Welcome back, my fellow creatives! I’m thrilled to continue sharing some lovely indie authors I’ve met in our community–it’s so great to connect with folks again. This month, please welcome the scifi author Michael Colon!

What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?

My literary pilgrimages occur throughout my day, from when I wake up until I go to bed. Any aspect of life I experience in some way leaves an impression on my soul, which is then funneled into a creative writing project. Whether taking the train to work, walking while listening to music, or going to the gym, I go into a zone that stimulates ideas for future writing projects.

Does writing energize or exhaust you?

Writing energizes me because expressing my art form makes me feel wonder and inspired. Writing can only be exhausting if it’s forced into someone. I am excited to add more sentences or pages to something I hold dear.

Your book, The Gift from Aelius, is a scifi novel dealing with the conflict between synthetic life and humanity. Where did you draw inspiration to write this story?

What inspired me to write The Gift from Aelius was to tell a story that involves political and ideological aspects of modern society with a creative urge to write a long-form fiction story. This sci-fi tale is a philosophical adventure and naturally goes along with how I think deeply. I also respect the speculative fiction genre, so it was fun to paint a story like this one.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

The most difficult part of my artistic process is when life’s priorities get in the way when I feel the creative juices flowing. It can disrupt that out-of-body experience of letting a story write itself, and often, it takes time to snap back into that level of focus. That’s why it’s good to compartmentalize our days with outside tasks and time for writing so we are conditioned to naturally become creatively stimulated at specific points of the day.

What kinds of research did you do in order to build your world for The Gift from Aelius? Are there particular sites you found that would be useful for other scifi writers?

I researched specific robotic terminology when writing codex unit dialogue for The Gift from Aelius and basic robotic terms for describing the physical parts of the codex units. The power of Google search works wonders for specific theme oriented questions.

You also mentioned you enjoy writing poetry, too. Do you find your creativity challenged to write in these different mediums? Do you have any favorite poets you’d like to recommend?

Yes, I like to write poetry, which is challenging but satisfying. The challenge of trying to express a thought or scene in a particular rhyme scheme makes it more worth it when the poem is complete with what I am trying to convey to the reader. I like to write in different forms to explore how far my creative writing craft can go. I’d recommend poets that the reader connects to intimately.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

If I could tell my younger self something, it would be that I can do so much more than what I see now, but I have to take small steps out of my comfort zone.

I think we have felt that way, to be sure. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Michael, and good luck on your poetry and fiction!

~*~

So, what’s coming up? A podcast is coming up, of course. I also have a writing resource spotlight, the importance of reading for fun (gasp!), and whatever happened to stories for boys???

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!