Blazing Reader,

In the final essay of the anthology Reportage, entitled "Why I Write," independent journalist James Corbett shares how, at the age of seven, he resolved "to write a screenplay for a comedy/action television show (or was it a movie?) involving ninjas and talking cars."

By age thirteen, he had penned Animal Farm 2, an unauthorized sequel to George Orwell's classic on pigs and communism. 

Upon moving to Japan in his twenties, he began writing for an hour every day at a local café.

Despite such literary aspirations, two years later, James transitioned from budding novelist to world-renowned podcaster, giving birth to the long-running (nearly two decades!) Corbett Report. He explains the reason for this career-changing move:

“But why has my writing not taken the form of literary fiction, as the younger incarnation of myself was so convinced would be my career trajectory? Because, knowing what I know about the world as it is, I could not conceive of using my facility with language in any other way than in ringing the alarm bell as loudly as I can about the existential threat facing humanity.”

That said, I think the fiction-writing muse still haunts James.

Last week, he took a break from his witty and incisive investigative reporting to publish a short fictional story (with a video cleverly embedded in the text) titled "The Story of Freedom Day." Set a few generations in the future, it recounts how Chicago was nuked, the internet frozen, and the citizens of the world conscripted into a one-world government militia... except, well, someone decided not to comply...

You can read The Story of Freedom Day on The Corbett Report.

John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.