About Mon Rea:
For many years, Mon Rea has taught English to foreigners, but his one true passion has always been writing stories. He never stopped scribbling – between classes or in between part-time work, on napkins or on the back of receipts, with or without a pen, on the bus or in the shower, awake or asleep.
“Spirit Wars” is his first published work and he is currently at work on a romance novel, to prove his versatility as an author.
His motto both as a writer and a teacher is “Break Barriers Build Bridges.” Mon Rea lives in a sunny, beautiful spot in the Philippines.
What inspires you to write?
My inspiration to write is the thought of bringing happiness to regular readers. When I’m able to touch their lives in any way, whether by producing a planned effect on them or simply making a connection through similar experiences, I feel I’ve fulfilled my role as an author. As a reader, I know the delightful feeling of having read a good story and the idea of reproducing the same experience in other people, through my own work, drives me to excel in my craft.
Tell us about your writing process.
I suppose an outliner-type of writer. Naturally there are some parts where I just follow my instincts, but there’s also this mostly hard and fast blueprint of what particular story you really want to tell. I mean, it’s the kind of blueprint that impels you to write in the first place; you just try to write the life out of the story and hope you’ve done a great job of bringing it into words, of fleshing it out the way you’ve envisioned it in your mind.
This doesn’t mean that I always have plot lines on a whiteboard or a piece of paper. But this does entail that I don’t make certain deviations from the original design. When it comes to characterization, I might be slightly more lenient to give characters unpredictability. Then again, there are still some hard-wired lines that I wouldn’t let my characters cross.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I watch a lot of movies. I still haven’t outgrown the taboo against talking by myself. But my being a big fan of movies helps a lot with my hearing how dialogues should go. A couple of times after I watched a movie, I went back to a page I had completed and went ahead and changed a character’s line.
Period stories are much more challenging though. I do a lot of painstaking research; Old English, western, even contemporary slang sometimes.
What advice would you give other writers?
Be persistent. Nothing is ever easy in writing, and that includes a lot of the self-publishing path. Modern technology has made our work a whole lot easier, from background research to publication, but it has also generated numerous distractions and temptations.
Make writing a routine. This will take care of your writer’s block. You might as well embrace it and work your way around it because it’s an integral part of the writing life. Incidentally, don’t quit your day job to be an impoverished artist. Be practical and make your writing more possible and available with your day job.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
It was a very natural choice for me to become a self-published author. I belong to a generation that has experienced both print books and digital ones. Of course traditional publication has managed to make the transition into the e-platform as well, but I feel that self-published authors are more attuned to the technology, the medium that it entails, and the ever-changing taste of readers. Besides, once you’ve learned the ropes, self-publishing is definitely more favorable to authors.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think the publishing industry will shift more and more into the digital and text platform. As a result, literary language might evolve to become shorter, less concerned with grammar and other technicalities, and more casual. Readers would also expect lightning-fast and bite-sized content.
What do you use?: Professional Cover Designer
What genres do you write?: fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, sci-fi, dystopia, parody, humor
What formats are your books in?: eBook
Website(s)
Mon Rea Home Page Link
Link To Mon Rea Page On Amazon
Link to Author Page on other site
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
Facebook
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
