About MJ

M.J. Carlson is an American science fiction author and activist. Several of his short stories have received an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest. An early novel and short story were finalists in the Florida Writers Association Royal Palm Literary Award competition, and a more recent one was a finalist in the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) Short Story contest. M.J. currently has four novels and two non-fiction writing reference books available. He lives in Brevard County, Florida with Sparkle, his Wise Reader and muse — right down the road from where Major Anthony Nelson used to live with that nice girl, Jeannie.

Okay, enough of the Wikipedia answer.

Who am I?

The Real Me

Like the caterpillar’s question to Alice, I’ve always found “Who are you?” to be the most difficult one to answer. More so because it has always struck me as less about personal trivia than the more esoteric aspects of personality, like “what is your philosophy,” or “what color are the glasses through which you peer at life?”–not to be confused with the question I’m more commonly asked–“what color is the sky on your planet?”

When the graduate school interview committee asked me to tell them about myself, I knew they had all the facts about me on paper, right in front of them, because I spent hours typing the forms (when such things were done). So, as I sat perspiring in my single plastic chair across the table and separated from those three stony-faced pillars of academia, I chose the more inscrutable answer of a parable. I chose the one about the thief who, captured in the harem of a sheik, offered to teach the sheik’s favorite horse to fly if he would be pardoned in exchange. The deal was struck, but with a one-year time limit. When the thief’s friend asked him what he was thinking, to make such an outrageous claim, he replied, “Many things can happen in a year. The sheik could die, he could be deposed, or he might take pity and pardon me. Also, it’s a large palace and I will always be on the lookout for a means of escape But if all else fails, I might just be able to teach the damned horse to fly.”

Needless to say, they were not impressed.

I got in anyway–and graduated, much to everyone’s surprise (especially mine).

In that same vein, I’ve always believed that the inner person is reflected in his or her description of their world. Not all, perhaps, but more than a curriculum vitae will ever tell me.

My home is Florida. It’s who I am. But my Florida isn’t tied tightly together by six-lane ribbons of asphalt or littered with strutting, pastel, multi-million-dollar beach sandcastles. It’s a Florida of scrub palms and sand spurs, of cool December beach breezes, forty-minute four o’clock August thunderstorms, and sultry, honeysuckle-scented summer nights. And when I say Florida I mean all of it. I’ve lived in every corner of my prickly paradise, from the rusty buckle of the bible belt up in the northeast corner to a stone’s throw from Ft. Lauderdale’s Slip F-18, from Pat Frank’s North Florida with its live oaks dripping with Spanish moss to walking distance from where the road ended for Jack Kerouac in St. Pete. I’ve watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and drop into the Gulf of Mexico on the same day, walked the heat-shimmered backroads, raced motorcycles across the Everglades under a full April moon, and awoke bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed on Key West’s Duval Street more than once.

Over the decades, Florida’s changed under my vagabond shoes, but my restless quest for the perfection of the next butterfly’s flight continues. Along the way I’ve met some good people and said good-by to some bad ones, made a few friends and, I hope, not hurt anyone too badly. Somehow, in the midst of the madness, life has given me a statuesque, gray-eyed, blond beauty who manages to read my first-drafts and still believe in me as we search together for those ever-elusive sloe-gin-colored sunsets, and a step-son who wakes up every day prepared to walk into the hell of burning buildings to save complete strangers. And I still question what I did to deserve their love.

When I get old, I want smile lines deep enough to hold all my memories. And when I’ve finally run far enough and I’m done falling and skinning my knees, I want my ashes to feed the mangroves and orchids.

That’s who I am.