Bronson O'Quinn
I am Bronson O'Quinn
I write cross-genre fiction with a humorous, often satirical, slant. I'm currently querying a bureaucratic fantasy novel inspired by an adulthood working retail and a lifetime playing video games.
Bio
I grew up watching TV and playing computer games while secretly wanting to publish a book or two.
I went to college for psychology because, ultimately, I wanted to write interesting, relatable characters (and learn to understand my own issues with depression and anxiety).
During this time, I worked as a grocery stocker, an all-night baker, and a retail clerk at the nation's largest pawn shop/video game store.
I got a Bachelors in English and Linguistics, started going to writing groups and attending open mic poetry and slam sessions. I wrote a personal writing blog for a year before a respected poetry press asked me to blog for them.
I learned to code, worked at a library, a college tutoring center, and a literary arts nonprofit. Now I'm writing fiction while making cool websites, like this one.
Polaroid photo by Dana Rogers
Writing
When people ask about my novel, I tell them, "It's like Clerks meets Catch-22, set in The World of Warcraft".
Or it's Perdido Street Station mixed with The Legend of Zelda, written by Grady Hendrix.
No, wait! It's probably closer to that bureaucratic chapter of Snow Crash, set in a fan-fic crossover of the Mushroom Kingdom and Tengen's Tetris, but ghost-written by Hatsune Miku .
TL;DR
My current work-in-progress is a Humorous Late-Capitalist Fantasy Epic, so you'll be able to shelve it beside your back-issues of Adbusters and Mad.
Other Writings
In general, I like pulling intense drama out of the mundane and exploring monotony in fantastical worlds.
I self-published a novella in 2012 because everyone was doing it. It's about an ex-Soviet garbage man who comes to America to learn about trash. I'm most proud of the cover I designed, which is rough but lots of fun.
Because I love experimenting with layout design, I've also produced a few neat little publications.
The Backlog is a video game zine in which I craft a focused essay around a single (often overlooked) video game. As an example, I examined how privilege helps the rich get richer in Wall Street Kid (NES, 1989). I explored the viral nature of influence in the Source mod The Hidden (PC, 2007). I even used my years of teaching narrative craft to explain why the indie browser game Don't Look Back (web, 2009) is one of the best-told video game stories of all time.
The Mausoleum of Gratuitous Fear is an homage to EC comics, such as Vault of Terror or Tales from the Crypt. It combines three narratives from the "crypt-dwellers", who are an astrologist, a philosopher, and a reviewer. The story is about one bad night at an Applebee's.
I've written articles for local and online publications. I've been an active member in Lexington, Kentucky's writing community since 2011.
I wrote for my personal writing blog from 2011-2013. From 2013-2015, I blogged for Accents Publishing, an awesome, award-winning poetry press founded by Katerina Stoykova.
While at Accents, I learned to code websites and helped create the Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge, a generative writing challenge held every year in June (and also my proudest accomplishment, outside of my family).
I used to post some essays to Medium.com, but after a narcissistic Tony Stark wannabe ruined Twitter and Medium.com, I rebooted my blog as Diary of a Maze Rat and occasionally rant over there.