Maria Dean lives in Yorkshire with her husband, two children, and a Boston Terrier. She doesn’t have any fancy writing credentials, just a passion for words and an overused laptop. Her work has appeared in Writing Magazine, Tales From the Moonlit Path, and A Cup of Comfort for Cat Lovers to name a few. You can follow Maria Dean on her author Facebook page.
What inspired you to write ‘Matthew 1:19‘?
This story began life as a competition piece for Globe Soup who hold regular 7-Day Writing Challenges. Writers are assigned a random genre and are asked to produce a short story around an assigned theme. The theme for this challenge was cheating and I was assigned fantasy. I was well out of my comfort zone, having never written anything in this genre before. I wanted to push the boundaries of one of the most well-known stories of all time, and experiment with the possibility of it being one big lie.
Could you give us an insight into your writing process?
I am a learning mentor in a primary school where I work part-time as well as looking after my two children. I squeeze writing into every spare second of the day. I sometimes write early in the morning and often late into the night. Even when not sitting at my laptop, my brain is constantly weaving a plot, a character, or a scene. I often write to music, having many playlists which are tailored to whatever genre I am writing at the time.
What do you consider to be the most enjoyable or important aspect of science fiction or fantasy, and why?
For me, the most enjoyable part of writing fantasy is the enormous realms of possibility. Other genres tie the writer to the boundaries of the real world, but in fantasy and science fiction, the only limit is the writer’s imagination.
Otherverse Magazine 