Meet Terryn Horton-morton

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Terryn Horton-morton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Terryn, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

I keep my creativity alive because I understand that it is the engine to my purpose. I have always had an active imagination, and I honestly always enjoyed building up images of faraway lands and colorful characters in my head. Writing was something that allowed for me use my imagination and let my creative juices flow. I find that my creativity is what is needed in all the spaces around me, the spaces that God opens for me in order to help others see things with a new perspective. On that same note, I will say that my creativity stays alive through the ones who love me the most.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I write and I blog stories that are my personal journey, but with a fairytale twist. That is where my tag line, “Faith and Fairytales”, was birthed from. I have always loved a good fairytale story. The books I grew up reading were full of characters and creatures that piqued my interest, which allowed for me often cope better with many things I did not understand growing up.

The main character of my book’s name is Faitherella. She embodies strength and resilience. She is me. She is fighting multiple evil, spiritual personality flaws that try to hinder her progress toward her God-given destiny. Much of my writing whether short stories, poetry, or books involve a mixture of my faith and fairytales in order to tell a perspective that many of us, as women often forget about as we age. We often forget that we had dreams as little girls-and the boldness to accomplish them.

I am excited to share my perspective of modern Godly femininity with lots of pink and sparkle. While also making more mention of how fairytales are based on the true events that can be found in the bible (you find so many parallels).

My brand and my mission are to inspire every woman to remember that she can live out her own happily ever by having faith in Christ.

My books are called, “Their Innocence, My Hustle, Our Growth-A Modern Faitherella Story” and “Her Assignment, My Identity, Our Curse-A Modern Faitherella Story.”

You can find both of my books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Books-a-million, Spring Harbor, Russell Books, McNally Robinson, Indigo and iTunes.

I am currently working on the third installment of the Modern Faitherella Story saga. My focus in my authorpreneur journey is to allow my books and my writing to inspire more conversations around what we may have thought was impossible after becoming adults. We are never too old to try and be successful at new things.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three qualities that impacted my journey were persistence, resilience, and faithfulness.

In order to pursue a dream, you must persist in learning everything you can about what needs to be done to be successful in it. This means researching similar topics and brands that correlate with yours. Google has been such a huge tool in helping me find what is out there to be able to compete with others within my same genre.

Resilience because when doing the things of God, you find the road is often lonely because no one sees the vision as He has shown it to you. It is yours and yours alone, and the biggest thing is trusting that He will be there guiding you each step of the way. It takes resilience to stick with the vision when it’s not always made plain.

And I will say faithfulness because in order to fulfill any goal or dream you must have crazy faith to keep going even when things do not look like they are worthwhile. I find that prayer and obedience to God’s will, even when I do not understand what is happening is the key to unlocking my potential in this space.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

My biggest area of growth and I will include improvement is in my confidence in my own brand. I became a published author in 2020-in the heart of the pandemic-and I was clueless on what it meant to have a product that needed to be sold to the masses. My thinking was that the book would speak for itself, and the sales would come…eventually. I had no understanding of marketing myself or even doing the social media advertising for my book either.

I will say that I was blessed to have used google to find some information I needed to put together my website and some other advertising tools. I was also able to find an author network via Instagram in which there were a lot of nuggets of wisdom being put out there for up-and-coming authors such as myself at that time.

During the release of my first book, everything was virtual, which kind of hindered me from getting out there amongst readers except through social media. I found myself not showing up for myself or this gift 6 months after the release.

I left the book on the shelf, never talked about it or marketed it and went back into the 9-5 routine. I realize now that I was dealing with my own issue with imposter syndrome. I honestly found it hard to believe that I accomplished becoming an author much less having a voice that others needed to hear.

I found myself a year and a half later in December 2022 talking to a relative about nothing in particular, yet the topic of my book came up. During that conversation I found myself feeling a way about the fact that I had worked very hard and invested in a dream that I was no longer putting in the effort to fulfill. This made me pause and reevaluate where I was and where I needed to be.

Spring of last year, I took the leap of faith to join a women’s writing network. At that time, they were having a huge virtual literary conference, and I decided to join to gain more insight and knowledge for my craft.

Needless to say, the conference did exactly what I needed which was to revive the fire within me for my writing and for my book like I had never had before. I was speaking with other authors, writers, editors, marketers, publishers who ate slept breathed literature. I was so inspired to keep going and keep learning about this new journey I was on from that one-week conference.

From that moment on, I went to work on building my author/book brand.

I went from my book just sitting on the shelf collecting dust, to doing twenty in- person book signings, 10 virtual interviews, 5 magazine articles, I threw my first in -person book launch party, I participated in numerous vendor events and have been asked to speak at different women related conferences and events.

I am no longer taking a back seat to what I can only describe as my assignment.

My confidence level is the highest it has ever been, because it has literally been a 180-degree change from last Spring to this year. The growth in just being able to represent myself in any space has been testament to what faith will do.

I can say I do not know where else this author journey will take me, but I am so excited for all that is to come. To me this is the definition of true growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oursparkblog.com
• Instagram: @mygodlyspark
• Facebook: Terryn Horton-Morton
• Linkedin: Terryn Horton-Morton

Image Credits

The first photo image credit to @Keishae.Photography