Ten Questions with… Stan Morris
Welcome to the first edition of Ten Questions with Mia for the month of May! Our guest today is Stan Morris, author of multiple stories. Welcome!
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Author Bio: Stan Morris (1951-) was born in Linwood, California, to religious fundamentalist parents. He grew up in Norwalk, California and Concord, California, where he discovered the amazing world of hard science fiction and became influenced by conservative atheism and liberal humanitarianism. He moved to New Mexico in 1972, and finally to Maui, Hawaii in 1983. He in worked a variety of jobs at oil and gas companies, driving situations, and computer tech operations. He retired in 2006. His first book, “Surviving the Fog,” was published in 2009. He lives on a farm and grows coffee, avocados, tangerines, peaches, plumeria, a variety of vegetables and herbs, and an incredible amount of weeds. He is married to Rene Yamafuji. They have two sons.
Author Site: https://sites.google.com/site/stanandrene/
You can find his stories at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes and his website!
About the Writer
1. What five words describe you?
Reader, writer, gardener, sports fan
2. What was the first story you ever wrote? I mean the really bad one we all have that you’re trying to hide in the back of closet now that you’re published?
I don’t remember the title. I was fourteen. It was a science fiction story with teleportation booths that allowed people to travel between Earth and Mars. Star Trek was popular at that time.
3. What inspires you?
Ordinary people who strive to do good things. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an ordinary man who changed the course of American history and will someday be seen as a man who changed the course of the world.
4. What distracts you?
At one time it was young pretty girls, especially oriental girls, but now it’s the internet.
5. What’s your favorite story? This can be specific, as in a particular book or even story-driven movie, or general, like “I’m a sucker for a hero looking for redemption story.”
I love stories of ordinary people in extraordinary situations. The story of some small hobbits facing an incredible ancient power is that type of story.
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About the Writing
1. Tell us about your currently available titles.
Surviving the Fog is a story about four dozen teenagers who are trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by a mysterious brown fog that covers the Earth below 6,700 feet. It focuses on Mike who tries to get the others to see the necessity of preparing to survive.
Sarah’s Spaceship Adventure is from my Mackenzie’s Rock series, and it is about a girl who sneaks out of her house one evening to take a short hop on her boyfriend’s space yacht and ends up taking a trip to her star system’s asteroid belt. It’s a story that describes cultural drift.
The Colors of Passion and Love is about a young princess who can see the colors of the aura of the men around her and knows which color corresponds to a particular emotion in one special young man. It’s a story with light magic.
Tales of the Ragoon is a series of stories about some people living in central California after the Earth is colonized by a hermaphrodite, merchant, alien species. In Sam’s Winnings, a kid jokingly bets his sister in a poker game with life changing results. Kate’s Movie Star is about a girl who runs afoul of the Ragoon and is forced to live for one year with a young movie star. Amy’s Hero is about a girl who has become so withdrawn from life that her parents appeal to the Ragoon for help.
2. What’s your favorite part about writing these stories?
Creating something different. The aliens I read about or watch on TV are usually monsters or wonderful wise beings. In Tales of the Ragoon I created a group of aliens from a civilized society, but who have prejudices that have serious and sometimes terrible repercussions for the worlds they colonize. They have laws requiring them to pay for what they take, but they bend those laws out of greed. They have a religious moral code, but some of them use that religion as an excuse to do terrible things. They need humans to be content with their rule, so they sell us high tech stuff to get money to pay for what they are taking.
3. What would your characters say about you? Be honest!
They would probably say, “Why can’t you make us prettier, handsomer, smarter, nobler, and cooler. Why are we so average?”
4. Who would play your favorite character if they made a movie of their story?
I would like Elle Fanning to play either Kathy in Surviving the Fog, or Sarah in Sarah’s Spaceship Adventure. I would like Chandler Riggs from The Walking Dead to play Sam in Sam’s Winnings or Mike in Surviving the Fog.
5. Do you have any projects currently in the works you want to talk about?
I am about to epublish Surviving the Fog-Kathy’s Recollections. This is the story of Surviving the Fog from Kathy’s point of view. It focuses on the girls in the story. I have a number of other works in progress including some from the Mackenzie’s Rock series, a contemporary story, and a historical fiction book.
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Thank you for joining us today, Stan, and good luck with your writing!
