Teodora K

Hello, @TeodoratheScholar!
          
          We are interested in featuring you and your story "Thirty-Three Tastes Of Poison" on our profile in our interview book. If you would like to be featured, please provide us with the best email address to move forward with our interview. Since the removal of private messages, we have moved our interview process to email. Please let us know if you have any questions!
          
          Thank you,
          The Asian & Pacific Islander Fantasy Team

Getting back to Wattpad is overwhelming (as aways). If I have already started your novel or promised to read your sequel, I will do it soon enough. Hopefully, I will get to it, but perhaps not as fast as I would love to.
          In the meantime, I will be finishing Morok (probably this month or in November) and leaving the chapters to marinate here for a while before taking the work down for edits. I'll see where I go from there. While I don't do 1000 rounds of edits (I have an almost photographic memory, so I tend to know who did what and why while polishing things - this perk helps), I still need time.

Congrats on the Morok being one of the Top Stories from the March to April 8 Chapter Challenge! Totally deserved!

I will update my new project, Morok, once or twice weekly on Mondays and Fridays. Meanwhile, I hope to catch up on the many novels I have on my lists and also the ones that I have abandoned due to falling out of a book club or shifts in my working schedule. I haven't done any promotional activities lately, and for now, I am not sure if I should. Perhaps I will, given how well social media helps authors find readers. If any of you are actually enjoying Instagram, TikTok or any other platform, tell me about your experiences. Is it worth the effort?

@TeodoratheScholar I don’t know myself XD

@AnnamitaMuscaria As always, thanks for rooting for me. I really have no idea where you find the time to work on your projects, design covers, read stuff and also read it with purpose and intention.

Since I am struck by productivity and hyperfocus, I hope to publish at least eight chapters of Morok by the end of this month. The new one is out! https://www.wattpad.com/1437632201-morok-chapter-iii-cr%C3%A8me-caramel
          
          “I hope you die. I hope someone kills you. I hope you will suffer for all you have done.”
           
          “And how would that make you feel? Triumphant?” 
          
          “Free.”
          
          Gorenski smiled, but his eyes remained cold and glossy.  
          “You’ll never be free, Kazimierz. It is not I who torments you but your inhibitions.” He drew closer, forcing Kazimierz to retreat to the wall. “A Polish boy on the field littered with bodies. You were a beautiful sight with your hair like a heap of autumn leaves on the ground. Do you remember what you said to me when I leaned over you and pressed my finger to the artery to stop the bleeding?”
          
          “I’ve regretted it ever since.” Kazimierz turned away. “I should have died.”
          
          “Chcę żyć. I want to live. That was what you said.” The corner of Gorenski’s lips quirked, but he did not smile this time. “Do not blame yourself. Our survival instinct is often stronger than our nobler impulses. There's nothing shameful about that. It has kept the species alive longer than expected.”

Ever since I embarked on a project that deals with alternate histories and mysteries, smells and tastes were something I could not ignore.  Memories of scents bring us back to the past, remind us of a heyday that never was or create a reality that never is. While my main character is a murderous doctor with a knack for creating elaborate desserts and a love of perfumes, I could not avoid naming chapters after Gorenski's sweet treats. Also, each of my characters has a signature scent, so I had to add those to the Author's Note, as well as the Cyrillic spellings of some of the names (makes sense for Gorenski, who is both Russian and Polish and for Zora, who is Serbian)
          Meanwhile, I've been wondering if someone else derives inspiration not from songs (I've seen a lot of awesome playlists added to the published works here, on Wattpad) or images but from tastes and smells. Does anyone else have an idea of choosing a perfume for their favourite characters or the beloved characters from their fandoms? Are there any fragheads among us?

Thanks to the inspiring projects many of you have been posting lately, I finally managed to focus and start writing my new novel -  Morok. 
          
          Morok is a literary fantasy with a touch of dark academia, art and murder that spans centuries. It is a standalone. 
          
          Any comparisons? Hmmm, think ‘Addie La Rue meets a killer at the Night Circus’. 
          
          Any romance? Yes. But the dark varieties. Since the novel depicts twisted relationships and characters with questionable morals and contains mature themes (but no gratuitous violence or intimate scenes that do not advance the plot), it is best suited for adult readers. 
          
          Any historical accuracy? Yes and no. Although I am a historian (hence my nickname on Wattpad), I would not describe Morok as a conventional historical novel or ‘dark academia’. I am very liberal with my interpretations of events. While it is inspired by real settings and personalities, the main characters either never existed or never existed in the way I painted them. Dr. Gorenski’s father, Piotr Gorenski, was executed and never left official offspring behind. Similarly, Princess Anna Elżbieta Radziwill never met Piotr’s brother Juri while he was in exile. However, the Abandoned Library may or may not exist in modern-day Belgrade. That’s up to you. As an immigrant myself, I play a lot with my characters’ identities and their intersections, so you'll find displaced and lost individuals with strange destinies and dark secrets.
          
          How dark is Morok? The main character is a murderous aesthete, and this novel has no good-natured virtuous paragons on a quest to save the world. 
          
          If you like dark academia and complex villains, then welcome. Enjoy the ride.

While I am not participating in this year's ONC, I will be reading a lot of your stories in the following months. And I wish everyone plenty of luck and inspiration. 
          
          Meanwhile, I will start posting my new project in a couple of days. This time, I will be diving into an alternative history thriller with dark academia vibes. If you are into murderous intellectuals, stories about immortality, blood and the darkest kind of love and ties, you may like it. And, of course, I can't avoid making it a little Eastern European.