My Lore
I write weird fiction, sword & sorcery, and dark fantasy; prose and
poetry.
I also design narrative puzzle games and ergodic fiction.
Who am I?
I’ve spent over a quarter of a century in my own presence and yet I still struggle to answer this simplest of questions. My hope for this website is that it may assist me in finding a satisfying response. As of now, this is what I’ve ascertained concerning my own self and being. People at home call me Zoli, and my home I call Europe.
In high school, I studied media and filmmaking, but I was left unsure whether or not to continue with it. I spent one semester in film school at a reasonably good college, but after much disappointment, I left and pivoted careers.
My other love, besides media, is the English language 🇬🇧, so naturally, I turned to language teaching as a viable path forward. Now I study English and history at a more distinguished, albeit much more demanding university.
More about me...
The main genre of music I listen to is heavy metal but I enjoy any rock-adjacent noise, anything from Alkaloid to Zappa. While very much outside this spectrum, I have to name Aurora as my favourite singer; I find her music simply delightful. I’ve filled a playlist full of my favourite tunes: Rush, Iron Maiden, King Diamond, Wisdom, Blind Guardian, Ningen Isu, Sum 41, Aurora, & Alkaloid. Listen here.
I don’t consider myself to be a huge gamer but I do enjoy some older titles such as Thief, Morrowind, Dark Souls, and World of Warcraft (vanilla). Atmosphere, mood, and immersion are what I like in games. Gildrom Qeeney was the name of my first role-play character; I kept the name as my nom de plume online.
As you might have guessed, I’m interested in literature and writing. What excites me about a text is what it’s doing with language, especially meaning and sound. How can the first be encoded in the second, and how may I decipher it? I know, “a poem is not a puzzle to be solved,” and yet this approach is so easily invited by so many texts.
As for what I like to read, I enjoy mysteries, horror, detective, and weird fiction. The best literary period has to be the early 20th century pulp era. For non-fiction, I often read cultural history, especially about the Renaissance and early modern periods. Too many are the authors I enjoy, still I’ve yet to find one I could call favourite.
Ruefully, I must confess: I don’t read half as much as I would like, and a century would be too short to read half the books I ought to. Still, I intend to get some pages read every day, and I attempt to follow some canon.
Why Do I Write?
To better my English. While I subscribe to Krashen’s input hypothesis, I do realise that simply relying on natural input available through everyday life and media can only get you so far. To go further, you must seek more strenuous, though rarely as compelling texts. Reading does work; however, I’ve found that writing reveals more about the language than reading alone could.
I also cannot deny that I find writing tremendously enjoyable. To me language is a game, writing is play, and my preeminent priority is ever my own entertainment.