What was your initial inspiration for Colony?
My initial inspiration probably came from… ants. A couple of years ago, my kitchen was invaded by thousands of tiny black ants. It felt like a nightmare—there were so many of them. Eventually, I had to buy pesticides, and I was amazed by how all of them disappeared at once. That’s when I realized that ants function more like a system than as individuals. This fascinated me, so I started researching fun facts about ants. I became particularly interested in how us humans categorize them into distinct roles within the colony—worker, drone, queen. That led me to wonder: what if a different species were to observe humans and categorize us in the same way? One idea that intrigued me was how, in such a system, individuals would complete one another—no one would have to do everything alone.
It made me reflect on how our society increasingly pushes the idea that everyone should be able to do everything. For instance, I’m terrible at decorating, but whenever I mention that, people completely RUSH to tell me that it’s not hard, that I can learn, that I shouldn’t give up. And I’m like … maybe someone can help me instead, and I can help them with something they think is hard or boring.
Each of the characters in Colony is so vivid. Which of them did you relate to the most? Which was the
hardest to write?
I know every writer says this, but I really did try to put a little bit of myself into each character, so I feel connected to all of them in different ways. That said, I probably relate the most to Jozséf. I learned a lot from writing him. He wants everyone to get along, but in doing so, he may actually just be delaying inevitable conflicts. Aagny, the killer, was the most fun to write. I love her so much.Sara was the hardest. She’s the leader, and I was interested in portraying someone truly charismatic. It took me a while to figure out how to write her. You can’t fully understand charismatic people—that’s part of what makes them compelling. With most of the other characters, the reader gets access to their thoughts and
feelings, but with Sara, after a certain point, we can only observe her.
Pop culture is full of cults, communes, and experiments in collective living right now. Why do you think
people are so drawn to these stories?
I can’t speak for others, but for me, it’s something I genuinely think about a lot. There are so many reasons why collective living makes sense—it’s more affordable, you have people around when you need help, and you can support each other. Most other species live collectively, so why don’t we?
While writing, I kept U2’s ‘With or Without You’ in the back of my mind because that’s exactly what it feels like — living and working with other people. You can’t live with or without them.
Has songwriting taught you anything about writing prose? Has writing prose influenced your songwriting?
Songwriting has taught me that you can almost always say something in fewer words. You can tell a whole life story in three verses and a chorus. Transitioning from writing ‘I love you’ in a song to filling several pages where love is shown was a challenge for me. I would love for it to show in my fiction work that I’m also a songwriter, I still try to write with as few adjectives as possible. Writing prose, on the other hand, has given me another creative outlet. Some of my lyrics used to be ridiculously long and complex, but now that I have fiction, I don’t have to cram everything I want to write about into my songs. Some of them get to be just a feeling now.
What do you most hope readers take away from Colony?
More than anything, I hope it’s a book that lingers in readers’ minds after they’ve finished it. I’d love for them to reflect on its themes, to discuss them with friends—questions like: What’s the best way to live? How should we raise our children? What are we doing to our forests? And;: whose rules are we really following? Why are we following them? Is it because we want to, or is it just because it’ s easy to continue the way it is?