Fantasy Authors Interview

Meet Mo Yun

We've got another awesome Fantasy author for you today. Hailing from Singapore, please welcome, MoYun_ZJ , and let's hear what they've got to say.

What is your country of origin?

Singapore

What other languages aside from English can you speak fluently?

Chinese (Mandarin)

Are you writing under a pseudonym? Is there a story as to how and why you came up with it? Please tell us about it!

Mo Yun is a pseudonym that I came up with after I decided I wanted to share my Eastern Fantasy stories on Wattpad. It's written as 墨韵 in Chinese. In the Chinese language, Mo 韵 means ink and Yun 韵 can mean harmonious melody. So taken together, my pseudonym can be interpreted to mean "a song of ink" -- a sentiment I hope to conjure in my stories!

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Why do you want to be a writer?

The first realisation that I enjoyed writing came when I was ten years old. As a chronic daydreamer - I decided that it would be fun to record down my imaginings. That started a hobby of storytelling: I wrote plays for my younger cousins, mock news articles set in the fictional worlds of books I've read and games I've played, and started keeping an idea book of 'talking games' to entertain my cousins. I guess things just snowballed from that point. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.

These days, I write to give structure and body to the worlds and ideas fighting for attention in my mind, and of course, to entertain my readers (and myself).

Please tell us about your story/ies on Wattpad so that readers could find them.

My main fantasy stories on Wattpad are set in Qi'zhou, an eastern fantasy world largely inspired by the Chinese xianxia genre. 'Xianxia' translates loosely as 'immortals and heroes', and is a term used to refer to high fantasy stories set in ancient china that incorporate elements of magic, gods and demons. Qi'zhou means 'forsaken lands', so named because its inhabitants were left to fend for themselves after the goddess of creation died.

'A Sliver of Frost' (ASOF) is a (very!) loose xianxia retelling of the Chinese myth of the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid, featuring a perfectionist immortal artist and a mysterious mortal musician. The story features plenty of music, as well as conversations about art and mortality. Of course, you'll also find dark conspiracies and slow burn romance.

'Another Path' is a standalone short story set in Qi'zhou, where I experiment with a more historical 'wuxia' setting to tell a story of war from both sides. In it, a defeated general meets a pacifist physician, and has to determine if the beliefs he has held sacred since birth can actually be interpreted another way. Gods don't appear in this story, but there's still music!

'Weaves of Ink and Song' is a collection of short stories set in Qi'zhou. It's where I put in all the stories I want to tell about the world that I cannot fit into ASOF. So go there for lore, origin stories and character side stories!

For you, what is the importance of having a process in writing? Do you have a process? If so, please tell us about it. If not, why?

I find that having a process makes it easier to get started with a story. Oftentimes, getting started is the hardest step - so having a plan makes the act of writing seem less daunting.

My stories usually start off with a 'what if', and they can percolate in my mind for quite a while. Once I have the beginning, the main conflict and the ending figured out, I'll do a rough outline before I begin writing. This outline gets expanded whenever I start working on a new chapter, when the exact beats and details of that segment are planned out.