Meet Tora Moon

If you've wandered through Moonbeams & Starships for a while, you may find yourself wondering about the person behind these worlds.

The simplest answer is that I've always been fascinated by possibilities.

Not just what is, but what could be.

What would happen if…

• A civilization grew from partnership rather than domination?
• Mythology remained part of everyday life?
• The sacred wasn't tucked away in temples, but woven naturally into ordinary existence?

What kinds of people would those worlds shape?

Those questions have followed me for as long as I can remember. They eventually became stories.

Where My Stories Begin

I don't begin writing with a plot. In fact, I have a hard time picking out the plot in books that I read.

I begin with curiosity.

Usually, a character appears first. Then I start to ask questions.

• What kind of civilization could have shaped that person?
• What is their society and spirituality like?
• How do they govern themselves?
• What stories do they tell, their myths and history?
• Who or what do they fear? What do they celebrate?
• What do they believe about love, community, death, or the sacred?

Only after the world begins to breathe does the story truly reveal itself.

For me, world-building has never been scenery. It's discovering what it would feel like to live somewhere else. Not somewhere better, but simply somewhere that asks different questions.

Remembering Rather Than Inventing

People sometimes ask where my ideas come from.

The honest answer is that they rarely feel invented. For me, they feel remembered.

The worlds I write often arrive with the strange familiarity of places or people I've somehow already known. Whether that's through imagination, intuition, spirituality, or simply the mysterious way creativity works, I leave for each reader to decide.

My responsibility isn't to explain the experience. It's to remain faithful to it.

My Background

Although Moonbeams & Starships is devoted to my fiction, my stories don't exist separately from the rest of my life.

For more than twenty-five years I worked as a Certified Public Accountant, eventually serving as Chief Financial Officer for an international software company. Logic, systems, and structure became second nature.

At the same time, another part of me never stopped asking impossible questions, filling notebooks and computer files with story ideas and beginnings. I explored subjects I love, like mythology, studying spirituality, and imagining civilizations that existed just beyond the edge of ordinary life.

For years, those lives seemed completely unrelated.

Looking back, I can see they prepared me for exactly the work I do now.

The analytical side of me helps civilizations feel coherent.

The curious side of me wonders what happens when those civilizations encounter hope, loss, courage, love, and change.

I need both.

The Thread That Connects Everything

If you've also spent time within the Temple at Tora Moon.com, you'll recognize another thread running through these stories.

The Goddess finds Her way into every story I write.

Sometimes as a living presence, through the people’s mythology, or through their culture and cosmology. Other times, She’s simply in the assumptions a civilization makes about the sacred.

I don't place Her in my stories to teach a philosophy. She belongs there because it is through Her that I experience the world.

The stories aren't arguments.

They're invitations to inhabit civilizations where relationships—with one another, with the sacred, and with the living world—have unfolded differently.

What I Hope Lingers

If there's one hope I have for my books, it isn't that readers agree with every idea within them.

It's that they leave asking better questions about:

• Themselves.
• Humanity.
• The kinds of worlds we create together.
• The possibilities we may have forgotten.

If a story lingers after the final page, continuing a conversation long after the book has been closed, then it has done exactly what I hoped it would.

I don't expect readers to love every world I create.

But I do hope that if one of them feels like home, you'll come back and explore another.

After all, there are many more worlds still waiting to be discovered.

And more ways for my imagination to remember new possibilities.

Tora Moon - Character Sketch

I thought it would be fun to do a character sketch about me, just like I do my characters, to give you some insight into who I am.

Occupation  — Current:

Author | Artist | Creative | Goddess Mystic

I write fantasy, science fiction, and Goddess spirituality books—all fueled by an overactive imagination and an endless supply of "What if...?" questions. (And a bit of chai or soda)

My stories have a habit of blending genres. If mythology, shapeshifters, portals, magic, science fiction, and the Goddess decide they all belong together, I don't argue with them.

When I'm not writing, you'll probably find me drawing (I’m now up to over 200!) and coloring mandalas, experimenting with watercolors or colored pencils, or doing some handcraft. Or I’ll be learning another creative hobby because apparently I don't have enough projects.

Story ideas are always knocking on my door! (Truthfully, they're usually pounding to get my attention.) I have so many stories I want to write (or more accurately, they want me to write.)

Occupation — Past:

Certified Public Accountant (CPA)

Oh, yeah… you’ve read about that. Moving on…

Clifton Strengths:

Top 5: Intellection, Input, Ideation, Connectedness, Achiever

Bottom 5: Consistency, Woo, Context, Harmony, Includer

Between my Human Design and Clifton Strengths, don’t expect me to be consistent! Or do things the same way others do.

I don’t write according to genre tropes or market trends. I bend and blend fantasy subgenres, even creating a new subgenre of Goddess fantasy and sci-fi. Don’t ask me about tropes or themes, because I don’t pay attention to them.

I've stopped worrying whether my stories fit neatly into existing categories. They never seem interested in doing that anyway

Pets:

I’m a cat person! I’ve only gone 9 months without having a cat in my life.

My current cat is Aya, a long-furred Maine Coon mix

Favorite Food — Least Favorite

Pasta dishes. I love Italian and Tex-Mex.

I hate mashed potatoes, green peppers, and pineapple on my pizza.

Favorite Color — Least Favorite

I love purple and teal.

Red is my least favorite color. I always associate it with anger, rather than passion. Although I do like shades of pink.

Creative Process

Discovers civilizations before plots. My favorite phases of writing a story are world-building and writing the first draft, where I discover the story, meet the characters, and learn how they live within their world.

Adventure Style

Follows curiosity wherever it leads. This isn’t only in my stories, but I also love to travel, meet new people, and explore old places. I’ve visited quite a few countries, but more are on my bucket list.

Past Accomplishments

Black Belt in Japanese Style Karate (Japan Karate-do Ryobu-kai)

Years of karate taught me far more than how to throw a punch. They gave me a feel for movement, balance, discipline, and the rhythm of a fight. Those years also taught me how a fight actually feels, which turns out to be surprisingly useful when writing fantasy battles and fight scenes.

Karate also gave me something unexpected.

Our dojo used the Japanese names for every technique, and we even took a few Japanese language and culture classes. It was there that I first heard the word “tora”.

I knew immediately that was what I wanted to be called. I've now been "Tora" longer than I ever used my birth name. (And no, I’m not sharing it…)

Favorite Books and Authors

My love for fantasy developed early with reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I had an aunt who loved fantasy and science fiction and shared her books with me, such as the Dune series and The Hobbit (not my favorite!).

Then I found Anne McCaffrey and her Dragonriders of Pern series. She’s my all-time favorite series and author. I’ve read almost everything Anne McCaffrey wrote. I also fell in love with Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton, and Ursula Le Guin.

These women shaped my understanding of modern fantasy and, in my opinion, deserve to be recognized among its founders. They profoundly influenced my own writing.

I prefer to read women authors. My new favorite authors are Lindsay Buroker, Shannon Meyer, and Lydia Sherrer.

For Goddess Spirituality, I don’t have a favorite author. I’ve read a wide variety, and pretty much follow my own path.

Least Favorite Author and Series

Tolkien and I have agreed to disagree for decades. I admire what he accomplished, but his stories simply aren't the kind I enjoy reading. Give me someone like Anne McCaffrey or Mercedes Lackey instead.

Where I Live

I currently live in Southern Utah, near Zion’s National Park, where I care-give for my elderly mother. My father recently passed away at 98.

I lived in Orange County, California, for over 25 years, and my daughter’s family still lives there. It’s where I based the location for my Sentinel Witches series.

Family

I have one daughter, who is married, and two grandchildren. I’m so proud of her for using her law degree to help get alternative energy projects funded.

Other Interesting Tidbits

I once belonged to a mountain man club and owned a .35 muzzleloader rifle. In the summer, we’d go into the mountains, have shooting contests, dress in period costumes, and sleep in teepees. That was great fun!

In my position as CFO, the company I worked for had its major operations in Lahore, Pakistan. I traveled to Lahore twice (before the Taliban took over!). It’s a strange experience to have people ask for your photo because they’d never seen an American woman before. It was also a wake-up moment to see armed guards at the office, hotel, stores, and even at homes.

I lived in my 5th-wheel RV for 3 years and traveled around the American West with just my cat. I loved going up into the mountains and staying for a couple of weeks when no one else was around—just me, my cat, and the cows. There’s nothing like waking up in the middle of the night with your RV rocking because the cows are licking the salt off it!

I love all things metaphysical and “woo.” Want me to swoon? Show me a beautiful crystal or other stone. I’ve practiced Wicca, Paganism, and Goddess-focused spirituality. I love Goddess myths and stories.