I am Matthew Atkinson and I write stories that aim right for the face; sometimes it’s a punch, but sometimes it’s a caress. I’ve sneaked into the fiction world through the ventilation shaft since I grew up on millennial video games and my college creative writing program eventually considered me untouchably radioactive, although I did win the school fiction contest my first year as a writing major! I structure my writing time around my emotionally intense day job, which charges up my stories into hammer blows on matter how goofy, strange, or pulpy the premise.
My creative process is a steady march into the darkness. Every day I learn about trusting my creative instincts more and discarding commonly spread, insecurity-laden myths about writing, and a lot of my blog content concerns the mental battle of thriving as an independent fiction writer.
I publish whenever I can. New stories drop like lightning bolts with no warning but a funny taste in your mouth. I write fantasy, co(s)mic horror, and other stuff; genre is maybe not as useful for characterizing my work as sensibility: melancholy, obsession, transformation, humor, sweetness, rainbows in the dark.
My north star is the clutch of classic pulp authors who followed a hardcore policy of letting the flames of their imagination rage and not looking back. Stick around if that sounds appealing or if you are interested in figuring out how to do the same thing.