Inspiration can strike in a moment, but it also can take time to percolate, sometimes years.
That’s how it worked for Colorado Springs science fiction and mystery author John Stith. It took him until almost the end of earning a physics degree in college to realize what he really wanted was to write. And then it took another decade to actually sit down and do it.
That doesn’t mean, though, that his brain wasn’t dreaming up and mulling over ideas for novels all that time. It probably started while growing up in New Mexico, where his father held several sci-fi-esque jobs, including working at Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory and White Sands Missile Range, where he worked on the rocket sled. It also didn’t hurt that his family’s neighbors headed up the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.
“I’m sure that all played a part,” Stith said. “It’s like advertising — some works, but you never know which part.”
He’s now written nine science fiction novels, one mystery and a bunch of short stories.
“Science fiction appeals to all the senses, including the sense of wonder,” he said. “I really get a good feeling when I’m partway through a book and it takes a turn I didn’t expect and opens up a brand-new avenue. Sci-fi does that for me more than most things.”
His 1993 book “Manhattan Transfer,” about the island of Manhattan being kidnapped by aliens, has attracted interest from the film and TV industry over the decades, though nothing has come to fruition. A film company is doing crowdfunding to try to produce a TV pilot based on the book.
Stith will hold a book signing Saturday at Hooked on Books for the completion of his science fiction trilogy “Tiny Time Machine.” His books also are available for purchase through Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and other online bookstores.
While making a career for himself in the Air Force, then working as a civilian for various software development companies, Stith was a giant bookworm. Science fiction and mysteries fed and inspired him, genres that stretched back to his high school days.
“I had a wonderful biology teacher and physics teacher,” he said. “If I’d had a wonderful history teacher, things might have been different.”
Almost 45 years ago, he finally decided to indulge his love of the unknown frontier and start putting his ideas on paper.
“Every once in a while I’d put down a book I was reading that I loved and gave me such a charge,” he said. “And I said gosh, I wish I could do that.”
He started small — 15 minutes of writing whenever he could find the time. The slow approach worked — his first book, “Scapescope,” set inside NORAD, where he worked for a few years, debuted in 1984.
A decade after he started writing, he went full time. It worked for a few years, but he returned to the job market in the late 1990s when it didn’t bring in enough money. And then life took some turns — his mother came to live with him and died two years later, and then his wife died of cancer. Writing fell by the wayside.
“Some people can write through anything,” he said. “I wasn’t one of them.”
A dozen years ago, he remarried and shortly after returned to writing. In 2018, his only mystery novel, “Pushback,” was published. Set in the Springs, it was semiautobiographical.
Publishers Weekly called it an “unsettling Hitchcockian thriller”: “Judicious use of humor provides some relief from the dark plot line. Fans of Daniel Palmer-esque intelligent suspense will be pleased.”
“It’s way disguised and you’d never know what parts,” Stith said. “But I got remarried not very long after my second wife died. I had occasional feelings of guilt about moving on too quickly. That was one of the elements in the book. The protagonist gets punished for moving on too quickly.”
Ideas come to him “painfully,” he says.
“Every writer is different. I know some who have a dozen great ideas before breakfast. I’m not one of them. It takes me a lot of digging to find something I like well enough to spend a year on.”
Contact the writer: 636-0270
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