Valerie -Hi there, today we're talking with Jared Michaud about his YA science fiction novel, BrightStar: Energematrice 6, the epimyth begins. Bright Star is the beginning of an epic space adventure that introduces readers to Nate, a boy desperate to escape the prison of an ordinary life made unbearable by his autism. When he is unexpectedly transported to another universe, Nate's perceived disability is transformed into a near superpower. Welcome to Bookworthy Jared.
Jared - Thank you, Valerie. It's wonderful to be here. I really appreciate you having me on. I was looking forward to it and I love this kind of conversation. So, thank you.
Valerie -I'm glad to have you here. I love science fiction and fantasy, and so it's neat to see people diving in and with Christian themes in those genres. And so, but before we get into the meat of it all, I'm gonna start us off with a dangerous question. Jared, since you are a science fiction writer, we must know if you prefer Star Trek or Star Wars.
Jared -Well, you know, when I was when I was really young, I listened to a huge amount of the Star Wars fiction that was written around the universe. And up until Episode One came out, Star Wars was my favorite. It was amazing. And I loved it. And now Star Wars is an utter disaster. But so Star Trek. And when I was a kid, I would watch Star Trek Next Generation with
my dad. It was a special thing we did together. So, you know, I liked Star Trek, but Star Wars 1, 2, and 3, and the surrounding universe are the best, and nothing else in the Star Wars universe exists. So we're good there.
Valerie -I agree with you. There is a sweetness to episodes four, five, and six that with all of the expansions of this, I mean, I was just talking with my son yesterday. He wanted to know what the word lore meant. And I'm like, all right, well, let's talk about that. That, I mean, look at Star Wars, because when episode four came out, all the ideas and the structure, the government, the empire, the Jedi's, all of it was lore. It was, there wasn't any story with it. So he had a really easy time kind of understanding, okay, lore is the history, what everything's built on. And there is a sweetness to that story because it does echo a bit of the salvation story in the Bible as well. So what made you inspired to write science fiction?
Jared -Well, you know, when I was a kid, I had a pretty difficult time growing up. And, um, one of the, one of the things that I did to escape was I would make up stories in my imagination. And at first, it was just, uh, I would visit worlds of characters. I love stories that I read and I would make myself a part of their story. But then eventually I decided I needed my own story. And so I started coming up with a science fiction story in my head. And you know, as time went on, it developed more and more. But when I was 12 years old, I started writing the prologue to a book that would eventually be Bright Star. The prologue has to be over 200,000 words. I finished when I was about 16 and it was unpublishable. Nobody could ever read it. It was awful. It was a total waste of paper and a wonderful use of time. It taught me how to write. So my advice to other people who are starting is along those lines, the first things you write are gonna be a waste of paper, but they will be the best use of time that you can make because that's how you learn. And so it was when I was a little kid that I started writing it and I don't even know how to go deeper than that, you know?
Valerie -Well, was there anything about space, you know, that itself that inspired you to say, Ooh, I want to go see other planets. I want to learn more about the stars.
Jared -Well, okay, so actually the answer to this is a little weird and it's gonna tie into one of your later questions, but the way my brain works is kind of different from most people's. I'm wired differently from most people. And so I think very systemically about everything. And if I'm gonna be in other people's worlds and I'm gonna be bringing them into my world, then my world has to be in space because everything is encompassed by the universe and we have to go out there too. So that was sort of how that happened I guess. And I always loved space stuff so I don't know. There's sort of a visceral attraction there to me that's just kind of part of me. I don't know.
Valerie -It kind of, it's, it's nice to see something that can look chaotic, be organized because it's just one of those like amazing things God did that it looks chaotic, but it is so much precision into how he created the universe and how the distance of stars, the distance of our sun, the tilt of our earth, all those things is just amazing. Yes.
Jared -Gosh. And how beautiful, how, you know, this light show, this thing that's out there, my gosh, the beauty.
Valerie - I love how space kinda was it. It's never-ending, you know, just to show that God is even bigger than that. Like we can't even fathom the length of the universe. We'll just think God is even bigger than that. And I love showing that to my kids when we go out and look at stars and stuff, just to be like, look, this is so far away and God is even bigger. So I love that. So how do you feel that science fiction can help communicate truths about God to teens and young adults?
Jared -Okay, so the way I generally approach this goes something like this. As a writer, there are three things that I try to do and one thing that I try hard not to do. So the first thing you got to do is you got to tell a fun story. Everything starts there. It has to be a story that people love. And part of that is number two, you put some of yourself into the characters. Okay? So your experiences have to play into the story, they have to be a part of it. And that is, that's how you call out to other people. That's how you make them experience it with you. That's how you pull people in. And something about that you just can't do without it. And when you find a book that doesn't do it, it doesn't hold your attention. Okay, so then the third thing is
it's what I call myth. And this is sort of a Tolkienian definition of myth, I would say. It's, goes something like this, there's truth out there in the world, real solid truth that God built the world on. It's like, imagine the skeleton of reality is truth. And there are places in reality where you can almost see those bones sort of pushing against the skin. And we as artists, writers, whatever, when we try to communicate with people, what we hope to do is to sort of look out into the world, see something out there that is true and beautiful, and distill it down, and pull it into something that people can access right in front of them that touches them. And the books that stand the test of time, you know, you get all kinds of popular fiction going some books stand the test of time that you won't just tell to your kids or give to your kids. You'll give them to your grandkids and they'll pass them on to their grandkids etc. Right. We see that is what the substance of a really good story is. That is a myth. And that is what we strive for. And you know, what would I say? Myth. That's a good introduction to it, but there's more there. Because when we look at the world around us, it's kind of crazy, right? There's a lot of craziness going on. And I would say something that has been coming to me lately that God's been making real to me is how what He gave us with the Bible is a set of stories. It wasn't a description of how to act though you can pull that out of it. It wasn't a, there are a lot of things it isn't. You can name a million things it isn't, but the one thing it is, is the thing that speaks to the human heart, and that is stories. We identify with stories. So those myths are so critical and so key. And, you know, in one of my conversations recently, I sort of went through a longer chain of logic to sort of prove this out, looking at how Rome, if you go back to Rome, the morality at the time was all based on strength. It was who's strong, and they could do whatever they wanted. They had the power of life and death over the people who lived in their households. And there was no real moral judgment on that. But what happened? Jesus came along, and his story, not just the fact of what he did, but the story of what he did, the true
myth of Christ because his story is true, but it is also a story at the same time. And that changed the world. Anything that we think of as good and evil today came from what he did. And it's true. And so as a writer, I think that the best thing that I can do is, number one, tell a good story. Number two, put some of myself into the characters. But more than any of that, as you read through Bright Star, what you'll see is that his story echoes Christ's story in ways that aren't the same. It's like Marcus Aurelius said that our actions echo in eternity. Well, if that's true at all, then Christ's actions echo loudest of all. And so what I put into my story was supposed to be an echo of that. But the substance of it, what I asked myself was, If I were a Christian and I were transported to another world, like in the Chronicles of Narnia, and I had the opportunity to fix something that was broken in that universe, not sin because Jesus did that. I don't have to fix what, you know, I don't have to reflect in another world what Jesus fixed, but instead, there's another problem in that world that came in at the beginning of the universe, but I'm a Christian and it's my job to live that out. What's that story gonna look like? That was what I asked myself when I wrote Bright Star. So as people read through the story, they'll see an echo of Christ's story, but they'll also see a picture of what it looks like to live as a Christian in a damaged universe where we are called to be Christians, little Christ's followers of Christ, we take up our cross every day, and it's hard, and it's difficult, and it's scary, and yet what we do has an impact that is just powerful. And so that is what I wanted to communicate through Bright Star. And you know, I can't promise that I did it perfectly. I'm just a guy, but man, if I could aspire to anything, that would be it.
Valerie -I love that, I mean, I love fantasy and I love science fiction and that it does, in a sense, take you out of our world, but the truths, like the skeleton you had mentioned, remain, and because we can dive into them deeper because we know that everything else is a mystery and not real, but the truths stick out all that much more. Now, your main character, Nate, what was the inspiration behind making him autistic?
Jared -Well, you know, I have to admit, I got halfway through the book when I was writing it, and he wasn't. He was just a normal kid. And then I was praying, and I got this inspiration, and I'm like, do I have to do that? And I'm like, okay, yeah, I really do have to do that, because autistic is a word for it, but really what it is we're each wired differently. God made us each to be a different part of the body, to fulfill the role he made us for perfectly. We're not like anybody else. And some of us stick out more than others in different directions. Some of us are wired differently in a way that makes us abnormal so it's hard to even look normal. And then there's the environmental damage that comes in that can make people have these
symptoms that are whatever. And wherever it comes from, whatever the source of it, I grew up not feeling like everybody else, not knowing, you know, not being able to interact the same as everybody else exactly. You almost can't tell talking to me, but there was a time when I was not, this isn't a huge spoiler, but in the prologue of the book, Nate beats his head against the wall, right? And there was a time in my adult life when I did that. I remember doing that. I made a crater in the wall that was like half an inch deep with my head because I was so I don't even know how to put words to it, but I was, well, overwhelmed is a good way to put it, but the way I was handling it wasn't healthy, and I had to learn how to handle it and how to work with it. And when you read books, how often do you see main characters who are two things? Number one, they're wired differently or autistic, however, you want to put it. And at the same time, the whole book isn't some kind of exploration of and glorification of that. Because I don't see that. So what I wanted to do here was, and actually, to be honest, as an author, this was a bad move in some sense, because most people are made uncomfortable by this stuff. It isn't a comfortable thing for a lot of people. But My goal was to reach out to the people who needed to hear it. The people who, like me, are growing up not really understanding what's up with them, and can't interact like everybody else exactly, and maybe it's not as extreme as what you see with Nate in the book, but it's still there, and they see it, and it connects with them on a heart level, and they go, oh, that's me, messed up or different or whatever combination of those two is appropriate because you know to some degree I'm just different the way my mind works is different but by the same token I think that there's some damage caused by some specific environmental toxins that made it worse at some point. So whatever the case is whether it's whether it's something that god put there or whether it's wrong with you it's okay to be different that way and There's a book about me, too.
Valerie -Yeah, I love that there's been a trend in Christian fiction to have neurodivergent kids as part of, you know, what is it usually the not if not the main character, they're, you know, a secondary character right alongside the main character. And I love what it does to not just connect with those who might be in those situations where they do feel different and other than, but also allow people who don't have those struggles to see how they struggle. Cause I had the privilege of reading your, uh, your book and the prologue, Nate does kind of, he, you know, does, like you said, banging his head against the wall because of just some
overwhelming sensations that he's getting. And I have a kid that has sensory processing disorder. And kind of, as we talked before, it's sensor processing. Uh, most autistic kids do have problems understanding sensory input but not all SPD kids are autistic. And so it was amazing just to sit there and read that and be like, yes, I've been there. I've watched my kid struggle with it being too loud, with it being too overwhelming. And it was just neat to see. I don't know, it was kind of the first time I saw autism really being demonstrated in a book by the autistic person's character and just what's going on in his mind. Be like, no, I'm not stupid. I'm not this, but I can't communicate. And I think there is that big struggle inside.
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Jared -Well, you know, that's still a daily thing for me, where I, okay, as an example, some people think in words, some people think in pictures, right? That's a common dichotomy, except that's not all there is. I think in connections. The basic way my brain thinks is in how something is connected to something else. And because of that, I have a hard time putting new ideas into words, because there's too much there. I can't get it all to work together right without trying a few times and making it fit properly. And that's not always, but you know, it's still like there are ways where that's the case so I'm with you. And I have to admit, it was also a struggle for me because I didn't want to make this hard to read. Where on every page of the book the main character is struggling with this, it's gonna get to be hard to read the book because it's just painful. But getting a taste of it, getting a flavor of it, and understanding what that character is looking back at and is trying to cope with, I think helped the story in so many ways.
Valerie -It brought Nate, it made Nate real, like a real person that's struggling, because that's what we want in our books, is we want to travel alongside a character that's struggling just like we are, and to see them overcome, to see them face their struggles and be like, you know what, I can't accept this the way it is, but I've got to keep working, I still gotta grow myself, I still gotta work towards a goal, and those types of things. I think that's what connects us with the story, no matter whether that main character is, what is it, a habit that's too short to do anything. Or if it's, you know, a person from another planet being inserted into another place. And so I think that is the beauty of the story that it does do a great job of just letting those that feel different connect us and bringing empathy. And I don't know, there's such power in stories that way. So fun. Okay. Now.
Jared -Yeah. Absolutely.
Valerie -I struggled a little bit with this word earlier, but the Energematrix six, tell us a little bit about that. What is that?
Jared -Energemetrix6? Yes. Okay, so, Energemetrix6 is the energy force that is used to build the universe, that underlies the universe that Nate is transported into at the beginning of the book. The word was one that I invented when I was about 12 myself. And, you know, I thought about trying to come up with a different word, but I couldn't do it. And I think it gives it flavor. So you know, it is what it is. But that energy field, I was looking for something, and this is sort of on the writer's side, I was looking for something that could give me sort of a Star Wars feel where there is a mysterious force in the universe that acts on things that can be interacted with by the characters, but I didn't want any kind of mystical, magical, mumbo jumbo stuff that was, that could be misinterpreted into being something that was somehow evil. All Energemetrix 6 is, is just a tool. It's like gravity or you know, any other law of physics, it's just part of the world. And I thought that was a good way to accomplish that. So that was sort of where that came from.
Valerie -I find it's a very interesting concept and it is a place as a Christian writer, we do have to be careful because drawing on other powers and that kind of thing can bring in kind of those new age ideas that distract from the Christian truths we're trying to communicate. And I think you did a great job of, like you said, making it a force of nature, a light gravity, and rather than this mystical thing out there. Because I mean, we do know that God is out there and he is unfathomable and he is where we get our hope and our strength from, but it's not this force we can appease like the Roman gods that you mentioned kind of earlier. And so it's, it's that funky balance.
Jared -Right? Yeah. Well, you know, and the other thing about it that's actually kind of cool is one of the things that I ended up doing. I can't say I pre-planned it, but it's like there are times when I was writing this where I'm like, oh, thank you, Lord. You allowed me to put a truth in here. That's pretty cool. And one of those was that God has all the power in the universe. And If we had all the power in the universe, that still wouldn't change. What we needed to do to accomplish doing the right thing. Just having more power doesn't make it easier to do the right thing. So whether it's, and that's a lesson that I tried to sort of illustrate in the book is that when we, even if we have all the power that you can imagine, what are we gonna do with it? Are we going to tear people's houses down because we don't like them? Are we gonna, I mean, you know. the main character comes into a place where he gets the opportunity to ask another character, so what do you think I'm supposed to do here? Right? It's like, I have all this power, what am I supposed to do with that exactly, do you think? And I thought that was a great way to illustrate that, right? It's like, what God wants of us actually has more to do with our relationship with other people and growing our character than it does with the other.
Valerie -Yeah, it's one of those just, you know, was it just mysteries in the sense that, yeah, God has done it all. There's nothing we can do, but he is constantly working on our hearts and it's no matter what situation we're going to be in. He wants to have a relationship with us. He wants to continue to grow us in Christ's likeness. And I think that Every kid asks the question, what am I supposed to do with my life? Because I mean, whether we have powers or not, that's like the ultimate question, you know, is, you know, what am I supposed to do? It's like, well, you're supposed to follow after Christ and based on his leading glorify God.
Jared -And you know, it's like actually it's like what Martin Luther said if you're a Christian shoemaker That doesn't mean you put little crosses on your shoes. It means you make the
best shoes you possibly can and So, for each of us God made us to be very unique individuals I have this ability to write and tell stories, but I come from a family of people who are engineers and you know, they make things with their hands and the reality is none of us is better than another for these gifts we've been given. Instead, we are all necessary parts of the body. And so for any kid, what we're motivated to do, what we're supposed to do, is different from other people. But God made us do these things, whatever it is, and in that, we all get to become more like Christ, but we each have these different paths we get to go down. And that was something I struggled with.
Valerie -I think it's a common struggle especially for teens now nowadays where cultures telling them to be a kid but also telling them to grow up at the same time and it's like well what am I supposed to do here I think stories that allow kids to struggle along with the character that's facing the same questions gives them that time to understand their selves just as much as they're understanding the characters in a story. Now Jared, what has been the most impactful book in your life other than the Bible?
Jared -Okay, I was about to go there. The most impactful one other than the Bible. You know, that's a really hard one. I don't know if I can point to one. I love The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. That one's been in my heart lately. But you know, before that, when I was a kid, actually there were fiction books that were from, some of the Chronicles of Narnia books were. Orson Scott Card's Enders game was one of those very early on that hit me where I lived It helped me to understand things better there I Don't know if I could point to one. I'm sorry I would love to but it's like there's a season and a time for each one and every and at each
stage, There's something new and there's a new book that comes to speak to it or sometimes it's a song, you know.
Valerie -That's very true. I know that's why I like the question because it is a hard question. After all, as you said, during different seasons, different books can impact us change us, and enlighten something within us. And so I love finding out where people have been and it's, you know, books, at least for me tells me a lot about you as a person, what, yeah, just by what you've read. And so I thank you for sharing
those books with us. And that. What is it? I have people that come over to my house and look at my bookshelves and they're like, I don't, you have a lot of the same books I have. I'm like, yes, that tells me something about you. It's like, okay, we at least have the same bizarre brain. So that's why we're friends in the first place. Yes. Very cool. And what can we do?
Jared -Oh, and it helps us to relate to each other. It's great. I love it. You know, and I was going to say in recent times, there are a couple of others that are more adult sort of things that have changed my view of things. Some it's like the book, The Sovereign Individual, which I read recently changed my view of things. And then Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm is something that I think all of us should probably read. Then there's the one that well, you know it's kind of a cool book, but when you get too weighty, the one that in college that sort of gave me nightmares for weeks that I don't recommend to kids at all, but that every person should read before they're done with high school age, college age is Ordinary Men by Browning. And that's not a book to approach lightly, but it tells you what human beings are like at their core. It's like Reve showing you sinful nature through the worst lens you can imagine.
Valerie -Yep. No, I think it's probably a question we could talk about for a whole hour onto itself. But Jared, what can we expect next from you?
Jared -Oh sure, sure. Okay, well, Bright Star is the first in a series, I'm expecting probably four or five. A lot of how fast I can get those out depends on how many copies of Bright Star sell because the publisher says to me that they like to earn the right to put their sequels in a bookstore, which means they like to make it so that there are copies of the bookselling before they wanna publish another one. So, I'm hoping that at the same time, I can put out some related books, maybe with some other, you know, maybe other stories from the Bible that they sort of echo here or there or something. But I definitely have this super deep attachment to the Energematrix universe and the thought of abandoning it to even go somewhere else temporarily is tough for me. So definitely looking for more of what people can get if they go to my website and get on my email list. So if you like what we've been talking about, if you like the idea of Bright Star, whatever, there's a free short story anybody can get anywhere on the internet called The Keeper of the Mysteries. It's a prologue to the Bright Star book. It's in the days and hours before Bright Star enters the Aurora Galaxy, and that one is a great way to find out if you like my writing. So if people are interested, go grab that. And then if people join my email list, I've got this other short story that I'm, it's another character in the universe and introducing him and he is, he is a different story, man. He's interesting, but I really, 'm enjoying getting into that. So those are the things I've got. That's what I'm working on and hopefully more stuff in the E6 universe.
Valerie -Sounds neat. I'm excited about what you are doing in, you know, kind of Christian science fiction and to bring those core truths that we love and know from the Bible to audiences that may not typically pick up, you know, a biblical fiction or historical fiction book. So, I'm excited about what you're doing. Where can people find out about you and your books?
Jared -Okay, so if you're looking for Bright Star, you can buy it basically wherever you'd buy books. I highly recommend finding a small bookseller and buying it from them, because you want to support people who are local to you or who are smaller, and genuinely, we all need to be doing that. But you can find it at whatever bookseller you usually use. If you're interested in my stuff specifically, E6Universe.com is the website for the fiction. You can find me on X(twitter) and my more adult nonfiction stuff, which is a podcast right now is online at modernApocrypha.com. I've got a lot of very interesting stuff like there, but fair warning, it's, it's like all the truth that's outside the Overton window. So it's all the stuff that nobody's allowed to talk about in polite society. So be warned, the fair warning, but the fiction stuff is at E6Universe.com.
Valerie -Very cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jared, and I'm looking forward to your next adventure.
Jared -Thanks for the opportunity, I appreciate it.
Valerie -Thank you for joining Jared and me on this episode of the Bookworthy Podcast. Check out the show notes for any books or links that we discussed. And let us know in the comments if you prefer Star Trek or Star Wars. Remember, be kind. If you've been blessed by our time together on Bookworthy, be sure to leave a review to help others discover great books for their kids.
Happy reading!
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