Escape to Tarkenwore: Eagle River woman pens debut fantasy novel

EAGLE RIVER — Over the last decade or more, there’s probably been no go-to path from book to movie to the imaginations of teenagers than the young adult model. Often the worlds of these stories are set in the future — a future that, in one way or another, is typically dystopian.

Eagle River author Morgan Warner, who goes by the pen name M. Cote Warner, has turned that pattern on its head somewhat with her debut sci-fi/fantasy novel “The Stratus Estate”, which she recently self-published and is currently in the process of marketing.

The central character in the book Is Phillip Stratus, a 13-year-old boy in a future Earthly society known as ‘Tarkenwore’, which isn’t dystopian at all. In fact, it’s quite successfully and unabashedly utopian.

“He lives in this utopian world where everyone looks similar and everyone behaves similarly, but he’s just kind of different,” Warner said. “His journey is one of self-discovery — a coming-of-age kind of journey, only he doesn’t realize that. He’s not searching for himself in it; it just works out that way.”

Phillip’s sidekick is the Crown Princess Vive Tarkenwore, heir to the prodigious throne of Earth. The two adolescents spend their time getting into adventures and misadventures, learning a little bit about themselves all along the way.

“I think it’s somewhat unusual to see a utopian society because you’re usually looking for conflict, and they definitely have conflict, but it’s genuinely utopian,” Warner said. “They will start to see conflict when it starts to come from the outside.”

That outside, dystopian presence comes from the planet of Mars, but here on Earth, now known as Tarkenwore, things are perfect.

The secret to a perfect world in Warner’s story, which, she hopes is the first in at least a trilogy:

eugenics.

“It’s not their form of government and it’s not their economic system — it’s who they are genetically, basically,” Warner said. “So I thought, in order to have a utopian society, we would have to change people. Their queen is a supernatural being and she selected people, basically. Their queen is basically a eugenicist… Phillip and Vive start to mistrust her and her motivations and start to question this whole world.”

Warner said that she, in no way, is a supporter of eugenics.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “But it’s kind of how they get around the morality of it all. Their queen is a supernatural, god-like being.”

The concept for the story first dawned on Warner when she was a student at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.

“It actually goes pretty deep into my past. I started developing this world and some of the characters in college,” she said. “It was an escape for me into this universe I’d created.”

That escape proved to be somewhat cathartic.

“I did struggle with anxiety and depression, so maybe (it was a coping tool) a little bit,” Warner said. “I’d read a lot of science fiction and fantasy in college and was kind of dissatisfied with the world. I was taking what I was learning in school and applying it to a utopian world I would want to live in.”

Warner majored in psychology at UH-Hilo and applied that course of study to her fiction writing.

“Something that always interested me, in particular, was abnormal psychology and personality disorders,” she said. “That definitely comes into play in the book.”

As many self-published authors have found, getting published in this day and age is the relatively easy part. Self-marketing and promoting is the biggest challenge.

“I have a publicist but we’re almost done with that campaign,” Warner said. “I’ve been going out on my own, reaching out to bookstores… I did do a farmers market, and I’m going to do an authors’ panel at the UAA bookstore in the fall. Bosco’s is doing a press spotlight kind of event with other local authors in the fall, too.”

Though the first book took the 34-year-old seven years to write, she’s already begun working on the second. The sequel, she figures, shouldn’t take nearly so long.

“I’ve only written a few pages and done a couple illustrations,” Warner said. “I need to read through the first book again, and I need to do an outline this time. The first book I just went where the story took me. I’m going to outline where they need to go in the second book because there were a lot of things I left open, questions that need to be answered.”

Warner said her book is currently being carried at Bosco’s in Spenard and could be in the UAA bookstore by the fall. She said the best way to purchase it is either through Amazon, or her website atwww.deinoncote.com.