Episode 162 – Gustavo Bondoni – Colony

Overview Gustav is from South America where he lives with his large family. He writes for a very thriving science fiction fan base there. We discuss his sci-fi military book, Colony, but also about being a South American writer and trying to sell in the United States. Gustav is a Jumpmaster Press author and loves what they have done to help his career. Book Website https://gustavobondoni.com/ Favorites https://www.kelediciones.com/ YouTube https://youtu.be/7rYVL-7Pwns Transcript Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Gustavo Bond. Bond. Is that correct? See, I didn't ask the last name. Alright, so Gustavo, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Gustavo: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah. Stephen: Yeah, this is great. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Some things you like to do, where you live, that type of stuff outside of writing, things you don't besides writing. Cool. Gustavo: I'm from Buenos Aires. I'm currently in Buenos Aires. I live in Enos Aires. Nice. I have two young daughters. I live with my wife and two daughters, plus two children from my wife's previous marriage. So there's a lot of us in the house. Nice. Outside of writing, I I have a day job. I work for an internet company and I also enjoy I enjoy reading. Of course. That's I think you probably Stephen: get that lot books behind you there. Gustavo: Yeah. And if you look to the, like to that side, there's also a little display case with a bunch of models in it, airplanes and cars, which I actually built. I also like to do some art. So the, if you look above the models, lemme see if I can make like right above the models, there's one draw. One of my drawings is up there, which actually they were, there was two of them hanging on that wall before I put up the display case. So Stephen: yeah. Nice. So I think you're the first South American author I've interviewed. Cool. Gustavo: Great. Great to be the first. Yeah, it's, a lot of South Americans write science fiction and fantasy. But not a lot of them speak English or work in the US and the European markets. So it's not unusual that you might not have run into too many of us. Stephen: Oh, that's interesting. I think it's great cuz I've been getting authors, all continents. I think it's great talking to such a big variety. Gustavo: Yeah. It's cool. Stephen: So you've got multiple kids. I know what that's I've had the same how do you find time to write? Gustavo: So generally I try to find a little bit of time to write when they're at school. And after that, when they're watching cartoons in the afternoon, the rest of the time becomes a little bit harder. But if I have to write during during A fight in the middle of my house, I can actually do that. I've done it. So Stephen: arriving under fire? Gustavo: Yeah, during the pandemic. The pandemic was actually very good training for that because like they were here all the time and they were small. They were like, one of them was two and the other one was four. During the pandemic. Oh, wow. They were really needy, really small. And so that was good training, like writing when Yeah, when the world is like coming down around your Stephen: ears. So I wanna talk about your book Colony but I find it interesting I wanna ask you, there it is. Ask you, you mentioned that a lot of South American authors like to write sci-fi and fantasy which is interesting to me. Why do you think that is? There's a tradition Gustavo: not only of straight science fiction and fantasy in the Asimov vein, but actually science fiction and fantasy in Latin America has been spilling out into every genre. So if you look at the last few greats from Latin America, if you look at Mario Osa, who is Peruvian, or if you look at Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is. Who is Colombian or even our own Argentinian superstar who is Borges.