Lifestyles of the 21st Century Writer

By Jason Boog 

If there’s a job a 21st Century writer can do, then chances are Alex Irvine has done it. He’s the author of the Vertigo Encyclopedia, worked as a journalist at the Portland Phoenix, joined the writing team that produced the ground-breaking alternate reality games, The Beast and I Love Bees, and maintains a blog.

As traditional writing jobs disappear during the recession, writers like Levine are assembling careers out of new kinds of writing–mixing online, print, and digital works. GalleyCat interviewed Levine about his work, churning out new ideas for publishers and writers. GalleyCat prowled the teeming, costumed crowd of true-believers at Comic Con this year, uncovering some vital intelligence about this flourishing corner of the publishing industry.

To see more video interviews with innovators, follow these links: a Quirk Books editor talked about zombies and Jane Austen; Eric Nylund discussed how to get video gamers to read books; comics legend Danny Fingeroth talked about graphic novel sales in the recession; Ron Fortier unveiled his pulp fiction revival; and Chris Metzen analyzed World of Warcraft publishing.