John M3 Frame Weaves Passion, Myth, and Rebellion Into Unforgettable Stories
PHOTO: Author John M3 Frame, whose vivid imagination and poetic voice breathe new life into forgotten legends and inner truths.
A Literary Journey Through Emotion, Legend, And Personal Awakening
John M3 Frame’s world is full of romance—of emotion that not everyone understands, but everyone feels. Poet, storyteller, and seeker of truth, he invites readers into universes shaped by passion, mystery, and ancestral legend. In Mosaic Digest, we are proud to spotlight an author who doesn’t just write stories—he revives forgotten myths, transforms haunting folklore into literary elegance, and challenges cultural paradigms with raw authenticity.
His books—La Llorona, The Whistler, The Mohan, and the Dorado trilogy—are unafraid to delve into the primal layers of human experience: grief, sensuality, cultural disconnection, spiritual awakening. With every sentence, Frame disrupts the ordinary, gifting readers a narrative pulse that is both lyrical and visceral.
Frame’s writing is fearless, poetic, and deeply evocative—each story pulses with emotional depth, cultural resonance, and unforgettable imagery.
A fearless innovator in contemporary literature, Frame’s evolution as a writer mirrors his personal journey of shedding inherited beliefs and reclaiming inner freedom. His work is not only original and irreverent—it’s liberating. Through this intimate conversation with Mosaic Digest, we celebrate an artist whose voice is as compelling as the legends he reclaims.
Your early life was characterized by imagination and storytelling. How did your childhood experiences influence your unique writing style and thematic choices?
Perhaps in a fresh style —my childhood was lived in a free-flowing way, where every day was an adventure without limits. Alongside many neighborhood friends, sometimes up to 60 little wanderers, we’d gather to play and get into mischief. It was a time where many skills were forged: the ability to create, to invent our own tools, the skill to climb, to hide, to predict the opponents’ next moves, and to take advantage of certain positions.
Equally, there was that ability to explore fantasy when things weren’t so physical—playing with all kinds of toys, I could spend hours inventing lives for the simplest things.
From a very early age, I began to feel tingles of romance, curiosity about my own body, about the sensuality around me. I was especially drawn to those feminine traits in women—their scents, their softness. I always found something unusual and deeply attractive in them. They were the ones who, through their fragility, held power over the rest, placing us in a state of paralysis.
That same sensuality, I found even back then in poetic declamations. I would listen to those recordings for hours, completely entranced—feeling a whirlwind in my chest, that urgent need to exclaim, to repeat those lines with their sublime, almost erotic rhythm.
The ‘Dorado’ trilogy intertwines the lives of six individuals with a vanished culture. What inspired you to explore this narrative, and what message do you hope readers take away from it?
Wow! A profound legend, touched only on the surface… that’s what inspired me. These stories, passed down from generation to generation, deserve to be lifted by a voice that not only brings them back through time but also reclaims their dignity.
Over the years, The Dorado—a legend rooted in an Indigenous culture—was stained with the colors of other lives and fantasies, distorted to the point of losing any true place of origin, both physical and imaginative. As the first reader, I would want anyone who discovers it to approach it without filters, without embellishment; not just feeling what’s on the surface, but uncovering what lies behind the curtain.
As mentioned, six contemporary individuals—who don’t necessarily get along—each engage with the ancient world in their own unique way. They collide, raw and unfiltered, with every layer of that vanished culture: some are moved by its customs, others learn to adapt, and eventually they begin to merge at that point where no difference remains.
They experience it as something real—they touch it, breathe it in—translating the Indigenous language not in a literal sense, but through lived experience, through respect. As they gradually become one with that world, they begin to recognize a part of themselves that had long been buried—like a hidden treasure—and only in this way is it finally brought to the surface.
In ‘The Whistler,’ a simple whistle disrupts the lives of several characters. Can you share the inspiration behind this story and its underlying themes?
Speaking of whistles… when two friends use them to talk in someone’s presence, it’s complicit, even charismatic. That whisper and sound are the same when the two friends argue, and one whistles with disdain, while the other responds not with a smile, but with a mortal wound.
The whistle is carried off by the air. At the burial, someone does it solemnly. Tears stream down the faces of those dressed in black, and the only one in white—who moments later walks alone down the street—hears it, when two strangers communicate with that sound. One crosses the sidewalk, the other speeds up… quite intimidating. The pale face of the one in white is the panic of that sound.
That sound, the same one when one of those strange men passes through a wooded area… the sound of morning birds, that sound, how it gleams with the sun, becomes soothing and playful. That same sound I heard passing by at night, in the midst of the gloom, beside a giant tree. The ground wasn’t visible, nor the path. Suddenly, a whistle came from the treetop.
‘La Llorona’ delves into the psyche of a mother searching for her children. How did you approach writing about such intense emotional experiences, and what challenges did you face?
Whew, La Llorona… I had to dive deep into the heart of the story.
One of the biggest challenges was stripping away all the commercial frills that had been attached to it. That was my greatest task, because honestly, none of the existing material captured it—not even remotely. It failed to extract the essence of this beautiful legend. So, I approached it from the place of original maternal pain—something raw and heartbreaking.
I began to notice signs through in-depth research, to connect threads that slowly started weaving together with clarity inside the tormented mind of the protagonist. As I touched those emotional fibers, I aimed to keep them as natural as possible, preserving the narrative without resorting to clichés, while maintaining emotion, suspense, and coherence across the different perspectives.
I kept its unique nuances intact, and along the way, turned it around—surprising even myself with the twist. I brought this character back to life, reclaiming her for what she truly is: a symbol of authenticity. A legend.
Your works often blend elements of mystery, legend, and emotion. How do you balance these components to create stories that resonate with readers?
The legend—or rather, the core of the story—is what always leads the rhythm, like a beautiful song.
That tempo… like the set of verses in a love poem, soon slowed down or quickened by the timing of mystery. That shift in instrumentation: a stunning variation meant to be read aloud, to be recited with intensity—making the heart race, the pulse sweat…
And then, that rhyme, the melodic phrasing, the shifting of the accent into a more intricate rhythm. The refrain… and the climax of emotion.
Reflecting on your career, what do you consider your most significant achievement, and how has your writing evolved over time?
My most significant achievement isn’t something specific, but rather the sum of successes I’ve experienced from the very beginning. From my first work, The Mohan, I felt the satisfaction of having extracted the core of that story—and that drove me toward the next one: La Llorona. That one surprised me even more, generating a deep shift within me.
Then came The Whistler, El Dorado, the start of my short stories… a storm of puzzles that stirred me up and, at the same time, disassembled the pieces that were shaping me from within.
The Universe represented the challenge of understanding the full picture of a system: how to manipulate its agents, how to play with them, how to control each scene. It was a guiding thread that led me to discover the “glue” between lumps that once looked like well-fitted pieces in my perception. I had to remove them—to strip away many of the programs I had absorbed from my social and family environment. There were pieces that simply weren’t mine—like those tied to religion—and I had to cancel them entirely so that my puzzle could finally fit together perfectly.
It was a cleansing. I did it to myself and, through that, to my writing. Now it’s free, like the legends themselves: drawing from my unique core, making my narrative not only original, but also irreverent. Like The Pombero.
