About Max
The man at the pen
I have always been fascinated by fantasy worlds, especially those that I could/would want to live in. Growing up in a boring German village, escaping to a fantasy world full of adventure seemed a worthy life goal. Frustrated by both writing style and world style of much of modern fantasy, Sphereworld is my project to write the kind of books I'd like to read.
My goal is to join the beauty and prose of classics (Proust, Goethe) with the wit and whimsy of modern fantasy (Pratchett) and classic (Sterne, Wodehouse, Swift); the breadth displaying the human condition (Dickens, Trollope, James, Austen), and the fantasy worlds I love coming back to (Inheritance Cycle, Harry Potter, Richard Schwartz's Götterkriege).
Having always questioned how and why things work, I'm now bringing this curiosity to my own writing, questioning the inner workings of my fantasy world until my pen commits acceptable answers to paper.
I read widely, with a lot of classics and non-fiction in the mix, the occasional fantasy or science fiction thrown in; always trying to "read all the really good books out there". I love having physical books around me; my current collection sits at 1400 volumes and counting.
Beyond writing, I enjoy building things—sometimes stories, sometimes software, sometimes businesses, always ideas that I hope will prove worth the effort. My flat is shared with two Russian Blues, Nox and Osiris, who take their editorial duties seriously and regularly inspect any open book or notebook. I try not to take myself quite as seriously, and have found that the best conversations, like the best stories, tend to begin with someone asking, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…?”
This site is where I think out loud about all of it. If any of it resonates, I'd be glad of your company.