Science fiction and fantasy author Tom Jolly has one piece of advice for up-and-coming writers hoping to get published: It’s never too late to start.
“I never sold anything until 2011, when I was 57 years old,” said Jolly, a former engineer who’s written more than 50 short stories for magazines, including New Myths and Daily SF, and other publications since retiring.
Jolly has also self-published a full-length novel, An Unusual Practice, and a novella, Touched: A Ghost Story, but his latest book marks the first novella he has ever sold to a publisher, Distant Shore Publishing. Released on May 7, A Game of Broken Minds is described as a bite-sized, fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller.
After the story’s protagonist, a homeless man named Cory, becomes the test subject for a mysterious, experimental drug, he gradually begins to communicate with his “inner brain,” an entirely separate consciousness from his own, although they share the same cranium. The idea for this story came to Jolly while he was reading an article about the human brain, he explained.
“I was reading something about the ‘unused part of the brain,’ a common myth since most of the brain provides redundancy in the event that other portions get damaged,” Jolly said. “But I decided to run with that idea; what might be inside that other part of the brain? It’s brain-material, so what if it actually contained another functioning brain with its own personality?”
A longtime sci-fi and fantasy enthusiast, Jolly takes inspiration from some of his favorite authors, including Iain M. Banks, Martha Wells, Isaac Asimov, John Scalzi, Mathew Hughes, Andy Weir, Orson Scott Card, Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and Steven Brust, when it comes to writing. In film and television, Jolly was a big fan of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone growing up, and nowadays gets a kick out of the modern Star Wars and Star Trek tie-ins as well as Marvel’s cinematic universe.
Jolly and his wife, Penny, currently live in the Santa Maria where they spend most of their evenings sitting on the patio with a couple of glasses of wine or whiskey, “as long as the mosquitos aren’t out,” the author said.
The couple first met in El Segundo, but they’ve lived around the Central Coast for the past 40 years, previously residing in Los Osos, San Luis Obispo, and Nipomo before moving to Santa Maria.
Jolly worked as an electrical engineer for more than half of that time, during which he also obtained his degree in astronautical engineering. Ironically, Jolly said the degree has helped him more in terms of science fiction writing than it ever did during his engineering career.
“I used very little of what I’d learned in school on my job, which was mostly basic electrical stuff. After I retired, I started writing hard science fiction, and there I use quite a lot of what I learned in college,” Jolly said. “Designing a spacecraft for a story, or calculating orbital trajectories from one planet to another, or understanding the basic physics and environment of deep space—these are all very useful for writing hard science fiction, trying to get the facts right and making the stories as realistic as possible.”
While his retirement from the engineering field brought about a passionate side career in writing for Jolly, the local novelist admitted most of his day-to-day life consists of casually procrastinating on a dozen things, from writing projects in the works to typical, daily chores.
“It’s just enormously easy to waste time once you’re retired, and it’s amazing I ever get anything written at all,” Jolly said.
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood always loves to hear from local authors at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 13-20, 2021.