The Void Author Interview

Summary:

Which would you choose—save your sister or save the world?

Emma Edsel’s first priority has always been protecting her blind sister Carla. So when Carla begins to develop science-defying abilities that threaten her life, Emma will stop at nothing to save her. With nowhere else to turn, she seeks help from Mitchell, the new boy at school who seems to know much more about it than he will admit.

After his last mission went horribly awry, Mitchell Banks is relieved to have a simple task: seal a small, accidental portal between Earth and other worlds in the multiverse. He didn’t count on his growing feelings for Emma—and the dangerous levels of dimension energy contaminating Carla.

Carla knows the voice in her head is evil. Manipulative. Feeding her with strange energy she can control. She doesn’t know that she is the key to a coming global catastrophe and Mitchell’s boss will use any means possible to prevent it…including blackmailing him into murdering her.

About the Author:

Morgan Elizabeth Huneke fell in love with sci-fi and fantasy at age seven when she first read A Wrinkle in Time and The Chronicles of Narnia. In the time since, she’s spent an inordinate amount of time exploring new realms and bygone eras through countless books, movies, and TV shows. She also spends a great deal of time talking to her imaginary friends and writing down their stories in books such as the Time Captives fantasy trilogy and Twisted Dreams, a sci-fi/fantasy Sleeping Beauty novella. On the occasion she remembers she lives in Georgia in the 21st century, she can be found working at the local library, playing and teaching violin and piano, singing along to Disney and Broadway soundtracks, making casseroles while blaring Casting Crowns, sewing her own clothes, turning pirouettes in the kitchen, and volunteering for political campaigns.

Buy her book on amazon, and add on Goodreads!

Interview with Morgan Huneke:

When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? Was there a life-changing event that impacted your writing?

I honestly don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. I’ve loved books since I was tiny, and my first story was dictated to my mom—Bambi’s Gonna Go To Faline—before I was even school age. One of my earliest dreams was to be able to walk into the library and see books I wrote on the shelf. I can actually do that today, though only at local libraries, and only the ones I’ve donated. I don’t know that there’s a particular life changing even that impacted my writing so much as a cumulation of events throughout my life. As I’ve grown as a person, read books, visited places, met people, learned things, and just lived life, my writing has changed and grown. I’ve certainly come a long way from the “Silly Monster” stories I was obsessed with writing when I was little!

What do you hope your reader will get out of reading this book?

I don’t know that there’s one particular thing I want people to get out of it. It’s a very complex book and I try to never write with a particular theme or message in mind. I find that its more effective to just write the story and let God take care of the theme. I’ve been surprised many times by the themes that come out of my books when I take that approach. And like I said, it’s a very complex book containing many aspects and themes that will resonate with different people in various ways. When it comes down to it, what I want for all of my books is for them to draw people closer to God and to deepen people’s worldviews, making them think and helping them to see and understand things in a richer way. There is one theme in the book that stands out to me more than others, but I’d prefer for readers to find it for themselves. C.S. Lewis was careful never to decode The Chronicles of Narnia for children, and I like that approach.

Which character was the hardest to write and why? Which character would you say that you are most like?

Emma was definitely hardest. We’re opposites in so many ways—she’s into science, I like science but I’m more into the arts; she has a dysfunctional family with a crazy mom and an emotionally distant dad, I’ve always had a stable family with loving, supportive parents; she is very closed off and doesn’t like people, I may be an introvert but generally speaking I do like people…So it took a while, a good bit of research, and a reread of The Hunger Games trilogy+quite a bit of Hunger Games fanfiction, but I was eventually able to get inside her head. She’s still the most difficult character for me to write, but that’s also because she’s so complex, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As for which character is most like me, well, most of them have a little of me in them. Grace’s tendency to make fandom references is 100% me, and Carla’s love of music and books (particularly L’Engle and Haddix) also comes from me. Though Carla likes piano best and I prefer violin. Those are the two that probably have the most of me, and also are my easiest characters to write, but neither is exactly like me.

Which book (other than the Bible) has impacted your life and your life as a writer?

Is it cheating to pick a series rather than just one book? The Chronicles of Narnia. There’s not a particular lot of Narnia influence in Acktorek—it’s more influenced by my second top fandom, Star Wars—but there’s not a chance I would be the person and writer I am today without Narnia. I first read the series at age seven and was instantly obsessed…an obsession that lasts to this day. At one point in my life I could literally quote the entirety of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) beginning to end. It shaped my imagination, is one of the primary reasons I love speculative fiction, and has illustrated many biblical truths in a way my story-loving brain can understand. There’s certainly a lot of Narnia influence in my Time Captives trilogy, and I suppose my other-worlds concept in Acktorek does find its root in Narnia, even if the end result is completely different. (Also, most, if not all, of my villainesses probably have a touch of White Witch/Jadis in them.)

If you had a super power what super power would you have?

Telepathy. Yes, I’ve thought about it before. Like Carla, I’ve always been fascinated by the concept. It’s been taken out of the final version because my family thought the reference would be too obscure, but both her and my fascination stems from the kything in A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle. (Though telepathy is only the barest surface of what kything truly is.) There are some really cool aspects to telepathy in fiction, but there are dangers too. It’s not always sunshine and lollipops as illustrated in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Claim to Fame…and as Carla herself discovers.

Make sure you sign up for the giveaway! You can enter here to win a signed copy of Acktorek: The Void! The giveaway is for U. S residents only. Sorry, international readers!

_{Disclaimer: I was given a copy of The Void for participating in the blog tour and for posting about the book on my social media.}

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