Hiya and welcome!
Mariana C. Morgan is not my real name. I borrowed ‘Mariana’ in memory of my grandmother, ‘C’ stands for Camille, an anglicised form of my given name, and ‘Morgan’… well, Morgan la Fey was just cool.
I am a naturally curious person who enjoys learning and trying new things. I have a low threshold for boredom, and I might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie.
While I have always enjoyed writing, my life initially took me in quite the opposite direction. Most of my high school and university studies were about biology, chemistry and the human body, culminating with a master’s degree from Imperial College London. Shortly after graduation I realised that my future didn’t lie in a laboratory working with test tubes and petri dishes.
The passion of my early years to understand the human mind returned with a vengeance. I needed people in my life.
Following my curiosity, I explored a little bit of psychology and counselling before discovering hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I have studied Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Clinical Hypnotherapy with Nigel Hetherington at Communicating Excellence, greatly expanding my horizons. Learning about the conscious and unconscious mind has had (and continues to have) a profound effect not only on my writing but on all my creative endeavours.
When creating my characters, I don’t focus on what someone does but why they do it. The creative industry calls it ‘the intention’ behind any given decision. I prefer the term motivation, or desire, the drive behind what people do and how it affects the future. I enjoy digging deeper, discovering what makes my characters tick and watching them come alive in my mind—even though that sometimes leads to a lot of swearing as they get up to silly mischief!
In my writing (and reading), I love to escape into the future, into the realm of science fiction, where ideas and fantasies flow unimpeded. It is an environment that is not governed by our modern societal and legal rules, meaning that the imagination is the only limit. I enjoy dark and difficult topics as well pondering and exploring the limits of human endurance. Although I no longer work as a scientist, I greatly rely on my medical sciences degrees when creating the nano-tech and deciding how it moulds the life of everyone in the 28th century.
When not writing, I love to exercise to keep my mind happy and the hunched-over-the-laptop posture at bay. For years, I have been training in aerial dance, floor acrobatics and hand/forearm balancing, and I enjoy performing, mixing these physical skills with improvisation and spoken word. I also like exploring nature, hiking and running.
