Get a behind-the-scenes all-access pass to Marta Moran Bishop's The Divide Series!
***Synopsis***
It is a dystopian series based upon past and current events of where we as a country could be headed if we don’t take heed if we continue on our current trend.
The Between Times was written first. In the wee hours of one
morning I saw a world unfold before me from all the bits and pieces I had read
or seen in current events. The characters took me on their journey through the
past, present and a prophecy. They are a chronologically told story starting
(with the first book Darkness Descends, of a plot to seize the White House that
was tried in the nineteen-thirties by a group of millionaires. (True story)
following some of them up through time to today.
The Between Times opens with Jewell, (the girl in the prophecy) weaving a magical tapestry during the time when night is over, but day not yet begun.
What is the sub-genre and trope? Did your characters lead you to this genre or
was that decided before the story began?
It is a dystopian cautionary tale and has been compared by readers to 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and others. The characters are of all races, some good people, some filled with greed and hatred. The story wrote itself, most of the research for The Between Times was done after it was written, when I said ‘what, is there really tunnels and caverns under Chicago.’ Though book 1 was highly researched before writing.
I had no idea which genre it would be until it was finished.
Are you more character or plot driven?
Both the characters live their lives as the plot unfolds around them.
With many main and secondary characters, how do you keep them separated in your mind? Do you have a story/vision board above your workspace?
I do not have a story/vision board, or even what would be called a workspace. Some of it was written on tablets, some on the laptop as I sat in my bedroom, other pieces written in notebooks, and on my desktop. The vision is all where and what the characters showed me of their lives.
I know from previous interviews that characters take on a life of their own. Were any of the characters in this series determined to take their own direction instead of where you initially wanted them to go?
All of them did what they did without direction. I had at no time any idea of where they were headed as their relationships, family, who they loved, secondary characters each led me, as if I was in their shoes walking through their lives.
Are any of the male/female POVs based on anyone you know?
No.
Was there any one character/scene that was harder to write about than the other?
In Darkness Descends (book 1) there is a torture/rape scene that was incredibly hard for me to both write and live through, as I live through each moment as I write.
What is your favorite book in the series?
The Between Times, though I do love Dawn Rises too the 3rd book, it took me ten years to see their path out of the darkness they lived in.
Though I love Dawn Rise too for it shows the budding relationships.
I know that we aren’t supposed to have “favorites” as far as our children, but seriously, who’s your favorite character and why?
I guess my favorite character would be Jamie, who was a child genius, his father one of the richest men in the world, but carried a sense of responsibility toward others, a generosity of spirit toward others, and did not have any ‘I’m more special than you are,’ about him but instead held that all who were of good heart were worthy of the best they could be. His father had no influence on his growth of spirit.
Series question - Who is your favorite couple and why did you decide on their dynamics?
I didn’t decide, I found out at the end of The Between Times when their eyes met for the first time. That would be Jamie and Jewell.
How do you get inside these characters’ heads to find their perfect HEA?
I live in their lives during when I write. They create their own perfect HEA.
I know that sounds strange but I don’t control my characters. That I suspect is why it took me ten years to write them out.
The series begins with a prophecy of fifteen years, it took them almost that long to plan, and put things in place to move into a new and better world.
What scene in this book/series sticks out the most for you? Why?
The reviewers who saw what I saw when writing the series, the greed, cruelty, bravery, and chance that we as a society may be headed in this direction.
Series - Were any of the books harder to write than others?
Darkness Descends because of the horror of the brutality to Rebecca who gave up her life so that her daughter could fulfill the prophecy and save the world.
This question is if you write in MULTIPLE POVs not just the hero and heroine - I love the multiple POVs in a book. It’s not just the hero and heroine, but we get inside the heads of multiple characters throughout this series. I feel that it gives the story further depth. Do you think you will write another book or series following this multiple POV outline?
I almost always write in multiple POV’s. The only ones I haven’t is those stories that I finished for my mother and sister.
My own are always multiple POVs, because I live in their minds and walk in their shoes as I am writing. I can’t imagine that will change in future books or stories.
How long did it take you to write this book/series?
I wrote the first (2nd book) The Between Times in two weeks (though editing took longer).
Book 1 Darkness Descends took three years to finish as I was working seventy hour weeks at the time.
Book 3 Dawn Rises took ten years. A piece here and a piece there until the characters were ready to let me know what the plan was and where they were going.
So I guess the entire series took fourteen years. Though I wrote other books and stories in between.
How did you come up with the title for your book and series?
I’ve always thought of the time of day when it was no longer night but not yet day was the time when the veil between the worlds was lowest. I called it the between times.
The book came together during those hours. Though we can also call the time when as a country or world we are between what we were and what we will become can also be called the between times.
If you met these characters in real life would you get along?
Yes, I’d like them a lot. There is bravery, kindness, honesty, without false pride or privilege in them.
Series question – Did you know in advance that you were going to write this as a series or did one of the characters in book one demand their own story?
I did not plan on writing it either a standalone or as a series.
I was in the middle of writing Dinky: The Nurse Mare’s Foal (the true story of my rescue horse told POV horse) and The Between Times characters yelled at me too loudly, and so I took a break and wrote it.
It was originally stand alone, until my readers continued to bug me for a sequel. They said I had to write the characters and the world out of it. I determined that in order to do that a prequel was needed.
If your book/series were made into a movie, which actors do you see as playing your characters?
Ben would be played by Shemar Moore, Sam Heughan – Jamie, Tanaya Beatty—Jewell or Rebecca.
Can you give us a hint as to what we can expect next? Whether a new book and series or a sequel to an existing series? Can you share a small tease?
The book with no name yet. It began as a short story and decided to become more.
PROLOGUE
All bright as polished pearls and sparkling diamonds too the lacy snowflakes fell, each different than the other. No two alike that she could tell but each so beautiful in the snow filled sky as they rained upon them all. Till father wind began to churn them all and create a funnel white and tall.
Churn they did round and round till a wall circled them all. Mother Earth cradled them in the center of it all and Lailinai began to sing to calm herself and her horses from the wall that carried them to a future she did not know.
Father Wind brings us to a place
Where grass grows tall and strong
And warm breezes fill the air
Coming from the ocean blue
With waves of green glass too
And rainbows of color light the sky
Glinting off the crystal walls
I’ll find my true love there
With sapphire eyes and cornsilk hair
A horse tattoo upon his arm
Together we’ll save a people doomed to die
Who must teach us all to live
Those that will, we’ll carry forward
A new life we’ll build
One that brings us through the dark days
That greed begets in man
And steals their souls
Till only gold and power reign in them
Churn round and round
And cradle us as we go
Along the path that leads us
To the place that we need to be
It’s off to Lemuria we go.
Marta Moran Bishop walks in the shoes of her characters and weaves the tapestry of their lives with the threads of her dreams.
Her first book, Wee Three: A Mothers Love In Verse, a children’s poetry book, illustrated by Hazel Mitchell, was a collaborative effort and a labor of love. She took the short, sweet verses her grandmother wrote in the nineteen thirties for her children and expanded those and added additional verses of her own.
Ms. Bishop, is a prolific and versatile writer, writing in multiple genres, while continuing to stretch herself and her craft.
Her series The Divide: Darkness Descend (book 1) and The Between Times (book 2) tell the story of a bleak world, where society consists of the poor and the rich and the poor live in squalor, with only a prophecy for hope of a better future. It has a touch of paranormal within its pages. She is currently working on Book 3 in the series.
She has written three adult poetry books and a variety of fantasy and paranormal stories. A few of them are stories that her mother wrote over forty years ago and she finished while others are new and vibrant stories.
Her novel Dinky: The Nurse Mare's Foal won an award at the EQUUS Film Festival, it is written first person horse, and is the story of the first year of her rescue foals' life. She also wrote the story of Dinky's mother's plight, and what a nurse mares' life is like, and what they usually end up facing, when they are no longer able to breed, and be rented to nurse another's foal.
Ms. Bishop has taken many of the stories her mother, and sister wrote and finishing them.
She currently lives on a small farm in New England with her husband, three horses, cats and a conure parrot named Jack. They help her remember to view the world through a child's innocence and keep her young and imaginative.
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