Chad Robert Morgan was born and raised in California. He served in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman and worked his way through college as a vocational nurse. As well as writing, Chad works in the video game industry. He currently lives in Southern California with his wife Carol and his youngest son Alexander.
What got you interested in writing fiction?
I’ve been writing since I was a kid in junior high. My goal back then was to be published by the time I was 20, but it wasn’t meant to be. At about 35, I got published in a trade magazine and I figured that was as close as I would get, but thanks to Amazon and their self-publishing companies like ACX, KDP, and CreateSpace, I was finally able to be published.
Your book The Lady Rite is a science fiction thriller. What draws you to that genre?
The Last Rite is a horror story. Audible placed it in Sci-Fi/apocalyptic originally for some reason, but that’s been fixed. I’ve been interested in horror for a while. Since birth, you could say, since I was born on Halloween. I prefer supernatural horror. I’m not into what some people call gore-porn, or tales of man’s inhumanity to man. We have the news for that, there’s too much of that in real life for my taste. I like good old-fashioned something-goes-bump-in-the-night horror. In the 80’s we had a wave of slasher villains like Jason and Michael Meyers that really didn’t interest me, but Freddy could get you in your dreams! To me, that was awesome!
One of the major themes in The Last Rite is parenthood. I wasn’t able to be there to raise my son, something I’ve always regretted. Sometimes I would lie in bed imagining the day he would come to my door, and I would have to answer to him for my actions and inactions. Throughout the book, Daniel is offered an out. Abandon his daughter, and his ordeal is over. Most parents would say no, but is Daniel a parent? How strong are paternal instincts, and can they overcome the rift between Daniel and his daughter?
The book is performed in audiobook form by a full cast, and that includes yourself. How did you come to be part of the narration?
I performed the narration of the book out of necessity. I think it helped the book in the end because reading it aloud made for a final edit. One of the biggest problems you have with self-publishing is that you are also self-editing. The book actually started life as a series of 12 episodes and was intended to be a computer-animated series – something I’m still working on to this day. I got some money together and found a cast that was willing to record all 12 episodes for promises on royalties for when the show sold, but five years later and I’m still struggling to get the show off the ground. I felt I owed it to the cast to do something with their great work, so I crafted the 12 scripts into a novel for the purpose of turning it into an audiobook with their recordings intercut for the character lines. That still left the need for the narrator, and I didn’t think I’d be able to hire a 15th actor for such a slim percentage so I went to work recording.
What did you learn about the art of bringing a book to audio while working on your own book?
So I learned not to do a full cast again *laugh*. It turned out to be way more work than I thought it would be. I think it turned out well, though, but some of the cast recordings were not as clean as I would have liked. The cast was great, but some members were quiet and the recording levels were kept low, so bringing those volume levels up and cleaning them was kind of a pain. I do hope that I can earn enough from The Last Rite to make doing more in this series the same way = I’ve been jotting down notes for both the second volume as well as a prequel idea – but for other books, I think I’ll just go with a single narrator. I also learned how to use Izotope a lot better for audio cleaning
Tell us about your writing process. How do you develop your plots and books?
Lately, when I have time to write, I just write. I mean, I put the characters in a situation and try to figure out their motivations and their thought process. In a recent interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I think they summed it up best – when describing your plot or your action, you never want to have “and then” in your description. In other words, you don’t want the story to bend because the plot demands it. If character A hits Character B, there has to be a reason for it, either a logical or an emotional one. For example. I tried to avoid Ex Machina moments. There’s one point when one character shows up at the nick of time to rescue the main character, but I tried to show that character looking for the main character, trying to find a way into the building the main character was in, and so on, so he didn’t just magically appear. There was a reason for him to be there.
Do your characters develop over time or do they spring to life fully formed?
Some of the characters develop over time, although only a few days pass in the book. Daniel has his personal demons to overcome – in some cases literally – in order to rescue his daughter. He also has to come to terms with what happened to the mother of his daughter, who left him without any word. Bethany’s world has turned upside down, first with the death of her mother, then handed off to a stranger whom they tell her is her father, and that’s before the book really gets started. It’s one of the bigger questions in the book – can Daniel and Bethany find their way to each other and become a family?
Other characters, not so much. The old woman in the story is supernaturally old, and she’s pretty set in her ways. There’s a lot more to her story that I hope to explore in further installments, but in this installment, her motivations are simple, even if her plan is not – perform the last rite and end the threat of the apocalypse once and for all. The Business Suit Man is the main antagonist, and I wrote him much like I saw Darth Vader in the first Star Wars movie; he was just this dark and menacing figure. It’s why he was originally never given a name in the scripts. His partner, the Business Suit Woman, was meant to be another nameless antagonist, but as I started developing the story she grew and went her own direction. She started questioning her role, and the moment we see her as more than a nameless foot soldier, that’s when we find out her real name.
I’m interested in why authors choose the names they select for their characters. How did you name your characters?
Daniel’s original name was Dante, but Dante Burns was a bit too obvious *laughs*. A friend recommended I change it. As I mentioned earlier, the business suit people weren’t to even have names, I did that on purpose because I didn’t want to humanize them. They were just agents of a faceless corporation. Even the name I did end up giving the Business Suit Man is blatantly fake – John Smith – for that reason. I don’t think I put that much thought into the other names, there are no secret meanings behind them.
What is in store for your writing next?
I’m working on a couple of projects. At my day job, I make video games at Whitemoon Dreams, and when I have spare time I am working on a pitch for a game that serves as kind of a sequel. The goal would be to have a game, book, and audiobook all done at the same time. At home, I’m working on something completely different. I felt I needed a bit of a palette cleanser, so the new one is a sci-fi comedy filled with raunchy humor and some strong opinions of the music of Kenny G, so you’ve been warned. *laughs*. After those two projects are done, I’d like to work on volume 2 of The Last Rite. The first one had to do with my relationship with my estranged son, but for the second one, I want to draw from my relationship with my daughter and the difficulties we’ve had as she entered adulthood. It would be easy to write that one as “the dad is right, the kid is wrong” or vice versa, but that’s not real life, so I think it will be a challenge to write their arguments from both sides and show a conflict without a clear side. I look forward to getting to that. And with all that, I continue to work on the animated series The Last Rite originated as.
What authors have most influenced your own writing career?
Stephen King is an obvious influence. I love how he gets into the mind and motivations of his characters, which I think is the biggest factor in making his books so enticing. I’ve also had a recent opportunity to sit in a discussion with Peter Clines in Burbank and listen to his views on writing, both as a craft and as an industry.
To learn more about The Last Rite, visit the following sites:
