An Interview with Amalia Joy, author of Telescopic Observations from a Microscopic Being

When I am not sewing, cooking, gardening, roasting cacao, fire dancing, writing, crafting, singing and playing music, mixing batches of salve, seasonings and herbal infusions, painting, drawing, making candles, feeding the donkey, sheep, guinea pigs, chickens, cats or other humans, find me near a shore playing my drum while my children swim salty waves watching for whales and rainbows or deep in a forest listening to the wisdom of trees, breeze and wildflowers whisper their truth.

What inspired you to start writing?

Life! Questions! How do we fold into this vast unfolding?

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Like bright blue skies when clouds blow in on the trade winds, the title—Telescopic Observations from a Microscopic Being—blew in.

Describe your dream book cover.

I’d like to peer through a superpower telescope. Perhaps Spitzer, Hubble or James Webb and capture the image of a nebula looking back into my eye.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

My own soundtrack! I recorded an eight-track album last year titled Fearless Prayer. I have many, many songs, but these are on record.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

I read anywhere from 1-4 books a month, usually length and chewiness of subject matter are determining factors. Scripture and Rumi tend to stay an arm’s length away for joy, comfort, and grounding insight.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I’ve strove for inner wholeness, truth and wisdom this lifelong journey. Sometimes money comes my way. I’ve avoided patterned careers and boring things as much as possible. I am bilingual in English and Spanish, also speaking a few words of a Mayan descent, Mam dialectic.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

The nothingness of a white page like a blank canvas. Given my breath and beating heart, I in return feel the duty to create.

Where is your favorite place to write?

At home alone or in a forest.

Do you have any writing rituals?

To enter surrounding silence.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

An expansive prose perspective in sublime subtleties of life, love, and death.

Many of us have learned the gift of reading! I envision the curious, the over intellectualized, logistically minded, scientific rational, the technocrat, astrophysicists, along with the romantic poet, the spiraling revolutionist, the mother longing for belonging, the gangsta who’s been knocked down again and again only to rise stronger. Humans who are realizing our being-ness means we are all on this swirly planet together.