Getting Into Writing Sci-Fi at 50+

How I organically discovered writing sci-fi is even more fun than consuming it.

Hi, I go by M. Majeris, and I’m a sci-fiholic.

Let this inaugural post serve as an intro and a bio. I’ll keep it as short as possible, since I’m not distinguished in any way that matters, and we can only trick ourselves into believing to be interested in someone else’s boring life progress if that person is famous as fuck.

I’m a lot of things (or rather normal amount of things), but this Substack is dedicated to my “writer” persona, even though it’s a long stretch to call someone who hasn’t published anything a writer.

That said, the important distinction here is that not having pushed out anything to general public does not equal not having written anything. Luckily, I have, so forgive me for the self-assigned status.

2024

I’ve been crunching through books for decades, acquiring a special fondness for Cyberpunk sub-genre after a friend dropped Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash into my lap about three decades ago, but it was only in 2024 that writing entered my radar as something that is within the reach of a common folk.

“Everyone is an artist, but only artists know that.” A wall of the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius Old Town.

“Everyone is an artist, but only artists know that”, says the wall of the Contemporary Art Center in the UNSESCO-protected Vilnius Old Town. That sentence, walked by hundreds if not thousands of times, always struck cord with me. I truly believe it holds out in the context of creative writing, too.

My friend and business partner—Antanas Marcelionis—wrote a book. A programmer for most of his life went out and wrote a novel. Outrageous. How could he? And it was good, and catchy, and fucking page-turning grippy. It won awards here in Lithuania. It was all over news. Antanas was invited to TV and radio shows, podcasts, and caught attention of the literary community. I’m making it sound bigger of a deal than it really was, but the main message is true: it was and still is a good read.

At that point, I was happy and proud for Antanas, but there still were zero thoughts that I could do or even consider doing something similar.

Then Antanas got ambitious—he wanted his book in English. Bam, suddenly I have his boot on my throat, demanding I do the translation. I—another aging programmer for life. I’m a wussy tho, and after a few days of half-assed resistance, I finally gave in, and embarked on a project unlike anything I’ve ever done before, which probably deserves another post some day.

Fast forward a few months, and Master Version 1.1 was born, then proceeded to collect blazing reviews and collect awards like crazy, even though the English-language book market is a suffocatingly congested place with, millions of books being published every year.

Did that ignite my own spark for writing? Nope.

2025

That spark, though tiny, happened in March of 2025, and I have my grown up ass daughter to blame for that. It was during our month-long trip to Thailand, with my carefully polished set of home activities and routines in tatters, when I woke up one morning with a clear-cut dialogue in my head. Just like that, my brain decided to cook up a whole ready-to-consume chapter.

Driven purely by OCD-like obsession of not wasting a good thought, I sat down to write it down. And it was easy. It just came naturally. No sweat at all. Those pages signaled the start of my full-length novel “Desynced”, even though I cut and replaced it with something else in later edits, but I hear it’s a quite common part of the process.

Back in that stuffy hotel room in Chon Buri—a place very much off the beaten tourist path—having nothing much to do besides tapping the laptop keyboard for my daytime job and occasionally popping into a tennis court to humiliate myself against the locals, I felt something that totally surprised me: joy.

I wrote the next chapter, and then the next. I spend hours pacing in my room, thinking up the plot (I sort of had the general premise and a clear vision for the end, but the rest was new to me as it was revealing), but even a third into the book, I still didn’t even think I’m writing an actual novel. It’s fucked up how the brain works.

The “oh shit, I’m writing a book” moment came about halfway through the plot, when Antanas, having read the progress so far declared: “You’re finishing it.”

(Then he proceeded to trash a bunch of plot points, forcing me to rethink and rewrite stuff, but that’s another story.)

That brings me to today—a rainy October day here in Vilnius—with a finished manuscript of Desynced and at least three other projects stewing in my head.

Desynced original cover art by the talented Katrina (check her Insta)

What now?

I’m still navigating by touch here. I’d like to have Desynced published. I work on other stuff, which I’m going to experiment with posting here on Substack, and possibly some other places.

You can help me out by subscribing to this Substack and by commenting on my posts.

If you like something, share it.

Finally, follow me on Bluesky (if you’re not using Bluesky, now is a good time to start—it has a thriving writer community, including the biggest names in the industry, and they’re all approachable!), where I post shit about books, tennis and occasional cat pics.

Follow me on Goodreads, where I post a brief book reviews.

And if you’re in the same shoes—trying to cut into writing—ping me here or on BSKY for a chat. I love beta-reading and just kicking stones with likeminded folks.

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