, oh dear, how do I choose just three? I will choose the three authors that have influenced me as a writer the most since this site is about the craft and love of writing.
First, Edgar Allan Poe taught me the power of diction: choosing the perfect word that gives the most delicious ingredients to an exquisite baguette of meaning, mood, and magic. Like Poe, I want the emotion of my story to wrap the reader in a trance of stimulation. Like Poe, I want my writing to move the heart and blood and mind into a rapture of experience and thought beyond all explanation.
Second, another author that has greatly influenced me as a writer is Ray Bradbury. Not in the sense of writing science fiction fare, but in how he uses words and figurative language. His style is fresh, unique, and unlike any other writer. His ideas of characters and their relationships and how he goes about revealing insights, conflicts, and agendas of these relationships are beyond compare. I feel like I am eating when I read Bradbury: every word is a morsel that I slowly savor. His use of figurative language is masterful, and I have studied and studied his writing and work to emulate him all I can.
Finally, the third author that has affected me as a writer is Jan Karon. She is a more modern writer who I admire for many reasons. First, she had a full life in an advertising career, never publishing her writing until she retired. That brings me hope most gloriously. Her fictional series about an Episcopal priest and all the inhabitants of a small, sweet village in America called Mitford is delightfully real. Her writing is genuine, and she knows how to craft characters easily and simply. Her dialogue brings so much characterization and meaning, and voice. I work to make my dialogue in the vein of her genius.
Okay, your enthusiasm and syntax remind me SO much of my favorite HS English teacher. I bet your students absolutely love you! (Rachelle, get back on track. Only Michaela is allowed to go off on wild tangents here, not you!)
Do you use an e-reader, yourself, or do you prefer the ink-and-paper form of books?
I read on my iPhone, actually using iBooks or the Kindle apps. I love reading on my phone because I have lots of books with me, loaded and ready to read anywhere at any time. I have been doing this since Kindle and Nook were first on the scene with apps for the phone.
At any one time, I will be actively reading a couple of non-fiction books, a couple of adult fiction, and one young adult fiction (since I am still a high school English teacher.) It is great to be able to open whichever book I am most inclined to read at a particular moment.
Why both iPhone and Kindle? Because I buy when there are deals to be made. I belong to BookBub. If you love to read and are an avid reader, you should become a member. It is a free membership and sends a daily email of all the books on sale for a mere pittance. The sales are offered through Amazon or Apple or both. The best thing about BookBub is that you set up the genres you like to read and the authors you like to read, which are the sale titles you find in your email box.
I couldn’t agree more. I also like e-readers because strangers sitting across from me won’t have insight into what I’m reading. This is one of the few times when technology actually CLOAKS something rather than blasts it out to the world! [Oops; again with the tangents. Where’s my husband? He’s the one in charge of always knowing where to find find my muzzle!]
As an English teacher, what impact have you seen e-readers having upon your students' reading habits?
Sadly, getting the majority of teenagers to read these days seems quite the impossible feat. I teach 10th-grade English honors classes (the top academic scholars at my school), and even 85% of those students do not read. Sigh.
For the past two years, since I teach 10th graders, I have ditched the English canon for this age group and, instead, give the students full choice for their outside reading requirements. Anything goes: fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, plays, poetry. Just read! Please! We talk about why reading is so important for their lives and brains. I prove, through research I have done, how important reading is to their lives and brains. I talk to them and their parents ad nauseam about the importance of a reading habit. I cajole, beg, and talk excitedly and passionately about my reading. I read sections of texts out loud that I find exhilarating, all to no avail.
Social media and game apps on cell phones have really done a number on students’ caring much about reading or learning. But as they say, “Never Give Up! Never Surrender!” I will keep on keepin’ on in the fight to bring reading into the lives of our future leaders until I retire. Oops. I did it again. I haven’t actually answered your question: out of the 15% who do read habitually, most of them still like books. Only about 5% use e-readers.
Oy! Excuse me while I go weep for the inevitable demise of our species with those reading-in-general stats! I applaud your never-say-die spirit.
What are your thoughts on audiobooks?
I adore audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks while in my car (instead of music), showering, and getting ready for work. In the audiobook realm, I have dropped Audible because of the monthly expense and I am now an avid member of Chirp. Chirp is a free audiobook service that, like BookBub, sends you daily emails with extreme sale prices on audiobooks from your favorite genres and authors. Seriously! If you love audiobooks, check out Chirp. I get audiobooks, normally $25 or more, for $1.99-4.99, depending on the title.
But once again, my passion has caused me to digress. I listen to my guilty pleasure books audibly. Right now, my guilty pleasure is murder mysteries. There are many murder mystery writers that I adore (mostly UK writers): Agatha Christy, the Miss Seeton Series, and Sherlock Holmes, of course, along with many others. I also love UK comedy books for pleasure as well: my favorite, that farcical Duo Jeeves, the butler, and his man about town, Bertie Wooster!
Such fun! With Chirp, I have listened to so many authors I have never heard of in the genre of comedy or detective mystery. It is a lovely way to pass the time while doing mundane chores.
Oooh! Thanks for these suggestions! I’m always looking for something good to listen to while I’m driving between lessons or cleaning.
Is there any genre of book you just can't make yourself read?
I will not read horror or the grand dame romance serial novels. I also find it hard to enjoy science fiction, but I love many fantasy novels. Anything else I will read and enjoy many genres. If the writing captures me with its magic, I will read voraciously.
Books that have captured my imagination are the wonderful novels written in all free-verse poetry, multiple-genres, or by different points of view as told piece by piece from differing narrators. Fascinating.
What is your favorite non-book-or-writing extra-curricular activity?
I love walking trails. We have so many in Alaska. I have also started to learn French at home. I am really enjoying it. I can write it and read it really well, but my pronunciation is hilarious. No matter how hard I try, growing up for over 30 some-odd years in the deep Texas South has me sounding like an alien when I try and speak the beautiful language.
HAHAHAHA!! Now I’m going to insist we Skype; my musician’s ear is dying to hear what French, spoken by a Texan, sounds like! I just KNOW I am in for a treat!
I also know that Nonets are among your favorite poetry form. Please give us a Nonet entitled "Michaela Moore."
Buried deep in pits of raw despair,
My dreams lie unfulfilled and dead.
I dabble in light and hope,
Forming and chiseling
Each day into life:
Significant,
Meaningful,
Poignant,
True.
My dreams lie unfulfilled and dead.
I dabble in light and hope,
Forming and chiseling
Each day into life:
Significant,
Meaningful,
Poignant,
True.
I just knew you were going to blow that one out of the water, Michaela; thank you.
Do you have any long-range writing plans or a goal toward which you are aspiring?
I would love to be able to write a series of novels that a fan base would love. I don’t want to be J.K. Rowling or John Grisham popular. The problem is that I don’t have an idea for a setting, plot, or characters for this dream series of mine. So, for now, I will settle for any audience to read and enjoy my writing.
I love to write. It fills me with such joy and a creative outlet. There is nothing like writing and revising and revising and revising and getting each word perfect: the dance between the writer and the artist within the words. But it all seems meaningless if you don’t have a group to read your creations and be moved by it. I am hoping that FanStory will be my dream fulfilled for now.
If only I could interest more people to read my precious babies that I painstakingly birth. How do popular FanStory authors with many accolades obtain readers? For me, it remains a mystery.
They get their friends to interview them! Duh!
What advice could you offer our seasoned FS veterans here on how they could ease the way for a new girl on the site?
Remember what an honor it is to know that another lover of words and story reads your work and takes the time to comment, to uplift, to encourage, to support. Continue to reach out to various unknown writers on this site and let their art and genius stir and move you.
And remember that we all are artists in our own right. Writing style is subjective and multi-layered and varied. There is no one right way to write a poem or story. Open your mind and your heart to differing brush strokes and colors and ideas.
Let people play and find their way with words. Guide them toward excellence in their authentic selves and don’t try and stuff them into an everyman’s box. If you give unique a chance, it just might stir your soul to new heights.
Any parting thoughts?
I have enjoyed and delighted in my month-long new journey on this special virtual club of writers. For that is what we all are. We are writers! Because we write.
Thank you, Michaela. I have loved every minute of this.You are interesting and engaging and very fun. I predict that you are going to do great things here, and I bet I am not the only one who will be proud to say, “I knew her when!!”
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