The official Coffee Community book for exclusive interviews and advice from Wattys winners, Wattpad Stars, Ambassadors and various upcoming authors and poets. Peak inside, we have cups of Ristretto too!
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Monica, who is known as MonicaBGuerra on Wattpad, has taken the third place of ONC 2021 with her story BioSynth.
Let's see what she has to tell us about her writing goals and ONC journey!
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Welcome to the interview, Monica!
So, to begin, tell us a little bit about yourself as an author on Wattpad. For anyone who hasn't met you before, how would you describe your fiction?
I don't really know what to say about me specifically as an author on Wattpad, to be honest, so I'll just tell you a little bit about me in general: I'm a 41 year-old Portuguese writer (yes, that means when I mess up spelling or grammar, I play the "Not A Native Speaker" card). My background is in graphic and web design (I create WordPress-based websites), and I also manage my best friend's music career (if you're in the mood for good music, look up Half Full, by Tiago Barbosa — it's available on most streaming platforms).
I love reading and writing (naturally), designing, some coding (but not all, as I've recently discovered), going to concerts, photography (specifically concert photography), roleplaying games, board games, video games, lego, and stationary. Not necessarily in that order.
I have four kids (currently aged 23, 14, 6, and 5) and no pets.
As for how I'd describe my fiction, that's such a hard answer to put into words, even though I know exactly what I want to say in my mind... Let me give it my best shot:
I create layered characters, with flaws, who mess up even when their intentions are good. I love when those flaws conspire to bring them low, because I know they have the tools to overcome whatever situation they find themselves in, and to hopefully patch up what they broke.
All my stories have romance in them (MM for the time being, though I have a project where the main pairing is NB/M in the works, and another that will feature a committed poly relationship) and have, so far, focused on middle-aged characters. This is probably because I'm 41 and find there's a dearth of characters in my age range, out there.
Although Utterly Forgettable, my first novel, was a contemporary romance (I hover between calling it that and litfic, since capital R Romance is a genre that's a lot stricter than people imagine it is, and I'm not sure I hit all the beats), I'm a SFF writer at heart. BioSynth, the entry that won 3rd place in this year's ONC (and that got me this feature) is SciFi/dystopian/cyberpunk, and all my upcoming projects are either Fantasy, Sci-Fi, or both.
Regardless of genre, there are common threads to all of my works, something that becomes more apparent to me with every new piece. They all have an underlying theme of healing, of love, of hope, and, often, of moving past trauma, whether it's trauma from their past or that they experience on the page, as the story is unfolding. There's also a layer of social critique, and BioSynth/SynTracker have it in a far more visible way than Utterly Forgettable because sci-fi lends itself well to that.
