Updates 2022
My media critique essay, "Where Will You Place Us When We Are Dead?" has been nominated for an Ignyte Award for Best Creative Nonfiction!...
Who am I
Freelance Writer
Speculative fiction and nonfiction author
- "Little Bone Collector" in Flame Tree Press's Asian Ghost Stories
- "Bloodrunners" in Theatre Phantasmagoria, June 2022
- "This Choir of Ghosts" in Dark Matter, issue 009
- "The Alternity of Dead Universes" in Kaleidotrope Spring 2022 Reviews/recs: [1]
- Media critique essay, "Where Will You Place Us When We Are Dead?" in Strange Horizons
- "See With Your Eyes, Not With Your Hands" in Nightmare 105 Reviews/recs: [1] [2]
- "A Glut of Nothing, and Yet... Something" in Cossmass Infinities, issue 5
- "Unnamed" in Cast of Wonders 451 Reviews/recs: [1] [2]
- "The Absentee Library" in the Buckman Journal 005
- "Menobezoar" in Lamplight, volume 9, issue 2
- "heartsob playplayplay promisegift," published in Cossmass Infinities, issue 3 Reviews/recs: [1]
- Book review of C Pam Zhang's "How Much of These Hills Is Gold" in Strange Horizons
- "Adrift," sci-fi short story published in Flame Tree Press's Robots & Artificial Intelligence anthology
- Clarion West 2019 graduate
Li-hao, in the hold of a ship to Giu Gimsan, dreams of joining his brother as a bone collector: someone who finds and brings back to China the bones of dead miners and workers. However, the voices of the dead, drowned in the ocean, whisper to him in his sleep...
"The Pacific Mass just floats out there, a large, blood-brown-bluish mass the color of bruised skin..."
"Subject-412 has no real choice: fold space-time or asphyxiate and die, but where one lone voice may fail, perhaps a choir can free them."
"StrangeCharm is a sentient dead universe, their neural network made of a soup of quarks. And even they face a challenge on what it means to be alive."
In creating a fictional afterlife, creators can inadvertently erase or flatten the complicated issues of identity, ethnicity, and culture. Using American Gods, The Good Place, What Dreams May Come, and Soul as examples, we poke at how different fictional afterlives can enact this erasure through their own worldbuilding.
"When I was a boy, my left hand grew a cluster of tiny eyes..."
Jenny came to this southwest town to drink herself to death and get away from people, but an information singularity, the Glut, threatens to suck in the world, but worse, brings Tara into Jenny's life. Jenny can't tell which she's afraid of more.
Huìhuì Ga̅o has lost her name. No one remembers it, not her friends, not her teachers, not even her parents or cousin Katherine. The unnaming begins to unravel her, making her less, until it gets worse...
To Zari, Vellichor, the City of Books, is akin to heaven. To her sister, Nadia, Zari and Vellichor represents her discarded potential, her failures as the unaccomplished younger sibling. So when Nadia goes to Vellichor to find her missing sister, she learns that book-loving people are really really weird, especially when they start turning into books themselves!
Stephen receives an unusual offer, to help his brother Joe overcome all the things holding him back: his rage, his paranoia, his self-loathing. All it takes is for Stephan to eat the nails, wires, and metal shards of his brother's sins.
In a fae-scoured Earth, Caitlin plays several dangerous games with her fae counterpart, Aisling, in order to win her family back. But when stories and your own imagination can be turned against you, when even hope itself can lead you astray, what else is left?
In C. Pam Zhang's debut novel, Chinese-American siblings Lucy and Sam struggle to understand their place in America during the Gold Rush era, who they are in relation to each other, and who they are in relation to being a permanent Other.
With the Charon half-destroyed near Mars, the lone survivor, teenager Percy Winters, falls into despair. The ship's AI, Hayden, does everything he can to keep Percy alive, even if it means going against her wishes.
Assistant editor for Uncanny Magazine
Copy editor for Angry Hamster Publishing
- Afterlife: Wandering Souls quickstart
- Afterlife: Wandering Souls, surreal tabletop rpg
Copy editor for Magpie Games
- Supplement for the Masks rpg, Masks: Unbound
- Zombie World, card based tabletop rpg
- Fate Codex Anthology, volume 3
- Cartel core book
- Root Clearing Booklet
- Avatar Legends the rpg core book
Copy editor for Nahual rpg
- English version of Nahual
Contract Writer for Fantasy Flight
- Adventure writer for the Force & Destiny core book Star Wars rpg
- Content writer for Star Wars rpg supplement, Special Modifications
- Content writer for Star Wars rpg supplement, Endless Vigil
- Content writer for Star Wars rpg supplement, Fully Operational
- Content writer for Star Wars rpg supplement, Unlimited Power
- Content writer for Star Wars rpg Era supplement, Rise of the Separatists
- Content writer for Star Wars rpg Era supplement, Collapse of the Republic
- Content writer for Genesys rpg supplement, Shadow of the Beanstalk
- Content writer for Legend of Five Rings rpg supplement, Emerald Empires
- Content writer for Legend of Five Rings rpg supplement, Path of Waves
- Content writer for Legend of Five Rings rpg supplement, Celestial Realms
- Content writer for up and coming Legend of Five Rings rpg supplement
Copy editor for John Wick Presents' 7th Sea, Second Edition rpg
- Heroes & Villains
- Nations of Theah, Volume 1
- Nations of Theah, Volume 2
- Crescent Empire
- Lands of Gold and Fire
- Copy editor for up and coming rpg supplement (pub date TBD)
Writer for Cortex Prime
- Stretch Goal writer for Prime Spotlight Volume Three Cortex Kickstarter
Writer for Fate of the Remnants
- Content writer for the dark fantasy Fate RPG setting
- Monthly updates available on patreon
Writer for TableStar Games
- Content writer for the mobile tapper, Idle Outbreak
- Available on iTunes
Contract Writer for Wyrd Miniatures
- Primary writer, "Northern Aggression" adventure for Through the Breach rpg
- Writer for Through the Breach rpg supplement, A Night in Rottenburg
- Writer for untitled Through the Breach rpg supplement (pub date TBD)
Contract Writer for Watchtower Games' Fallen
- Wrote and designed some of the Story Cards
- Project fully funded on Kickstarter
Contract Writer for Rumpus' iPhone game Mo'Monsters
- Provided world-building and story background
- Provided sample NPCs and location descriptions
Contract Writer for Blue Shell Games' iPhone game "TinyTown"
- Provided NPC dialogue
- Provided quest descriptions
- Designed tutorial
Game Writer for EA Mobile/Centerscore Studios' mobile phone game titles
- Primary writer for Surviving High School '08
- Supplementary writer for Surviving High School '09
- Peer editor for Surviving Hollywood
- Supplementary writer and editor for Surviving High School for iPhone
Head Writer for Hazmat Games' mobile phone titles
- Level design and story design for Pegasus Lost
- Level design and story design for Pegasus Lost prequel
- Level design and story design for Zombie Noir, Chapter 1
- Level design and story design for Zombie Noir, Chapter 2
Miscellaneous work
- Rulebook editor for TableStar Games
- Wrote and designed "The Stink", a Dungeons & Dragons adventure in Dungeon magazine #105
- Wrote "The Spirit Speaker", a Dungeons & Dragons article in Dragon magazine #323
- Wrote "Dead Factions", a Dungeons & Dragons article in Dragon magazine #339
- Designed fan-playbook "The Radio" for the small press RPG Apocalypse World
Contact me
- mail: monte.lin.mail@gmail.com
- twitter: @Monte_Lin
