MALACHI MATA SCI-FI FANTASY AUTHOR
MORE ABOUT MALACHI
As a child, Malachi was too shy to speak to anyone except his sister. In order to communicate with others, he would whisper in his sister's ear and she would answer for him.
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"What do you want to drink, honey?" his mother asked.
"He'll take milk now, Mommy," answered his sister.
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Malachi didn't begin to break out of his shell until he entered his first year of college where he accidentally performed onstage for one of the most prestigious drama departments in the country, the drama department of Southern Oregon State University (then Southern Oregon State College) in the southern Oregon town of Ashland, Oregon, famous for its Shakespearean festival.
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Malachi was visiting his girlfriend at the time, a drama student, when he decided to look around the prestigious theater and wandered out onto the main stage. The two men in the audience stopped talking, looked up from their clipboards, and stared in disbelief. Did he interrupt something?
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“Do you believe in serendipity?” the director said in a half-whisper.
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Malachi blocked the stage light that was blinding him to get a better look at the odd man with the odd question. “What does serendipity mean?”
Malachi was 18 years old and had a lot to learn about life, and a lot to learn about the English language.
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“It’s the belief that things happen for a reason,” the kind, older-gentleman explained.
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It turns out that at the moment Malachi wandered out onto the dust-filled stage, the two directors were in the middle of discussing what to do about an actor who had just quit. The part was for an aboriginal watching as the European new comers to the continent disembarked from their boats and set up their town in Australia in the stage play, "Our Country’s Good."
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Enter Malachi stage right, the closest thing that school had to an aboriginal.
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The director and co-director exchanged looks, like they were talking to each other telepathically. “Should we do this? Yes, let’s do this.”
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Still crushingly shy, and despite the great couching of the director, Malachi did not have a stage voice. His lines we dubbed by a real actor and played over speakers while Malachi stood there on stage, like they were his thoughts, like they were his sister speaking for him at dinner.
"He'll have to milk, now, Mommy."
Malachi transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio and changed his major from art to politics. After graduation in 1999, he returned back to his home town of Portland Oregon, but ever the middle child, Malachi ran away again, this time to a place much farther away. He moved to South Korea to become an English teacher. There he met a woman and got married and after more than 15 years of teaching English, Malachi returned with his wife and son to settle down in the United States.
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Although Malachi has always liked to read, he never imagined in his wildest dreams that he would write his own story. When he first started studying books on story making, he had only intended to use the knowledge of story to improve his YouTube channel videos - a series of webisodes that followed the hardships of raising his son. But as he studied in preparation for season two, a sinister thought wormed its way into his head. A novelist, unlike a video maker, doesn’t have to be in front of a camera or try to coerce others into performing for him. Nor is a novelist constrained to limit his ideas to things physically possible in the real world. Perhaps he could finally release the imaginings he had kept caged inside his head and find his artistic expression. Maybe, through writing, Malachi could find his voice.
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So Malachi writes, hoping one day to be heard.
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