Interview with writer and poet Marta Moran Bishop

I am so honored to interview author of multiple books, writer and poet Marta Moran Bishop for my official author website. Marta writes in different genres and her writing is so captivating!

– Thank you, Leyla for the gift of allowing me to join you on your website today.  I am touched and thrilled to be here. Your questions are deeply thought-out and are sure to make me think, which is always exciting to me, for I love the challenge.

1. Marta, could you please tell about yourself? Where you grew up, the places you lived, your family and your current place of living?

I hope you don’t mind a lengthy answer here, for it cannot be told in a few sentences, however much I might like too. I think I will start with where I grew up, the places I have lived, and those I grew up with, for that is the beginning of who I am.

I was born in Southern Illinois, but moved to the Mesabi Iron Range, in Minnesota, just before my 2^nd birthday. At the time I lived in Babbitt Minnesota, it held two records, one that sixty percent of the population was under the age of six. The second was it had the highest birth rate in the country. For a little town of about 10,000 people it is remarkable. My family was considered to be one of the mid-sized families, there were only nine of us. I am both a middle child and the oldest of the youngest group, but that is another story.

From Northern Minnesota we moved to central Minnesota and then to Saint Paul Minnesota. It was while living in Saint Paul that I moved with my older sister to Seattle Washington, leaving my younger siblings and mother in Saint Paul. Though, shortly after my move to Seattle, my mother and siblings moved to Chicago, where six months after our stint in Seattle, my sister and I joined them in Chicago, Illinois. After my marriage, I lived with my ex-husband in Chicago, Ohio, West Germany, California, and Hawaii. A few years later, after my divorce I traveled for work to multiple states in the south and mid-west, though always returning to Chicago. Until my mother became ill with MS. At that time, she moved in with me and the two of us lived in California, Chicago, and Massachusetts. After her passing and before my marriage to my husband Ken I lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Chicago, before moving back to Massachusetts and getting married. Ken and I live on a small farm in Massachusetts with our three horses, four cats, and a parrot named Jack.

Each place I have lived and each person I have met, has left a mark on my heart and spirit. Whether it turned out to be a good experience or a not so good one, I have grown and learned a bit more about myself and who I want to be.

2. What kind of person are you?

I am a person who wishes to make others happy. To do and give the best in me to be, it doesn’t always work out how I wish it would, but that is always my motive. When I was young, I had a bad accident and nearly died, at that time I believed it my job to take away as much of the pain of others that I could. As I grew older I realized one must be compassionate, but not a martyr or you will be eaten alive by the emotions and lives of others. By and large I always look for the best in others, if the relationship or friendship ends for one reason or other.  I am someone who will first analyze what my part in it may have been, so that I may grow. As a middle child it made me more sensitive to the emotions of others. When my parents divorced I was the oldest child at home and thus believed it my job to help my mother raise my three younger siblings. I started working full time when I was twelve in order to help support the family.

3. You are an author of many books in different genres. Could you please tell from where comes your inspiration for writing?

With my poetry (both the children’s and the adult) my inspirations comes from something as little as a puddle, tree, cloud, etc. to the emotions I feel in others. Sometimes current and past events surge through me and a poem or verse is born.

My stories and novels are sometimes, like Dinky: The Nurse Mare’s Foal, born of meeting Dinky, learning about nurse mare foals and watching my horses interact with their world and with us.

Other novels such as The Between Times and The Choosing came to me almost as if they sprung from a well outside of myself, as if I were living someone else’s life. At other times, the stories spring out of me from some event that takes place, which spins a web in my mind and a book is born. The Void, came from my experiences at my job, though a paranormal/fantasy book, the emotions of the protagonist are those I have felt around me at my place of work.

4. What are your books about? Why do you write?

My books are as you said of different genres, I write paranormal, poetry, fantasy, and then I will write a story first person horse based upon the life of my rescue horse.

I write because I must, it is my outlet, my home, and my sanity. In my writing I can both express my inner soul and worlds I see and feel are out there.

5. You write quite a lot of fiction. Can you explain why and how it relates to your own vision of the world?

In fiction I can express a feeling or an idea. I can share someone else’s life, show what can be, take another into the mind and heart of other beings, or help another look at the world through another’s eyes.

In my books I usually need to have a bit of hope at the end of the tunnel, a bit of light to shine into the story. It is in this bit of light, joy, rebirth, or silliness that I keep the hope and belief in others and in the basic goodness of life alive.

6. What you are currently working on? Any future plans?

I am currently working on numerous stories and books. I have about a third of the story of Dinky’s mother done. I am working on the prequel to The Between Times, currently called Darkness Descends. The sequel to my mother’s story The Hollowers, and lastly the next book in The Memory Keeper series, (The Choosing is book one)

Alas, I also have about a dozen short stories that are still in bits and pieces. If an idea or a bit of a story comes to mind I write it down, sooner or later it finds its way into a book or story.

I will have another book of poetry out either the end of this year or the beginning of 2015, called Darkness into the Light. It is finished except for the formatting and cover. Oh time where are you?

7. What are your hobbies?

My hobbies are as varied as my writing I fear. I ride, make videos, paint, knit, read, dance, and picking the horses stalls. LOL

You can find out more about Marta and her books at her official website: www.martamoranbishop.com and http://www.martambishop.blogspot.com/.  And of course everything is available on Amazon, some on Barnes&Noble and a few bookstores.