Tina Morlock - The Power of Expression

This is an older post from my previous blog, which suits the current one perfectly. It's about a year since I wrote this, in which time Tina has gone incredible amount forward. She just finished a novel in the middle of moving and on top of all this, she's writing a movie script based on Where The Bad Seeds Grow. So, if I had to sum Tina in one word, it would be: Inspiring. Enjoy!

When I had my novel's first draft done, I soon started searching for editors, even though I knew it would take some time and effort to get it out for them. That's how I ran into Tina Morlock. By a pure stroke of luck. Tina is a freelance book editor, but that's not all she is.

She's also a talented author, who just had her debut novel, Where The Bad Seeds Grow out. I'll review the book once I've read it, but now I can only say that it's brilliant. At the first glance it looked like another overtly dark and anxiety driven teen drama, but once you dive into the books world you'll realize the brilliant concept: Where Bad Seeds Grow is a noir detective story, set in the dark world of 90's high school. Think about "Mean Girls" set in the world of David Fincher's "Seven"

Instead of a cynical, seen-it-all detective with gambling and drinking problem it stars ”The Most Popular Girl In School”. But the personal struggle she dives in is the level of any larger-than-life mysteries we've seen in the best noir-films. And considering Morlock's influences, it's not that huge surprise.

So, even without finishing the book, I already recommend Where Bad Seeds Grow (Now that I've read it, even more so!), but before that, it's my pleasure to introduce Tina Morlock in her own words.

What inspired Where the Bad Seeds Grow?

Oh, wow! That idea goes back at least 20 years—back before I ever thought I’d want to write a novel. In my 20's, I was fascinated by films and screenwriting, and I even attended film school for a bit. This story originally started as a screenplay about a girl who had lost her parents, and it chronicled the last 24 hours of her life as she moved from being suicidal to embracing her life, then ultimately being murdered in the end.

Thankfully, that story changed drastically when I turned it into a novel, so there’s no spoiler alert necessary there. From what I can remember, Erica’s story was sparked by watching American Beauty—and also my love for Twin Peaks. I was so fascinated about being able to tell a story about a girl everyone thought they knew—the popular girl, the cheerleader. I wanted to make her real, to make her fragile—to show that we are all connected by the pain that sometimes comes from just being alive.

There are so many stories out there that demonize the popular girl and make her into a stereotype, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to give the world a raw and unfiltered view of what it might be like to live with the world’s expectation of perfection. I wanted to use her as a way to show high school kids everywhere that in many ways, we are all the same. We are all human.

Though the story is entirely fictional, how much is inspired by your own life?

I would say that in a superficial way that some aspects of Erica were figments of my own imagination about some of the nicer cheerleaders at my own high school. And when I was much younger and fighting against being different, I’d always looked up to the cheerleaders, and I even practiced cheers when no one was looking.

I think this is something that so many young girls do because they think the beautiful girls have everything, so they want to know what it’s like to have a life that’s perceived as being perfect. So, maybe in a way, I wrote this for the girl I was in elementary school—the girl who idolized the girls everyone else did. I’d like to think that I wrote this to prove to little girls everywhere that you don’t have to be the most popular or the most beautiful to actually be beautiful and loved. Beauty isn’t something you can paint on with makeup.

Also, in many ways, she represents a lot of the things I learned later in life when I began to struggle with my own search for identity. Erica’s struggles are not only the problems of youth. I think we all struggle with discovering who we really are and trying to line that up with who the world thinks we are.

So many of us are bullied for what people think we are, but they do this because they can’t possibly understand what’s going on underneath the mask we present on the outside. And sometimes, it seems like no matter what we do, it’s a battle we can’t win. So, I suppose she’s a combination of multiple phases of my life: all the awkward teenage years, the discovery as a young adult, the toxic relationships throughout adulthood, and learning later in life that it’s all bullshit in a way.

Where the Bad Seeds Grow is practically a Noir story. Did you think of that when writing?

I did not! To be honest, I hadn’t really read much mystery, but many of my stories involved a bit of mystery to them because I do enjoy writing about the darker parts of the human experience. When I first published it, I considered it a young adult coming of age mystery romance. That’s kind of a mouthful.

Unfortunately, I didn’t write it with a particular reader in mind. I just needed to get the story out. I’ve had some pretty good reviews and feedback recently, so I hope it eventually finds its place in indie publishing world. Though, marketing is not currently my strong suit. I’m working on that!

What’s your favorite genre and why?

Oh man! That’s such a hard question. Though it’s not really a genre, I love reading and writing young adult. Ever since I discovered Harry Potter as a young adult, I’ve loved seeing the growth that young adult literature has been through. I do have a soft spot for dystopian—with novels like Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Animal Farm. I’m also currently re-reading The Hunger Games novels, and I just started reading Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward series. Somewhere on my bookshelf, I also have Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale waiting to be read—she’s one of my favorite storytellers.

Dystopian literature feels magical to me because it allows us to explore our deepest and darkest fears about government and the society we live in. It shows us that the monsters hiding in these things aren’t so far off, and it allows us to fantasize about what a revolution might do for our lives. Or at least, that’s what it does for me.

It allows us to destroy those systems we feel are evil and gives us the freedom to explore how delightful it would feel to overthrow the government. Jello Biafra once said that creative crime was not only good for the soul, but that it was also necessary in this day and age. And I wholeheartedly agree with that idea.

What made you first want to be a storyteller? Remember when?

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been writing. I remember a relative giving me a typewriter as a gift when I was 12—computers weren’t in every household back in the 80's—and I started typing up my own romance novel. From there, it progressed into poetry and journalism when I got onto my high school and college newspaper staffs.

Though I don’t remember the exact moment, I know that writing and storytelling has always been about escaping my little piece of the world. I was abused by a family member as a child, and as I got older, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I started to get more and more depressed.

Writing gave me the power of expression and the feeling that somebody was listening to me, even if it wasn’t always shared with the world. Now, of course, my writing is intentional, but back then, it was a coping mechanism.

How do you work through that anxiety?

Working, in general, helps keep my mind focused on straying from toxic or negative thoughts that sometimes come from depression. And with much of what I write, I try to include themes that advocate for depression, trauma, suicide, substance abuse, and mental illness. So, it's another way to work through the things I've experienced and observed throughout my life.

So, yes, writing does still help with that. But it's moved from just being helpful to me to translating those experiences in a way that might be helpful for readers.

I've always thought that as writers, we have our own internal language that doesn't exactly translate 100% for readers, so the challenge is in breaking away from that and making your narratives more accessible to give them the power to transform ways of thinking about certain themes.

I find my anxiety increases when I go through periods of not writing because I know how much more work I have to do to catch up. Then, that feeling of success being further away creeps in, and it just continues to build.

In certain ways, creating productive writing habits is sort of like losing weight or quitting smoking. You have to be diligent and intentional, and you have to have the will power to work through those tougher moments when you're having a hard time reconciling a scene or character.

What’s next for you?

My goal right now is to start writing young adult dystopian novels and building an audience there before I start branching out into other genres I’d love to write. My next book, The Secret Memoirs of Bloody Mary, is the first book in my History of Nightmares series, which is a dystopian series with a horror slant to it.

It follows the protagonist, Veina Kythe, a half-alien/half-human teenage girl, as she travels to the future after her planet has been destroyed. She lands on Earth 200-300 years from now and gets involved with a resistance group that’s fighting against a government that has outlawed literature of all kinds.

This first book finds her and her two friends, Techno Tru and Ska Faulkner, traveling back to the 1960s, where they meet my version of Bloody Mary right before she dies. Future books of the series will explore the legends surrounding the first vampire and other horror legends as the work together to overthrow a future government that has turned writers into outlaws.

It’s been a dream project of mine for nearly ten years. (I wrote a short story for an anthology based on this that can be downloaded for free from Amazon or any other eBook platforms. It’s called 31 Overlook Hotel

Ever thought about any other storytelling platforms? (Movies, plays, video games, etc.?)

Oh, absolutely! I have a mind that wants to conquer everything, but I’m trying to take it one step at a time. Ultimately, I’d love to see all my novels turned into movies because I have such a love for film as well as literature.

One last advice to storytellers?

Don't do what I did and wait until you're almost middle-aged to start pursuing your writing dream. I let so many things get in the way of my dreams, and now I'm having to work much harder to achieve them. Just believe in yourself and write every day, no matter what. Whether it's five minutes or five hours, it all counts.

I really hope you got as inspired by Tina as I did. She truly is a living proof that it's never too late to start creating that one dream project you always wanted. The world is definitely much richer place now, that Tina has started giving her brand to it. It will be so once you start as well!

Definitely check Where The Bad Seeds Grow if you haven't already. It's well worth your time and I bet it will earn its place in the list of future indie classics. Here's hoping we'll see the movie version one day! (I said it, didn't I!)

Thanks for reading!

-Alex