About Max

My name is Max Gabriele and I have a particular passion for helping visual storytellers express their worldbuilding through literary narrative. As a writer for a video game publisher and a freelance book editor, I have had the pleasure to work with many superb artists who have created truly unique worlds which are not only well-visualized but also mentally built out, sometimes to great degree. However, the truth is that while these amazing creatives are fantastic artists who have put thousands of hours into their craft, most have not honed their narrative skills to the same level. 

 

The more I worked with these artists, the more I saw clearly that, no matter how many images they included in their books, there was always, like the soil the images sprang from or maybe like a background fungal network connecting them all, a narrative dying to come out. But the idea to try to specifically brand myself as someone who could edit but also, preferably, contribute narrative content to these works came about in a funny way. For Christmas, I wrote a short story for my artist friend and mentor which took place in his imagined world. His reaction was effusive, and it expanded the world in his own mind, leading not only to more images but greater familiarity with his own characters.

 

He wasn’t the only one who got a thrill. Seeing his reaction, I was literally dying to do it again (okay not “literally” - I am not writing this from beyond the grave, but you get me!). After that I started offering additions or changes for the works I was editing more frequently, and actually contributed original content to some. This is the juice for me. It’s truly a joy to vacation in these original secondary worlds and bring out their narratives rather than simply add narrative to them. As a reader and appreciator of the images myself, it expands the world in interesting ways but it seems to also, without fail, end up being a generative experience for the artists as well, to see their own settings and characters reflected through a new medium.

 

So, this is me hanging out my shingle. If you need editing - proofreading, line edits, naturalization - I can do that quickly and effectively (please see some of the books I’ve worked on here) but if you also want to see your world - its characters, locations, and lore - brought to life through the magic of narrative storytelling, then you are in luck because (other than training horses) it’s my favorite thing to do in this life (change that closing and add a brief thing about my life - travel, phd, horses)

 

ABOUT ME:

I am an inveterate wanderer with a voracious appetite for learning, especially through direct experience. I was born in New York but lived most of my life in Arizona and I have lived in or sojourned in more than sixty countries (and counting!). During the Corona lockdown, I reached out to a well known content artist, which led to the freelance editing work I have been doing for four years now. For the past two years, I have lived in Tokyo, where I have two jobs teaching English and writing narrative content for a video game publisher. My first job was as a horseback riding instructor when I was eleven. Since then I have worked in the bar industry (as bartender, manager, and owner) but with stints as a branding agent, fashion writer, and travel writer. I traveled for the better part of five years, during which time I taught English, trained horses, and loaded ships on a dock in Istanbul. Returning to the states, I went back to school to study history, but ended up with a Master’s in Sustainability (studying agricultural and bibliotherapy) and then pursued a PhD in anthropology, which I very recently abandoned to focus on this project. In graduate school, I published articles on a range of topics, including video games. All of that is to say, I have lived a life with many chapters. But writing has been a throughline through all of them. While my published work has been academic, I’ve written far more narrative fiction, but it wasn’t until I did it in this collaborative space, working with artists, that I really felt compelled to turn it into more than a personal pastime. I’m grateful for the past experiences my unusual life has granted me, but now I’m eager to bring the unique perspective and appreciation for storytelling that experience has given me to the creative work I’m doing now.