Born in Spain and raised in the United States, Robin Marx has lived in Japan since 2001. He works in the video game industry, handling localization and international licensing. In addition to over a dozen video games, his writing has appeared in a number of role-playing game supplements, New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Grimdark Magazine, and Old Moon Quarterly. He lives with his wife and their two daughters.
I've enjoyed writing for as long as I can remember, but keeping to a regular schedule has been difficult for me.
During my university years I was a member of an online Amateur Press Association for my favorite tabletop roleplaying game, and that occasionally led to some officially published work in supplements for that RPG. I also wrote several capsule reviews of music and books for the gothic subculture magazine Carpe Noctem. Unfortunately, the magazine ceased publication in 2000, before any of my work saw print.
Immediately after graduation in 2001, I emigrated to Japan, where I remain today. Getting established in a new country and job absorbed much of my time and mental bandwidth, and apart from extensive personal journals my creative writing ground to a halt. I took on occasional freelance Japanese-English translation projects and unsuccessfully attempted NaNoWriMo twice. Years passed, I changed careers, started a family, and my non-work-related writing continued to languish. “Write more” was an annually failed New Year's resolution.
In summer 2021 I joined a small Discord server dedicated to Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery. Rubbing virtual shoulders with both fans and creators of my favorite subgenre of fantasy literature was creatively invigorating. Being able to directly interact with many of my favorite indie authors, artists, and podcasters was inspiring, and it sparked in me a desire to participate more actively in the scene. I began sharing my Goodreads book reviews, and the reactions were encouraging.
In the year since I joined, the Whetstone Tavern had grown and become a hotbed of creativity. Writers, editors, artists, and podcasters cross-pollinated. Not only did enthusiasm blossom for Whetstone, the amateur zine the Discord had been created to support, new creative projects began to take root as well.
In mid-2022, I was contacted by a fellow member of the Discord, an author I had previously reviewed on Goodreads, asking “Have you ever had an interest in writing book reviews...for a magazine?” Similarly fired up by conversations on the Whetstone Discord, Oliver Brackenbury was preparing to launch issue #0 of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine. Excited by the opportunity to move from cheerleading the new mini renaissance in sword & sorcery from the sidelines to actually contributing to it in my own small way, I leapt at the chance.
The free pilot issue of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine was released in October 2022. Buoyed by the experience of my book review's publication, I decided to stick with it. I answered a call for reviewers from Grimdark Magazine, where the bulk of my output to date has appeared. I've also been published in subsequent issues of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Old Moon Quarterly, and occasionally elsewhere.
Two years have passed since I took up writing again, and I have more than 50 reviews under my belt and more on the way. While I'm most happy to have readers encounter my work through the magazines and blogs that publish me (support small presses!), I now have enough of a body of work distributed across various venues that it seems useful to create a central repository of my reviews. As publisher's exclusivity periods expire I will archive my reviews here.
Sword & Sorcery fiction in the tradition of Robert E. Howard's Conan, Michael Moorcock's Elric, and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is my primary interest, but readers can expect to find reviews of other varieties of fantasy, horror, and speculative fiction as well.
In terms of social media, you can follow me on Mastodon. This account is also bridged to Bluesky.
In addition to RSS, people with Mastodon or other Fediverse accounts can also follow this blog directly at @robinmarx@write.as.
There's a lot of exciting fiction out there, and much of it doesn't get the recognition it deserves. I hope I can help you discover your next favorite book!