15 Minutes of Fame: Fantasy author muses on WoW themes
by Lisa Poisso 
Aug 18th 2009 at 6:00PM
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.The World of Warcraft is a season of life. You could approach it strictly as a video game - many do - but as soon as you push beyond the surface, you find yourself building relationships with fellow players, musing over storylines, sharing frustrations and triumphs in a way that punctuates time.
It's no stretch of the imagination, then (or is it, perhaps, entirely about stretching the imagination?) to consider the impact a game such as World of Warcraft might have on the fertile mind of a fantasy writer. So when we spied comments around the internet from Catherynne M. Valente (author of Palimpsest) pointing straight toward gaming, we suspected she'd had her hand in the WoW cookie jar – and we were right. While she's not currently playing WoW (having sworn off its siren call to devote her time to writing), she responded enthusiastically to our interest, producing an interview filled with gaming, WoW, fantasy, science fiction and the timeless themes that tie these worlds together.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Features, Lore, Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame
