Interview with YA fantasy romance author L.A. Morton-Yates

Author L.A. Morton-Yates joins me today to chat about his new YA fantasy romance, Bittersouls.

During his virtual book tour, L.A. will be awarding a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
A life-long lover of the magic of storytelling, L.A. wrote his first story at the age of 7 and has been writing ever since. Speculative fiction, particularly fantasy, has always held a special place in his heart for the uniqueness of the places and the questions it can address. Though veiled by apparent strangeness, he has always seen it as capable of revealing deeper truth about our own reality.

L.A. graduated from Montana State University in 2015 with Honors in Biochemistry and a minor in Music Composition. This helped nurture his critical thinking and research skills which continue to be instrumental to his writing. During his collegiate years, he also met the love of his life, Julie, whom he later married. At once his greatest supporter and his staunchest critic (when he is wrong, which is more often than he’d like to admit), she has been an integral part of his creative process ever since.

In February of 2018, L.A. became the father of his first son, Griffin. His second son, Tiber, was born in December of 2019 and his third son, Malachi, was born in January of 2023. Though life has become considerably busier since he became a family man, L.A. continues to work on writing in what little spare time he can find. He hopes to one day pass on his love of literature to his sons.

Welcome, L.A. Please tell us about your current release.
Bittersouls follows Dela, a young woman who is separated from her nomadic people during a blizzard as she tries to find her way back to them. Over the course of the book, she transforms from a brave but naive girl into a fierce and independent woman. It’s got action, survival, slow-burn romance, and some phenomenal plot twists. It was a blast to write and readers have been loving it.

What inspired you to write this book?
I often draw inspiration from songs. Different elements in the instrumental or in the lyrics trigger something in my brain to summon up an image—completely unbidden. It January or February of 2019. I was living in Montana with my family, listening to “Set Fire to the Third Bar” by Snow Patrol, and was struck by an image of warmth in the midst of frigid desolation. I wanted to explore the idea of human connection being the source of a visceral warmth that was strong enough to repel even the worst blizzard. At the same time, I felt this deep sense of isolation—the simple reality that in this vast white wilderness that I saw, I might never find another human being again. It was the juxtaposition that struck me so keenly. This feeling of warmth and connection—or the desire to feel those things—sustaining me through a lonely journey through the bitter cold.

Bittersouls is the manifestation of my exploration of this idea. It is set in a vast frozen wilderness called the Bitters, in which Dela and her nomadic clan reside. In order to survive, they have to keep moving and are forced to share their Warmth—the almost magical “life-force” that each and every person is given a limited amount of at birth. Their greatest fear is to be found by a so called “bittersoul”, who are said to wander the wilderness alone, burning their Warmth at an incredible rate, and only able to survive like that because they prey on clans like theirs and steal their Warmth.

The idea evolved a lot since that first incarnation, but a lot of what makes Bittersouls a unique story either came directly from that starting point. Over the course of the story, Dela does face the lonely desolation of the Bitters, finds hope and meaningful human connection, and becomes the woman she was born to become.

Excerpt from Bittersouls:
A Soul

[Dela] rounded the corner, stepping into the mouth of the cave. As she expected, she wasn’t alone. But the man who leaned against the far wall of the cave, watching her with a wild and savage curiosity, was not a man she’d ever laid eyes on before. He wore a stark, white roughcloak. To Dela’s eye, it looked to be fashioned from a Jackal’s fur. The head of the beast encircled his own as a hood, the angular snout coming to a toothless point a few inches past his forehead. His arms were crossed over his chest, pushing the sides of his rough out enough to reveal a tattered and patched network of leather garments, ugly and indelicate, but which looked to be sturdy and thick. At his sides, an array of bone hooks much like her own supported various tools and weapons.

But what caught her eye most was the fiery array that spread out around him, stemming from the center of his back. Unlike those in her congregation, whose entities kept small and close and wrapped themselves around their humans, his spread all four of its ghostly appendages out behind him like crimson wings, swaying gently as though breathing or being brushed by the wind. If the congregations’ were simply alive, his was awake.

“Interesting,” the man mused. His voice was low and scratchy, as if from months or years of disuse. Dela realized she’d been staring at him for some time.

“Interesting?” she repeated. Who was this man? What was he doing out here? He’d been so close to their group… and she’d followed him out here. Alone. Had that been his plan?

The man shrugged, stepping off the wall and approaching her with footsteps too quiet to hear over the din of the storm. “I had expected another—”

“Bittersoul.”

What exciting project are you working on next?
I’ve got a few projects in the works. The first is a sci-fi called The Damned Earth, which I hope to release at the tail end of this year. It follows a lone explorer as he tries to make an alien world habitable for the remnants of humanity while the mystery and the threat of what happened to the planet’s original inhabitants loom over him. I also have a large steampunk series in the works, which I hope to begin releasing next year, and a cyberpunk fantasy trilogy that I am in the planning phase for. Suffice to say that I’ve got big plans for the coming years!

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’ve considered myself a writer for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of writing a comic book entitled “Magical Man” back in the 2^nd Grade. It’s been a journey getting to the point where I can finish and polish novels, but the writing itself has pretty much always been a part of me. For better or worse, it’s just who I am.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I don’t write full time—and I don’t really want to. I’ve always found that my writing suffers when I have too much free time on my hands. It works best when I set it up as a contrast to a normal day job, turning the work of writing into an escape from my ‘actual work’. For the last five years, I’ve been working in a hospital laboratory, which works well for this because when I come home, I don’t have to bring my work with me. Though working all day is tiring, setting up my process and my psychology this way allows me to use writing as a way to unwind after a day’s work.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
As I hinted at above, I do my best and most writing when I’m juggling it with other responsibilities. The less time I have to write, the more I value that time and the more I am able to get done. It doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but it’s definitely proven true for me time and again. If I am struggling to get writing done, it is probably because I have too much time on my hands.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was very very little, I wanted to be a ‘space ship driver’. While becoming an astronaut for real turned out to be out of reach, I do feel like I found a suitable (and much safer!) alternative as a writer.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
For those of you that are aspiring writers and occasionally have issues getting anything on the page, especially when you have nothing but time to do so, I would recommend trying my insane-sounding strategy of making your life busier somehow. If you happen to be like me, convincing yourself that writing is relaxing after a long day of something else might just do the trick.

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