In 2013, I woke up and said, "I want to write a book about Pokémon."

In 2017, I finally wrote it.

In 2019, thanks to the fine folks at @DelReyBooks, you'll all get to read it.

I'm pleased to announce my epic fantasy debut. Formerly: "Fullmetal Pokémist." Now:

STEEL CROW SAGA.

LARPing Our Way To Armageddon

The intense and present danger of fantasy

a thread

One of the interesting things about the scifi / fantasy writing community is that it contains many people who have much higher tolerance for fantasy than the norm.

People who can be around fantasy a lot, without losing track of reality.

Counter intuitive perhaps. But people who deal with fantasy at a professional level become expert at recognising its stench.

That's a useful skill in 2021, when the world, and particularly America, is being sucked into a vortex of unreality.

Because human beings do not, as a rule, have good tools for distinguishing fantasy from reality.

This isn't a bug of humankind, it's very much a feature.

Humans are what we are because of our ability to engage in the shared fantasy we call society / culture / civilisation.

Homo Sapiens are the species that LARPs

Which has always brought with it some structural issues

That just got waaaaaaaaaaay more serious

Someone asked me recently about breaking into the video game industry as a writer / narrative designer. There's so, so much good advice out there that I only tend to hit this topic on rare occasion. But it's been a while, so let's go!

(Why my answer is worth anything: I've been doing this for about fifteen years and I've hired a lot of writers and editors. Why my answer isn't worth anything: My view of the industry is fairly narrow and I haven't tried to break in for a while, so I'm arguably out of date.)

First: Write, write well, and write video games. Published non-games material is great, but at this point there's no reason not to put together a Twine game or similar to add to your portfolio. Show you're interested in the medium.

If you're applying to a job that requires a writing test (most companies serious about narrative will require one), do what the test says. Follow instructions. Show you can deliver what your client is asking for. Do it well.

If you're submitting other samples, make them diverse in style / tone / character voice--show range. If you want to be artsy and experimental, you can INCLUDE that but it shouldn't be the focus. I want to know someone can tell a straightforward story adeptly. Basics first!

I've been talking to @polygon's @TashaRobinson about my books for nearly two decades. She was one of the reviewers to dig into Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, my debut novel, all the way back in 2003 when she was at @theonion's @TheAVClub.

https://t.co/t55DCpCNAl

1/

She's always had smart things to say about my books (and is never shy about criticizing them) so I was delighted to talk with her about my latest, ATTACK SURFACE, for an interview: "Cory Doctorow on his drive to inspire positive

As the title suggests, the interview digs into the relationship between our narratives about the future and the future itself when it arrives - the delights and perils of dystopianism, a philosophy that I find seductive even as I reject it.

3/

Many conversations and books disabused me of dystopianism, but the turning points came from a pair of woman historians. First: Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built In Hell" - a gorgeous, brilliantly researched book about the true histories of

And second was @Ada_Palmer's legendary end-of-year event with her undergrad Renaissance history students at the University of Chicago:

Writing scales, talking doesn’t.

If you're not writing, you're not making use of the simplest forms of leverage.

Why is writing important within companies, and how to do it well?

(thread) 👇🏽

So here is a secret: Not everything I write goes anywhere. I have at least 4 books completely written and edited that never went on submission. I have books that stalled out at 20k. I have docs on my computer with opening paragraphs I don't remember writing. But! 1/

Every now and then an idea sticks with me like that corner of tortilla chip that just won't go down your throat. It happened with SPARROWHAWK, which began as 40k of a YA story, died, and was reborn as a comic, thanks to @christopher_j_r and @boomstudios. And now... 2/

It's happening with THE WILLOWS, a short story that you'll see in @UncannyMagazine next year. This Southern Gothic horror story began as an attempt to sell my next Romance to @AbZurdity after the Blud books in 2014 or so. And she didn't buy it. Guess why? 3/

Turns out, it wasn't a Romance! It was Southern Gothic Horror. Even the bones of it screamed strangeness, not sexiness. I loved the taste of the world, but I hadn't found the right story yet. Tried to write it 2 more times and failed. Until I finally understood what it was. 4/

So I took the 50 pages I'd written and cut half of them, twisting the story around from a gothy Romance inspired by the band the Civil Wars and turned it into a spooky descent into madness. And it looked back at me from the abyss as if to say, DUH. Sometimes... 5/