Bleeding Ink

Authors have it rough. Fungibility seeks to infect you at every turn of phrase, every scrap of dialogue, every edit, red slash, and cut scene. To be common is to flicker as a pixel in cold television static. The effective writer is in a constant and thrashing dance of disruption. They flee from comfort, and often sensibility, in their quest to flip genre convention while simultaneously honoring it. It’s a barefoot dance on broken glass: one misstep and blood swamps the floor. When an author’s feet remain unharmed (save for a knick here and there) and arrive at the dance floor’s opposing end, it is like magic. Like the first time you witnessed a magnet swirl iron filament and alerted you to mysterious invisible forces that defy common sense and alter reality’s potential. Max Gladstone is kinda like that. It was my sheer, selfish pleasure to interview Max Gladstone in Episode 10 of Bleeding Ink. My intent was to bask in the glow of an author whose line-level polish would make proud any literary snob and w