Goodreads asked Melissa A. I. Murray:

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Melissa A. I. Murray The best thing about being a writer is being able to talk about the voices in your head without being labeled as crazy...just kidding. I do, however, hear my characters various voices very clearly, and often when I am recording dialogue sketches--what I like to think of as the "muscle" of my stories, with the outlines being the "bones" and the chapter summaries being "ligaments and tendons"--I feel more as if I am just listening in on and recording a conversation that is occurring in real time. It feels less like I am writing than simply being a vessel for the story to happen, and perhaps that does make me a wee bit crazy, but it's my process, and it's one of my favorite things about writing. The other favorite thing, of course, is being able to unleash the entirety of my creativity on creating a world that is all my own. I love building the land of Aorea, making up species and cultures and history, fleshing out the geography, the world's mythology and legends. I often joke that the reason I'm so terrible at mental math is because I exist with one foot in reality and the other in Aorea; I have thousands of years of history for a world that doesn't exist cluttering up my brain.

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