#AtoZchallenge Amren Ortega

Amren Ortega is one of our Operation Awesome colleagues, and I took this opportunity to do a quick interview.  Thanks, Amren!

 Tell us about what you write. Is there something special you’re working on now?

I mostly write YA with LGBTQIA main characters. I wrote a fantasy manuscript a couple years ago and queried it for a while without any success, so I set it aside last October. For NaNoWriMo, I wrote a YA contemporary romance about an all-female high school combat robotics team titled GIRLS BREAK THINGS, and I’m currently revising that. I wanted to write something based on the experiences of people who are close to me: I wrote about my coming-out as bisexual, my partner’s experience growing up half-Taiwanese, and my friend’s work on combat robots. It took a lot of research – I learned to code for this manuscript, but I don’t think I’ll ever learn what a flywheel does – but I’m pleased with the way it came out so far.

I also write for games occasionally. I’ve written for the tabletop RPG “Trail of Cthulhu,” which is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and I have a campaign for the video game Divinity: Original Sin 2available in the Steam Workshop.

If you could swap places with one of your fictional characters for 24 hours, who would you choose to be? Why? And what would you do that day?

This is a bit of a tough question because my partner and my CPs are always telling me that I’m too mean to my characters! Aaaaand they’re right. Although, I did write a short story once where this crazed millionaire collects 20 people into his house and plans for them to murder one another until only one person is left, sort of a murder house scenario. But the things the millionaire does to the house to make it “unlivable” aren’t exactly evil genius moves: swap out the Egyptian cotton sheets for jersey sheets, change deliveries of food from the farmer’s market to deliveries from Trader Joe’s, set out instant coffee instead of freshly-roasted beans, that sort of thing. (You can read the full story on my blog here.) I’d like to live in that house.

What part of the story was the most fun to write? The most challenging?

With GIRLS BREAK THINGS, I had the most fun writing the scenes where the combat robotics team is competing. I got to watch a lot of BattleBots for research (darn). It was fun trying to convey the same tension and excitement in writing, since I don’t do a lot of “fight scene” writing. The most challenging scenes to write are always make-out scenes. It feels so awkward – kissing my partner in real life is so easy and fun, but having to write the same thing down is inevitably clunky. I can never remember what I was thinking in the moment, but all I can think about while I’m writing these scenes is “What if I publish this and my mom reads it???”

Which of your characters is most like you?

Definitely Joyce, the main character of GIRLS BREAK THINGS – but only in terms of personality. I wrote the manuscript in first person present tense, so I mostly wrote her internal narration exactly the way I think and the way I process things. When my partner read the manuscript for the first time, his first comment was “Joyce is you, isn’t she?” She’s a total overthinker, and flashes through a hundred thoughts in an instant.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?

I would want my superpower to be the power over sleep. I would only sleep when I want to and for exactly as long as I want to, and never feel sleepy or tired. Goodbye, sleepless nights, hello, well-rested mornings. Also, then I’d be able to sleep on planes and never have jetlag, which would be awesome.

Tell us something we’d be surprised to learn about you.

I’m not sure which is more surprising: that I have a master’s degree in biological engineering, or that I can do a split. Maybe both together?

What other interests do you have outside of writing?

I love to cook! I’ve been unemployed for a few months, so I’ve been able to work on recipes that I’d usually only be able to do on a weekend, like making beef pho from scratch or meringues by h and. I also enjoy gaming, cross-stitching, aerial hoop, and aikido.

Do you have a nervous habit when writing? A guilty pleasure when writing? (example: chew a pen to death or have a stack of Hershey’s kisses while you write)

I have a bad habit of biting my lip. I go through a lot of chapstick.

Is there anything else you think readers should know about you?

I’m a big fan of the Cleveland Indians!