Zoltan wanted to be a writer for as long as he could remember. Before he was ten, he was often writing short fictional stories just for fun. Even his undergrad degree at Columbia was chock-full of writing classes amidst a philosophy degree.
After getting a literary agent in 1999 but unsuccessfully landing a publisher for a debut novel, Zoltan decided to try to publish shorter works, both fiction and nonfiction. It took a few years, but with the credibility of his many articles for National Geographic (found in a different section of this website) where he was a jouranlist in my 20s, he began publishing regularly. Some of his first big hits were for Outside magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Before those pieces, his writing career started with very small publications. A big score was a nonfiction piece in Clamor magazine.
His first fictional piece was in Nuvein Magazine. Zoltan has written about 10 short stories.
Probably Zoltan’s earliest publishing event was a few poems that made it into the 1993 College of the Redwoods, Del Norte Literary Review (see below). Between poems & songs, Zoltan’s written approximately 50 pieces in his life.
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But the real jump, at least in terms of journalism, came from Zoltan’s first pieces for sailing magazines. In the end, he ended writing for just about all the major sail magazines, which during his 7-year sail trip provided much needed income.
Zoltan also started publisingh for local and state-wide newspapers, magazines, and some websites.
Around Zoltan’s late 20s, he landed a dream job and began working regularly for National Geographic’s website, penning dozens of articles for them internationally over 5 years. Occasionally, he still wrote for a few other places, which he considers part of his Early Writings before he was a futurist.
Zoltan’s first book contribution was to Pirates Aboard, shown below:
All these early writings would help prepare Zoltan for publishing his novel The Transhumanist Wager, whose success quickly landed him three columns in major media: Psychology Today (The Transhumanist Philosopher), Vice (Transhumanist Future), and The Huffington Post (now Huff Post). Through these columns, he’d pen over 100 articles in 18 months from 2014-2016, which accumumatively was seen by tens of millions. It felt like, as an aspiring writer, he was finally off to the races.
To check out more of his writing, go to the menu and click on National Geographic, Other books, the Jesus Singularity, The Transhumanist Wager, or Modern Journalism.
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