>> Hina Baloch: Good morning, everyone.
I'm Hina Baloch.
Welcome to this 
beautiful literary constellation in
Washington, D.C..
General Motors and 
Cadillac are  proud patrons to be here
at the National Book 
Festival.
While we call this stage 
the science fiction stage, in our
attempt as humans to 
categorize and simplify what I must,
what must remain 
complex, I've often wondered why
the world of so-called 
science fiction is so male dominated,
is so homogenous, is so 
fixated in one geography, one race, and one
virginal view of 
history, where as a result, the
narrative has also 
become simplistic, divided into good
and evil, where the evil 
is often aliens attacking the
planet Earth and the 
good is often a white male trying to
protect and be the 
savior of the victims, often women,
children and people of 
color.
That must need 
rescuing, of course.
So in an attempt to 
dismantle, decolonize and diversify
speculative fiction, 
General Motors has launched a program
called the Future 
Fiction Collective, where we want to
bring with the 
objective of wanting to bring stories
from the writers of 
tomorrow, writers of the future and
the writing of the future should
not be limited to one world
view, should not be 
limited to one race, should not be
limited to one 
geography, and it should be
diversified. And the 
stories of the future, the utopian
dystopian stories of 
the future, should not be told with a
single lens. As a 
forever follower and a believer of
Octavia Butler, I 
believe that change is coming.
And as she would say, 
change is the only constant.
Change is God.
As I have the stage here 
and I have the attention of all of you,
I would also like to 
draw your attention to the floods
that are happening in 
Pakistan right now, my country of
origin, where some 1100 
people have died and about 33 million
people have been 
displaced.
We're looking at a 
world where we'll be having a new
category of refugees 
called the climate refugees.
And I wonder, as I've 
read Ursula Le Guin in the past, in
the sixties, where she
predicted and where she called it
ecological imperialism on
how we got here, what got us to
a point where we 
stopped  caring about the planet Earth.
And I wonder if the 
science fiction and the clarification
of the future would be 
able to predict a better utopia for the
world. I would leave 
with some optimism from Ursula Le
Guin's science 
Fiction of the Sixties, and I would also leave
with 1.3 from an 
Iranian American poet called Kabir Akbar, and he says
Maharishi is Rabiya 
Dust Daddy Hashem, as does Daddy,
which means that we 
have lost whatever we could have lost.
And now it's time for us 
to act and imagine a new and different
future. I'm also very 
pleased to welcome our very honorable
speakers here, Victor 
Manibo and Rob Hart for a session
that's being 
moderated by Miwa Messer.
Thank you.
>> Miwa Messer: I have to tell you, this 
time is going to fly.
If you are not fully 
prepared for how fast this panel is
going to go. It tells me 
you may not have read The Paradox Hotel
in Sweden. And if that's 
the case, you're in for a treat.
If you have read the 
books, you're still in for a treat
because we are going 
spoiler free in this conversation.
I think we can agree.
>> Rob Hart: I'm going to try.
>> Miwa Messer:
There's too much good stuff.
There is way too much 
good stuff in both of these books.
But before we start, I 
want to ask you guys, you have been
friends for more than a 
minute and I want to start here because
I think it does inform a 
little bit of what we're going to talk
about today.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah. Yeah. I think the way 
we met was was pretty cool.
>> Victor Manibo: Yeah.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah. You know, Do you want 
to start that?
>> Victor Manibo: 2019.
I want to say yeah.
We were part of this 
mentorship program called Pitch Wars.
He was my mentor and I 
am his mentee.
And it was kind of 
like, you know, think of the voice
where you auditioned 
for various mentors and hopefully you
get picked and Rob 
picked me and my manuscript, The Sleepless.
The Sleepless.
>> Rob Hart: It was--it was so cool 
because it was the first year that I was
doing it. And it's 
essentially anyone can submit books
to this thing. And I think I 
got like 140 submissions and had to kind
of call through them and
Victors just immediately shot
to the top of the list, you
know, like, I don't think I
actually seriously 
considered too many other people
because it had everything 
that I wanted in a book which was like
this a big hook and some 
great ideas and a fantastic character
in really good voice. And I 
was like, Yes, this is the book I
want to work on. So I can say
with complete honesty, you know,
from that moment to now.
Like, I'm not surprised 
that we're now sitting here together
being able to do this for 
your debut.
>> Victor Manibo: Thank you. And, you 
know, there was no question in.
my mind I was going to 
apply to be Rob's mentee.
I had just read The 
Warehouse, which had just come out
then, and I was like, Wow, this is
exactly what I want to be doing.
I want to be doing sci 
fi that combines mystery as well and
also has a 
commentary on the world we live in, the
system we live in 
with the warehouse in particular, it's
about capitalism. 
And that was something that I also
wanted to explore 
and did explore in The Sleepless.
So it's like, Yeah, 
it's Rob and nobody else that I want to
mentor me and. And 
I'm so happy that you picked me.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah.
>> Miwa Messer: Okay well, I'm delighted 
that you picked each other, so and I'm
very happy to be here, 
but I do want to talk about world
building for a second, 
because obviously when you're
dealing with 
dystopian fiction or what do we want to
I mean, are you 
technically sci fi?
>> Victor Manibo: Uh, wow,  That's a 
question that I myself keep asking
myself because it is 
a little bit dystopian in that it does
occur in the future. 
The Sleepless is set in 2043 New York,
and it is a little 
bleak, but it's not apocalyptic, at
least. You know, 
there's still a lot of institutions that
are in place and most 
people are still living, you know,
somewhat, decent 
lives that--but it's difficult and it
does have a lot of 
dystopian elements, such as
you know.
the surveillance 
state  or income inequality and the
overreach of 
corporations, which are elements of a
lot of dystopian 
fiction, I guess you could call the sleep is a
sleep is a little bit 
dystopian. Some people have called it
cyberpunk or bio 
punk, and the fact that it has a mystery
also kind of makes it 
hard to categorize. But yeah, I think
it all kind of checks 
those boxes.
>> Miwa Messer: Okay Rob. Paradox 
Hotel.
Can we call this a 
 locked box?
Locked box mystery.
>> Rob Hart: I see. I don't know.
You know, here's the 
thing.
Like genre labels make my 
head hurt, and I feel like, honestly,
like. And I think they're 
more useful for, like, for you.
Who works at Barnes Noble 
and for booksellers.
but I think for authors
sometimes, like, yeah, I could
say to me in a lot of ways 
it's a romance, which was like my
first time writing 
something about two people like very
earnestly in love with 
each other. And so, yeah, I don't
know, I got nothing but--
but I see elements of that and people
have called it that. And I 
kind of like that idea of--I liked the
idea of playing within a 
very confined space, just sticking
everything in like one 
building and just kind of seeing what
kind of nonsense can 
happen.
>> Miwa Messer: So personally as a 
reader.
And an interviewer.
I don't love labels 
either, to be honest.
I want to be told a good 
story and I want characters that I can
attach to. And both of 
you have these cats.
The dinosaurs I was not
expecting.
We're going to get to 
the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs
>> Rob Hart: Yeah
We're going to get to 
the dinosaurs. Yeah, the dinosaurs
are spoiler, but we 
will get there.
But I want to talk about 
the characters because Jamie's voice
and January's voice.
Which one of you is 
going to start? Because I love these
characters. I love 
these characters.
I love their arcs and I 
love their stories.
And it's not about the 
labels.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah. You know, January 
was  such a fun character to write. Um,
And look, you know, 
there's certainly a little bit of, like,
my acerbicness in there.
But, yeah, it's, you know, 
I was talking to someone about
this recently. There's 
this weird sort of like--the--it's like
the divinity in the 
process because, like, I spend so
much time researching and 
planning and plotting and like, I drew a
map of the hotel with the 
rooms individually labeled like all
500 of them, like I go nuts 
on this kind of thing.
But I also was kind of like
struggling with like, who to tie
this to. And then just one 
day just had this image of like this
woman stepping off an 
elevator, wearing a boho hat.
And she was just very sad.
And I'm like, Oh, oh.
Her name is January and 
she's the main character.
And it's like, okay, cool.
That's how this works.
And she was such a fun 
vehicle to play with because I'm a big
fan of narrators that are 
sort of like a little unreliable and
also processing a lot of 
their own stuff and just trying to
bring them to a place of--
kind of empathy and kindness and not
not that she's a bad 
person, but she's dealing with a lot of
grief and she doesn't know 
how to process it.
And, you know, at the end of
the day, the book is about how
hard it is to face 
ourselves.
And it just felt like she 
was the best way to kind of portray
that.
>> Victor Manibo: And I feel like Jaime 
shares a lot of DNA with January in that
you know, Jaime is 
also processing a lot of trauma that
kind of informed the 
choices that he made in the book.
And that was really 
something that I keyed into before
anything else, 
because I wanted this character to be
able to tell and 
present the sleepless world with a bit
of ambivalence. He is 
sleepless, but at the same time, we find
him at a stage in his 
life where he kind of regrets the choices
that he made or 
regrets the fact that he's sleepless
and also can find. 
That I still like the fact that I'm sleepless
even though it's 
messing me up in serious ways.
And so, like I was 
saying, it's-- it kind of reminds me of
January as well. But 
then after that, after finding the
voice of like kind of 
ambivalence and also regrets, I
needed to flesh this 
character out more and find what kind of
like sexual 
identity and racial identity he has
and because this was 
my debut, this was the first book I had
ever finished and 
they keep telling you, write what you
know what I know is 
how to be a queer man and how to be a
Filipino. So Jaime 
is a Filipino bisexual man.
And I it was easy for 
me to kind of infuse the character of
Jaime with my own 
experiences.
I don't think that I 
would make the same choices that he
makes in the book, but 
he does share a lot of at least those traits
in me, especially 
the traits or the experiences of being
different. Jaime in 
this book is different because not
because he's queer 
or Filipino, which is a big part of his
story. But the main 
thing that he grapples with is his
being different 
because he's sleepless. And again, that
informs a lot of, of 
the trajectory of what he does.
>> Miwa Messer: So both of you have 
built these extraordinary worlds.
The Paradox Hotel did 
feel a little bit like the TWA Hotel at
at JFK.
>> Rob Hart: Just that's exactly that.
That was my my visual
inspiration.
>> Miwa Messer: If you have a chance, 
it's totally worth staying there if
you have an early 
morning flight.
>> Victor Manibo: Gorgeous place.
>> Miwa Messer: But it's trippy the way 
you have this landscape.
And I love hearing that 
you did all of this research to figure
out what's going on, 
because one of the things that I love
about both of your 
books is the way you set up time and your
character's 
relationships to time.
And you're 
particularly, Rob, playing three
dimensional chess, as 
far as I can tell, because you've got
time slipping, you've 
got characters moving through time in
ways that we have not 
figured out yet how to do.
So congratulations to 
you, but
>> Rob Hart: thank you.
>> Miwa Messer: Can we talk about time 
for a second?
Because memory plays a 
very similar role with time in the
way that these time 
slippages happen.
So you guys are both 
sitting in these worlds where you've
got to know what's 
happening because ultimately this is
all up to you, but you 
can't leave your characters hanging.
So let's talk about 
world building for a second.
Let's talk about how we 
do this.
How you do this.
>> Rob Hart: Well, I will say that, like
writing time travel was a little
bit like eating White 
Castle and that I was like, This is a
great idea. And then like a
little bit later, I'm like,
Nope, I made a mistake.
Why did I do this to myself?
[laughing]
Because when you get into 
the minutia of it, you're like, Oh,
no, like none, none of this
makes sense anymore.
And I also set myself this
challenge of like, I'm going to
write a time travel novel 
in which nobody gets into a machine
and travels to a different
point in time.
Like really all the time 
stuff is is neurological condition.
So I was already kind of 
like building myself these these
you know,  impediments 
right at the beginning.
But I actually found that
helped more than it hurt because
the more sort of rules you
impose helps you streamline it
and then also helps you 
build some drama when you start
breaking those rules.
>> Miwa Messer: Okay
>> Victor Manibo: And with the 
Sleepless, I really had to be
meticulous about 
timing because it is a murder mystery
where you have to 
track every little thing that goes on.
And because it was 
told from a point of view of a character
who doesn't sleep, I had to pretty
much account for every single
moment. And if people 
have watched the TV show 24, it's
kind of like that, 
>> Miwa Messer:  right?
I had to account for 
what is happening and where
everybody is not just 
the main character, but also all the
other characters 
around him, which was kind of a tricky
balancing act. But 
at the same time, I also had to think
about Jamie's 
perception of time because he
has trauma and 
grief that he was
dealing with. And 
that kind of like influences whether
or not he's bored. 
And when he's bored, it feels like time
is just like taking.
Everything is 
taking forever.
And sometimes he 
just needs to meditate and shut his
brain down because. 
He's been like he's a journalist who
has to deal these 
different things.
He has to deal with a 
murder investigation, his job.
And so sometimes his 
perception of time is just so muddy and
clouded. So I think 
it was really important for me to give
the readers a sense 
of, well, this is this is what it's like
for a person who's 
always on time.
Doesn't feel like 
time in the sense that, oh, it just
passes in the same 
way. So, yeah.
>> Miwa Messer: The thing, too, that I 
loved about what both of you did with
Time in the books, too, 
is that time is the first thing that
gets really messy when 
you're grieving.
It is the first thing 
that goes.
You don't know what end 
is up.
You don't know where 
your, that is.
The first thing that 
goes.
And the minute I 
realized you were using time to play
with grief, you really had my
attention. And obviously this
happens very early in 
both of your books.
But how did each of 
these books start for you?
I mean, did it start 
with time?
Did it start with the 
voice?
Did it start with just 
an idea?
>> Victor Manibo: It started with me 
being really tired on a train ride from
New Jersey to New 
York. [laughing]
I was on a trip.
I had, I was
coming back home after
spending the weekend with my
family and I had a 
pile of stuff to get done and I thought,
I wish I didn't have 
to sleep.
And from what? From 
that what if.
Question I had other 
follow up questions.
>> Mire Messer: Right?
>> Victor Manibo: Well, what if I.
You know, what if I 
didn't have to sleep?
What would my body be 
like?
What would my mind be 
like?
And then I asked, 
Well, what if the rest of the world
didn’t require 
sleep?
What would the world 
look like?
So that's really 
where it started.
Just me being tired 
and having a really long to do list and
then asking follow 
up questions. And then
when I had enough
questions of like, what if, what if,
what if I realized, 
well, this could be a book, Let me try
and explore these 
questions in a book.
And that's how it started out.
>> Miwa Messer: So when does Jamie show 
up for you then, in that process?
>> Victor Manibo: Oh well, Jamie 
showed up because I was thinking
I need to tell this 
story about the sleepless world from
a certain point of 
view, and I needed that person to have
to be in it. He had to 
be sleepless, but I wanted him to have
some sort of nuance 
as to how he feels about it.
The rest of the world
or at least a lot of the characters
you can pretty much 
place them on Either they really like the
fact that they're 
sleepless or they really dislike it.
Um, Jamie is kind of 
in the middle because of a lot of his
experiences. He 
sees  the good side, but now, at least at
the point in the story where he is,
he sees, you know what, this is
really bad and when 
because he is a journalist, I'm also able
to look at it from a 
macro level, not just an individual
experience of the 
sleepless, but a journalist looking at
it from, well, what 
does capitalism look like when
everyone is 
sleepless or a big part of the
population is 
sleepless? What do governments look
like? How do they 
regulate or how do they deal with this
new class of people? 
So that's that's why I landed on oh, he
has to be sleepless 
person who is kind of iffy on it, but he
also has to have a job 
that allows him to take a bird's eye
view of it to pursue 
the questions in the book, the the
mystery in the book.
>> Miwa Messer: Okay. But we could 
argue you were writing a pandemic
novel before we were in.
>> Victor Manibo: Yeah.
>> Miwa Messer: Emily Saint John 
Mandel, you may know, had sort of done
this as well.
>> Victor Manibo: right? Yeah.
That was tough.
That was tough.
>> Miwa Messer: I can imagine.
>> Victor Manibo: Yeah.
>> Miwa Messer: Can we talk about that 
for a second?
>> Victor Manibo: Sure. Rob and I were 
working on the Sleepless shortly
before the pandemic 
and this mentorship program that I was
talking about. It 
ends with an Asian showcase where I had
to present my 
manuscript to industry professionals
and that was 
happening during the beginning of the
pandemic. And the pitch is part of the
population is sleepless due to a
pandemic. And when you see that
in a pitch during an actual
pandemic, but some 
people would be turned off and a lot of
people were. But, 
you know, once for those who've read
it, you know that it 
occurs ten years into a pandemic.
It doesn't really 
deal with how the outbreak happens or
the initial 
reaction. It's more like how do these
people deal with 
the new normal in their world?
So at least it was 
pandemic adjacent.
It's not it's not really about the 
pandemic.
And it made it a 
little more palatable to some industry
professionals. And 
luckily, I got some champions who
really believed in 
the book, even though it was literally
about a pandemic.
>> Miwa Messer: So, Rob, Warehouse came 
out in August of 19.
>> Rob Hart: Yes.
>> Miwa Messer: And before that, you 
had been writing a single character
mystery series.
>> Rob Hart: Yes.
>> Miwa Messer: Okay and now we're at 
the Paradox Hotel, and we've got
January and the 
dinosaurs.
I really liked the 
dinosaurs, by the way.
>> Rob Hart: So every time I write a book
I come up with something that I
feel like my editor or my 
agent is going to make me take out.
And when I was pitching 
Paradox to my agent, I'm like, It's
going to be a time travel 
story and it's going to be about
grief, but there's also 
going to be robots and dinosaurs.
>> Miwa Messer: Right.
>> Rob Hart: And he was like, Why are you
doing this to me?
And I was like, Trust me, [laughing]
I'm going to make the dinosaurs
work. And it was so 
satisfying when I sent him the book and
he read it and was like, All
right, you pulled it off the dinosaurs.
>> Miwa Messer: the dinosaurs
are really, really real.
>> Victor Manibo: Yeah, I call them
Chekhov's Velociraptors.
>> Miwa Messer: Yes. And you are 
correct to do that because one of the
things I do like about 
the dinosaurs too, and what you do with
them is this whole idea of you can
travel in time and you can look,
but man, you should not 
touch, you should absolutely not touch.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah.
>> Miwa Messer: absolutely not 
Touch.
And it’s a really great 
I mean, this is a primary thing for
Most people when it 
comes to time travel, right?
Like the butterfly 
effect, all of this kind of thing where
it’s like, oh, don't 
don't, don't change the things in the
past because very, 
very bad things will happen as a
consequence and I like 
the idea that you've got this very
sly humor coming in in 
the form of dinosaurs, but it makes it
really clear you 
should not be touching.
And again, it brings us 
back to time now.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah.
>> Miwa Messer: And how you manipulate 
time. So can
we talk about the world
of the Paradox Hotel?
>> Rob Hart: Yeah. You know, I mean, 
for me, I got the idea.
Have you ever done Sleep No
more?
>> Miwa Messer: Yes.
Does anyone know what 
Sleep No more is?  Okay a few people.
It's It's an interactive
theatre experience in New York
where it's like a it's a 
it's Macbeth, essentially.
But like, you're in this 
big warehouse space and you can
follow the actors around, 
and all the audience members are
wearing masks. It's a 
little weird, but it starts off in a
hotel and then moves into 
all these different spaces where,
like all of a sudden you're 
in a psych ward, all of a sudden
you're in a cemetery. And
I was doing that and I got
this idea like Time Travel
hotel. It just popped in my
head while I was doing that.
And I went home and I like, I
wrote it down and I'm like,
There there's a day's 
work. [lauhging]
Um...
And then it was just kind of
and it was one of those things
where I come up with ideas 
all the time and they kind of sit
there and will they 
develop into something?
But I just kept on
interrogating that and I was
like, okay, like if we develop time 
travel, what would happen?
It was like, Well, it would
probably be a scientific pursuit
>> Miwa Messer: Mmm Hmm
>> Rob Hart: and I'm sure eventually it
would be privatized because look
at what's happening with 
space travel right now, where it was
like it used to be NASA and
now all these rich guys are
getting in on the game and
they're trying to figure out
ways to monetize it. And 
I'm looking into it and there's
actually a ton of ways to
monetize space travel.
Like the average meteorite 
that approaches Earth has like
trillions of dollars in
platinum in it.
Like there are so many ways 
to make money off space.
So of course that's what
they're doing.
And then I was like, Well, 
if we invented time travel, of
course a bunch of rich 
people would want to take it.
But then of course they 
would want to like use it to their own
advantage. And like that 
just turned into like this boulder,
like rolling down a hill.
And then I just started 
getting all these other crazy ideas that
kind of like, Okay, and 
this is going to be set at a hotel where
before you go and take your
like, super fancy pants
expensive tourism trip 
to like the first showing of Hamlet, you
have to stay at the hotel.
And then once I had that 
hotel, it was like, Yep, done.
This is this is a book now.
>> Miwa Messer: And both January and 
Jamie are.
I don't want to say 
amateur detectives because, I mean,
January is part of the 
whole travel of the time authority.
And Jamie is a 
journalist. So it’s not to
diminish his sort of 
9 to 5, as it were, but you do put your
characters in positions 
where they are able to shall say
snoop around and 
figure out what's going on.
But they also can't 
trust their memories. Neither
of them can trust their
memories, which is a device I
happen to like as a 
reader.
>> Victor Manibo: Um...
But as a writer, how do 
you keep track of the lies they're
telling themselves?
>> Rob Hart: Carefully?
>> Miwa Messer: Yeah.
>> Victor Manibo: I kind of don't keep
up.
It kind of adds to the
ambiguity of it. And like when
somebody tells me, 
Oh, I read this and like, you know,
this is a little bit
inconsistent, but I like it
because it kind of 
informs me about Jamie's mental state.
And I'm like, Yeah, 
that's completely intentional.
I meant to do that. [laughing]
But You Know
memory is just
so fun to play around with on
the base level of 
this is a first person point of view
character. And I 
want to be able to show kind of an
unreliable narrator 
because that's that's always been
exciting to me to 
read, especially in terms of like a
mystery story where 
you can't really trust the the person
who is telling this 
story. So So memory
is automatically
like, okay, well, we'll mess
around with that.
But at the same time,
memory is something 
that Filipinos have
kind of a slippery 
relationship with.And you know,
because I'm
Filipino and I can't help but
infuse my stories 
with my culture. I wanted to
discuss, you know,
the basics. You Know, good food,
Filipino food is in
the book, but also the psychology
of Filipinos and
their like relationship with memory
and how as a people
we've been told that like, oh, we are
a very forgetful 
lot. We We are told that we’re
resilient because 
we keep weathering all these
disasters and all 
these dictators. And for me it’s like
well, that's the 
function of us just forgetting
the lessons of the
past. And this is
something that
Jamie learns to, you know, he
has this memory 
problem because he because of his
grief, but also
because of kind of his resistance
to or inability to 
learn from what had happened before.
>> Miwa Messer: Okay, Rob. I know
How do we do this
without, okay, robots? Dinosaurs?
But the humanity of
your characters really sits at
the forefront of 
Paradox Hotel.
When you're sitting 
down and  you've got January and
it’s so obvious. I mean 
that moment where you're talking the hat
But you have to surround 
her with bad guys and you have to
keep the bad guys from 
looking like their cartoon characters.
>> Rob Hart:  It's you know, I always go 
back to this idea that every every
villain is the hero of 
their own story. You know.
I mean, and those are the 
best villains. They're the ones who
like they're like, no, I'm
right.
And no one else 
understands that I'm right.
And that's why it's it's so
compelling to kind of play with
these characters that
that just have so much power and so much
influence and kind of get 
away with anything. And it’s
you know, when I was
writing the Warehouse, which is
basically about like if 
Amazon took over like the entire world
and you had to like, live 
there in addition to working there.
And I had two characters 
who I knew were were sort of like
going to be the mains and 
going to be stuck in like one of
these, like the gears in 
this in this warehouse machine.
And the book didn't really 
come together until I brought in the
owner of the company as a
character. And, you know, I was
inspired to write him 
after reading Sam Walton's
autobiography, Who Sam 
Walton who the the founder of Walmart
was an interesting guy 
because he, you know, his his
>> Rob Hart: autobiography, it's like 
very like my employers are my family.
And we worked real hard and 
we got the job done. And it’s like
yeah, but you're also the 
guy that when the Federal Minimum
Wage Act was
passed, split all your Walmarts
into different entities 
so that you didn't have to pay the
minimum wage, which is not a
great way to treat your family.
And yeah, it's just just 
the  way that these these guys like,
build themselves as 
legends and into heroes.
And it's like you actually
destroyed a lot of people on the
way to the top. And yeah, 
that is always a space I want to
write in, which is why rich
people are terrible.
>> Miwa Messer: [laughing] So in other words, 
you're just both writing about the
world we live in, in the 
exact moment.
You're just playing 
with some of the details.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah, Yeah, 
>> Victor Manibo: absolutely. And it’s a lot of fun.
>> Miwa Messer: But also I want to play
with the laws of physics. I do want to
talk about writing for
a second, and I set aside it
to for you guys to talk 
about how you met in your
relationship. But I do 
want to go back to the actual craft for
a second because 
there's a lot of thought that goes in to
the kinds of books that you write.
You can't just sit down 
and sort of pounded the keyboard as
much as you tried to 
sort of make it sound like you did it.
There's no way you can't 
when you're building worlds.
Right? But Victor, 
when you and I were talking before, we
were setting up our 
sort of conversation for the day, you
mentioned George 
Saunders at Swim in a Pond in the Rain,
which is if you haven't 
read it, thank you very much about
Russian writers in 
short stories. And this has been
a really big influence 
on you. I want to talk about this
book for a second 
because it's a really fun read.
>> Victor Manibo: It really is. And, you 
know, George Saunders, just as a
writer, is is one of 
my idols.
He writes really 
well, really crisply. And he also
plays in that space
of, like speculative fiction and
literary fiction, 
which I really love. But
swimming the Pond of 
the Rain is is his latest craft book, where
he basically
dissects a few Russians short
stories from the 
1800s. And, you know,
that kind of might 
sound boring to some folks, but it
was really
interesting because it showed
you or he showed you 
how you can be really efficient with
words and how you can 
convey so many things in like 2000 - 1500
words. And that's 
something that I think every writer
can benefit from, 
whether you're writing short stories
or even novels with 
novels, you I kind of think that you have a lot more
runway to just go on 
and then like world building and like do
character interiority.
But at the same time, you have
you got to have
to grasp the reader's attention.
And you do that by 
having really crisp, efficient words
that convey a lot of 
meaning about the world and the
character and the 
plot, all like firing on all cylinders at
the same time. And 
George Saunders going through these
Russian masters, 
you know, we're talking about Gogol
and Tolstoy telling 
morality tales from a different era in
so few words and 
telling it so beautifully. Just taught
me a lot about how I 
should be writing my my sentences
and structuring my
stories.
>> Miwa Messer: Rob You've worked as a
publisher, you've worked as a political
consultant, you have
worked as a journalist. I mean, so
you're  obviously 
pulling from lots of different
parts of your life when 
you're working as a writer, but you've
also taught writing.
What have you learned 
from your students?
>> Rob Hart: You know, I think at the end 
of the day, I always I still consider
myself a student in a
lot of ways, like I hope to be a
student until the day I die
because, like, I want to keep
learning and keep 
growing. And one of the best
things I get out of 
teaching people is that makes me
have to sit down and 
actually interrogate my process and
explain it, because so 
much of the stuff is just like, you
know, it's a gear that runs 
in your head that you don’t really think
about it. It's like your 
heartbeat. It’s like it’s there. But
you don't consider your 
heartbeat during the course of a day.
But then when I have to sit
down and say, okay, like, this is why I
do this, because then it 
results in this and then it leads to this
It's like, Oh, cool. Like 
I’m sort  of revisiting my own
process and I'm
understanding it a little better.
And then every student, I
think, brings a sort of unique
sensibility and the sense 
that they'll look at the world in a
way that's different from 
the way that I do. So I’m always
interested in what other 
people have to say or how other
people view things
because it's just going to inform
my own viewpoint and help 
me grow.
>> Miwa Messer: I have to say, I had a lot 
of fun with all of the different points of
view you had in Paradox 
Hotel and a lot of it. You like to zig when
I thought you were 
going to zag. And I really appreciate
that because I don't I 
don't like to be able to predict where
a story is going to go.
And Paradox Hotel is certainly
nothing I'd ever 
really experienced before.
>> Rob Hart: Thank you.
>> Miwa Messer: And that was really.
Yeah. okay.
Did I mention the 
dinosaurs? [laughing] I did. But again, listen,
we're talking  about 
really big ideas here, though. You’re
talking about trauma.
You’re talking about grief. You’re
talking about 
capitalism. You're talking about
corporations maybe 
having a little more wiggle room than
we might like. But why 
can't we have fun when we're talking
about all of this 
stuff? I mean, if we're if we're always
asking people to eat 
their cultural vegetables, they're not
necessarily going to 
follow us down the rabbit hole, right?
>> Rob Hart: Yes. No, I believe that very
strongly. And I really think of what I do
is when I'm like when I'm 
making my daughter dinner and she
wants mac and cheese, but 
she doesn’t want broccoli it’s like, okay,
the broccoli is going in 
the mac and cheese. You’re going to
get your vitamins, but 
you're also going to get a palatable
meal that's fun to eat. And
and that’s the thing. It’s like when I when
It's like I like when I when 
I wrote the Warehouse, I wanted to
write like a book about why
Amazon was terrible. And given my
background in journalism, 
I probably could have written a pretty
cool nonfiction book 
about it. But who would want to
read it? You know, not to [laughing]
say that there’s no value in nonfiction.
There's a ton of value in
nonfiction. But the thing about fiction
is that it's an empathy
machine.
>> Miwa Messer: Right.
>> Rob hart: You know, it's the way that 
we can sort of like put ourselves
in other people's shoes 
and really sort of feel and understand
something. And that’s so
much more appealing to me because
it’s just it's going to it's going
to connect with people so much.
And the amount of people 
who reached out to me after they
said the warehouse after 
they read the warehouse and they were
like, I've completely 
rethought my my relationship with
with buying goods.
Now I’m like, Awesome.
That's all I wanted to do.
>> Miwa Messer: But you also wanted to 
tell the story, right?
>> Rob Hart: Exactly. Exactly.
I wanted to have fun.
You know, like I 
the first book that I ever just
completely knocked my
socks off was Fahrenheit 451, which
was a it's a great little
thriller, but it's also about media
consumption. And I
remember reading that in high
school and being like, I 
didn't know books could do this.
>> Miwa Messer: Right? Right. What was
the book that knocked your socks off?
>> Victor Manibo: Oh, wow. There's a 
lot. Well, short stories were really like
my first love. And I
loved Sherlock Holmes growing up
And going back to 
your earlier question about having fun,
you know, with the 
Sleepless, I wanted to explore themes
of our hustle 
culture and, you know, the
glorification of 
the grind and all that. But I had to have
a mystery in there 
because it's fun for me, and it's also fun
for the reader. Like
I can’t preach about capitalism
without, you know,
opening the scene with a dead body
that you kind of have 
to solve, Oh, what happened to
this person? And 
and so, yeah, that goes back to my
roots or like my
First love. So which are these
detective stories 
that just drew me in and
transported me to a
world that I really knew nothing about.
I was reading those
stories as a young boy in Manila, the
Philippines, and
like, you know, turn of the century
or 1900s, England is
like a whole different world for me.
And I was just, wow, 
this is this is really cool. I was probably
reading them at
Too Young of an Age, but I was
immediately hooked.
>> Miwa Messer: So besides 
Fahrenheit 451, what are some
of the touchstones 
for you?
>> Rob Hart: I would say probably the 
biggest influence on me was Tom
Span Bower.
>> Miwa Messer: Oh, I love him.
>> Rob Hart: Right.
>> Miwa Messer: The boy who fell in love 
with the Moon.
>> Rob Hart: Yes.
>> Miwa Messer: Oh, wow.
>> Rob Hart: I believe in the City of Shy 
Hunters is the best New York novel
ever and I'm a snob when it 
comes to New York novels. I was born
and raised there. So we're 
going to hook up about this. Yes.
>> Miwa Messer: I'll do that.
Yeah. No. Tom Span Bower 
was a huge influence on me.
I actually got to take a
workshop with him.
>> Miwa Messer: Oh, wow.
>> Rob Hart: And he was an amazing 
teacher. You know, I feel so lucky to
have had that experience.
You know, Chuck Palahniuk was
another writer who I've 
since become friendly with, and he’s
a great guy and I love his
stuff. And Amy Hempel, who is a
fantastic short story 
writer. And then, yeah, a lot of the
sort of greats of like 
crime and mystery, because I
worked in crime and 
mystery for a little while. I ran a
small publishing
company that put out mostly
ebooks. It was like old 
books that it just didn't make sense
to put them in print, but we
could put them out as ebooks. And so, I
mean, I got into some deep 
places there with authors like Charles
Williams and Charlotte 
Armstrong and just this this great
list of people who I'd 
never heard of before. And as I’m
reading them, I'm like, 
There is so much to learn here.
>> Miwa Messer: Victor, Who have you 
been reading lately?
>> Victor Manibo: Ohh, I've been 
reading a lot of graphic novels lately
because I'm in promo
mode and I need something pretty, but
also has really good 
stories. But lately I’ve also read Young
Mungo by Douglas 
Stewart
>> Miwa Messer: Which Is a
brilliant book. I love this book.
>> Victor Manibo: It's not speculative 
at all, but it takes place in 1980s
Glasgow during a
 time of  economic depression.
And it's centered on 
it's a coming of age story about a gay
boy and the 
religious strife and economic strife.
During that time it 
was just like so beautiful and moving.
And again 
transportive which I crave in in books.
So yeah, I think 
lately that was one of the highlights.
>> Miwa Messer: I still want to know if 
manga is okay.
>> Victor Manibo: I think so. I think so.
>> Miwa Messer: After I finished 
reading, that was my first. Is this
kid okay? I realize I'm
talking about a fictional character who
does not exist, but 
that's how great the editing is.
And what I love 
talking to both of you is that you pull
from so many different 
places that it is ultimately about the
story. Oh, Yeah.
>> Victor Manibo: Absolutely.
>> Miwa Messer: That's really 
important. The language that you use
and your characters 
are fantastic, all of that. But
ultimately it always 
comes back to story and what you can
do with story. And I 
think that's really, really important
for readers to 
understand. And I’m just hoping
too, that we're going 
to get some really great questions
from the audience. So
if you do have questions because I have
many, many more,
but I’m really curious to see what
you have to say. We
have microphones set up in both
aisles if you'd like to
just line up and ask your question
Rob and Victor would be 
really happy to take them and I'm really
happy to eavesdrop.
>> Member of Audience: Hi, I I have two 
questions. One very specific question
for Victor and
then one more general question. The
first 
question is is when I hear a science
fiction 
concept and dealing with
sleeplessness, I wonder is Nancy Kress
beggars in 
Spain something lurking in the
background? 
And the other is a question about the
mentor mentee 
thing. I'm not in a formal situation, but I
managed to 
have talked myself into a situation
where someone 
at a very high level has offered to look at
my stuff, like 
how clean do I want to get it? How many
>> Member of Audience: levels do I
want to run this through before
I take 
advantage of that? Any suggestion you
can give me on 
how I want to work that situation. Thanks
>> Victor Manibo: Absolutely. Thanks
for that question. Nancy Kress
Beggars in Spain 
came out, I believe, in 1993.
It won the Hugo 
Award for Best Novel. It’s a
masterwork of science
fiction that I did not read until I finished
The Sleepless, which 
was kind of a shocking moment for me
because I was like, 
as a debut author, I'm like, oh, wow,
Somebody already
wrote this story that I just wrote. Like,
How? How do I deal
with this? And, you know, with mentors
like Rob and other 
people who have told me,
Tell every story is 
going to be different. You’re going
to have the same
premise and you will tell it a
different way just 
because you as a writer have a
different point of 
view. You know, the world where
people don't sleep 
is a thing that has been explored by
other writers as 
well. So I am aware of of Beggars in
Spain. I still have 
not read it.
I just don't want to 
be influenced by it in any way.
But I hear it's great.
And as for your second question,
it's the the formal
structure of a mentor mentee that
Rob and I had is 
an anomaly. Most of the people
that I know who get 
mentorship as a writer do it through an
informal networks, 
friends, friends of friends, people who
have been doing it 
slightly longer than others, try to pay
it forward to 
someone who is less experienced.
I think before I did 
pitch wars, I did have friends who are
maybe a few years 
ahead of me who I mostly corresponded
with online in
groups that I just met through
writer events in New 
York. And then we corresponded online
that that's really 
where it all started for me and I
believe for a lot of 
people. And I think if you just go to
certain events and 
go online, there are a lot of forums,
especially 
depending on what kind of writing you
really want to do.
They’re out there and the writing
community is just 
super supportive in general in
helping and 
nurturing up and coming or totally
new writers.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah, I would say you 
talked about like how clean it should
be, like because you want 
to put your best foot forward. I would
say be easy on yourself.
I’m in a situation right now where this
woman asked me to blurb 
her book and super cool concept, and
my plate's clear. I was 
like, Yeah, sure, send it over. And then
two days later she sends
me another copy. She’s like, Oh, I
caught some typos and 
fixed them. And then a couple days
later, she's like, Oh, 
wait, no, read this version.
Because I'm like, Dude, 
I don't care about typos. Like, if your
story is okay, like, don't 
worry about editing it within an inch
of its life. Like, just feel 
good about the story. i’m if you were
to come to me and 
say, hey, can you read my book?
And you gave me 
a book and the story was great.
The characters are great. 
It had a couple of typos. I’m not going
to be like, No, you will 
never be published because.
Because you used a
colon instead of a semicolon.
How dare you?
So so I understand that impulse
of wanting to put your
best foot forward. But, you know,
don't push yourself too
hard. It’s going to be okay.
>> Member of Audience: Hello, You 
know, I'm a writer, too. And I actually
participated 
in Pitch Wars a couple of years ago. It
was a really 
cool experience. So I was wondering,
what would you 
say are the important aspects of a
relationship 
between a writer and their agent?
Like, what's 
your the writer look for?
>> Rob Hart: Well, you're you want an 
agent who is very excited about what
you're doing and just 
can't think of anything else they want
to do than to get your book
published. And you--you know that there
was a point. I had one agent 
and then she retired, and then I got a new
agent. And then I got my 
second agent, I told myself, like, I’m not
going to be friends with 
my agent. It's a business relationship
And now we're buddies and 
we text each other all the time. We go out
for dinner and we hang out.
you just want to have a degree of trust.
You want to be able to
communicate with them clearly. You
want them to be responsive
and you have to go into it understanding
that you're not working for 
them. You’re not they’re not you boss.
A lot of people get really 
like hinky about agents and they're like,
Oh no, Like, I can't ask
my agent this question. it’s like, Yes,
you can. They’re your
agents. If you have a question, ask
your agent the question 
and they should answer you.
That's how it works. So I 
would say trust, clear communication
and just someone who's 
like, really excited about wanting to
work with you.
>> Victor Manibo: Yeah. I mean, 
everything Robb said. True, accurate,
100%. I would also
add that you kind of want to get a
sense of how
editorial they are when you submit
your manuscript to 
an agent. They might say, Oh, This is
great. Like we only 
need to do a few tweaks and then we
we could submit
this to publishing houses and that
might work for you.
That might be your style, but maybe
you're looking for 
an agent whose a little more hands
on and in telling you
okay, I know this is a good, this is at the
best stage I can take 
it, but I still need someone to like amp
it up a little bit more.
And if that’s someone you’re looking for
then you want an
agent who is known to be a little
more hands on in term 
of giving more editorial notes and maybe
doing an edit round 
before submitting it to publishing
houses, that that
differs for the stage of what stage your
manuscript is in.
Obviously always put out your best
version of the 
manuscript before sending it out to
agents, but 
depending on your editorial style,
that's something 
that you might want to think about
when you're
screening agents that you want to send
it to.
>> Member of Audience: Thank you.
Also, I love Fahrenheit 451.
>> Victor Manibo: Yeah, it's great.
>> Member of Audience: Hi. I was also a 
pitcher's mentee this past year. My
mentor was 
Clay Harmon, who was hanging out with
Victor in Chicago, like.
>> Victor Manibo: Literally 
yesterday. Hanging out with you say
Yeah.
>> Member of Audience: Very busy man.
So my questions are kind of in two
buckets, and it 
might be a lot to answer, however much
Y'all feel like.
So first I guess, especially for Victor,
you're writing
like a also 
queer Filipino character. How do you
deal with 
people thinking that, like, it's literally
you and those 
are the decisions you would make?
And then, like 
for both of you. There are a lot of diverse
characters in 
these books, and I was wondering, how
do you deal 
with like. People thinking that you
think that 
that's what everyone of that identity
background 
is like? Do you like have sensitivity
readers for 
that? with so many diverse characters,
how do you 
think about having that many
sensitivity 
readers even? And then for more
general 
writing craft, I was wondering like,
what do your
revision processes look like? Especially
with an eye 
towards making things fast paced for a
thriller 
mystery kind of thing.
>> Victor Manibo: Cool. So I get this 
question a lot. Like how much of you
is in Jamie? I would
say obviously the identity is there,
queer Filipino and 
all that. But I still have to make a
general disclaimer
Jamie is not me. He would make a lot
of choices that I 
would not make. I think I’m more risk
averse than Jamie is.
I think he has more 
tenacity than I do, but it's just
something that I've 
learned to roll with. It’s unavoidable.
Everybody. Well, 
not everybody. It’s It’s a common
saying that every 
debut novel is autobiographical to
some extent. I think
that’s true. It’s not true in this case, But
there is a lot of him 
in me. I just have to remind people.
No, it's it's not me, 
but it's fine if you think it's me. You
kind of just have to 
get used to that, especially if your
character is in 
multiple intersections of
marginalization. People 
are just going to assume that, and I’ve just
learned to be
comfortable with it. In terms of your
second question, I 
do have sensitivity readers, but in
terms of the burden 
of representation, one thing that I
always do is to make 
sure that I just I don't have just one
character
representing a certain, like again,
section of
marginalization. The Sleepless has
several queer
characters, several non white
characters. It's a 
majority non-white cast. You have
several black 
people. So there are many
different ways 
where I am able to kind of show the
black experience or
the Filipino experience or the queer, bi,
or pan experience,
because I have all these characters
So you don't I don't 
run the risk of a reader saying, Oh, you
know, you Victor, 
think all bi people are this way? Well,
because clearly I 
have multiple of them. So So that’s
that's what I do.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah, I do use sensitivity
readers whenever I feel kind of, you
know, I'm sort of
questioning something. I try to show
it to someone because, I 
mean, with as much thoughtfulness
as I have going into this 
stuff, at the end of the day I’m a white
guy and there are ways that 
I'm just blind to my privilege. So I want to
be really thoughtful 
about that. With Paradox, I actually
had two friends who are 
trans read the book because the book
has a trans character and 
her transness plays a role in the ending
of the book. And so I went
to them and I was like, hey, like, you
know, can you kind of can I 
can I bounce this idea off of you?
And they were both very 
caring about it. My friend Emma was
ike very challenging, 
which I really appreciated because
I didn't want to just 
be patted on the head and told I
was a good little boy. And
and then my friend Alena read the book
and it was great because 
she sat me down and she’s like you know,
here's what you got right 
and here’s what you got wrong and let’s
go over it. So that was a
really valuable experience for me.
And in terms of editing 
like and revisions, we could have a
very long conversation 
about this. But I will tell you, the best
thing that I've discovered 
in my process, which I’ve passed on to
to other people and they 
found really useful, do an entire edit of
the book backwards. So 
start with the last chapter, then go
through the first.
Because what’ll happen is, as
an editor, I see this all 
the time where you’ve got all this
fresh energy in the 
beginning of a book, and by the end
of the book it's kind of 
like, I just want this damn thing to
be done. So if you if 
you take one revision and start with
the last chapter and 
go through to the first, you put all
that fresh energy into 
the ending. And it also really helps
when you can see the 
plot structure out of order.
>> Victor Manibo: I still do it that way 
because you taught me that.
>> Rob Hart: yep.
>> Member of Audience: Thank you.
>> Member of Audience: Hi.
I was 
wondering if either of you or both of
you take 
inspiration in your books from, like,
the 
abundance of mythology and different
cultures and
religions?
>> Victor Manibo: Not with the 
Sleepless, but I have a current project
That’s a very 
Filipino, maybe too Filipino.
It's a gothic horror 
set in the Philippines and it tackles
toxic masculinity 
and dictators because that's
something that’s 
ongoing with the Philippines right
now. And there will 
be monsters and there will be also
religion because 
religion is such a big part of the
Philippines. For 
those who don't know, we are like 90%
Catholic. And it 
kind of is interesting to see how
folklore and 
religion mix and weave in the Filipino
culture. And I 
wanted to explore those themes.
So yeah, definitely 
influenced by I definitely want to write
about it, am writing 
about it now. And I think it’s there’s
there's just so much 
there that so many Stories that I still
want to tell.
>> Rob Hart: Yeah, Paradox had a lot of
Buddhist and like Eastern philosophy
in it, which was really 
exciting to me because I’ve always
been fascinated by 
Buddhism, I've always been
fascinated by quantum 
physics. And at one point was like, you
know, there's a lot of
similarities here. And then I found
this book called The
Quantum and the Lotus, and I was
like, Oh, there are and  here 
are people who are much smarter than
talking about it, and this is
helpful to me. So, yeah, that’s just a really
fun place to play it.
>> Miwa Messer: Thank you. Now I'm 
going to jump in because. Oh, wait.
Hello? Person who
has a question, then I’ll jump.
>> Member of Audience: Hello? Is this 
on? Yeah, I just jumped up.
Just three 
little questions. One, I was wondering
if there's an 
actual torch being carried from a
dangerous 
writing group that actually worked
with Tom 
Spanbower. That still exists to. If
you're 
willing, Rob, could you share, like, a
memorable 
interaction or something that you
learned 
directly from Tom Spanbower? And
then for both 
of you, I’m  interested in knowing. I
know you 
outline. I'm not sure if  you do. I’m
interested 
in knowing about the pivoting moment.
If there is one 
where you pivot from sort of outlining
to hearing 
what your characters say and start
writing 
dialogue. So those would be
interesting.
>> Rob Hart: My understanding is that 
Tom isn't really teaching these days
because he's--he's on 
he older end. His health isn’t in
the best place, which is 
incredibly sad. But it was it was a
really emotional 
workshop because you’re basically
in his basement for 
three days, just like sitting around
a table with a bunch of other 
people and you’re all terrified. And there
were a lot of really
beautiful, meaningful interactions
there. I would say the 
one that I took away that has been
useful for me, both as
a writer and sometimes as a person,
especially given the 
state of the world, is he taught me
that when two characters 
in a story touch that it really means
something and that you 
have to really sort of unpack that
moment. Because if you 
think about it like pre-pandemic, you
know, you go about your day 
and you'd pass hundreds and hundreds
of people, but you're not
really touching people. So like when
when you shake someone's 
hand, when you hug someone, like it
means something. And 
touch means so much more now.
Now Now that we've been
deprived of it for so long. So that’s
something that just
really resonates for me from that
workshop. And then you
want to jump on that other one.
>> Victor Manibo: Oh, yeah. So in terms 
of outlining, when I wrote the
Sleepless, I did not 
outline. I did it as part of the National
Novel Writing 
Month. So there wasn’t really a
lot of time
for me to outline. But now i’m
like, On writing my
fourth book. I am a huge believer in
outlines. I always make it 
a point that my outlines are no more
than three levels
deep and every line is just like a line
or a sentence. Once 
I start putting in like, vibes or like
dialogue, that's 
when I know I should stop outlining and
just write the thing 
and just go with it. I think that’s been
good guideline for 
me. Like if if you can’t put an outline
point in like a 
phrase, then you’re putting in too
much that should 
probably be on the page and not on
outline already.
>> Member of Audience: Thanks.
>> Miwa Messer: We have a couple of 
minutes.
I'm taking them 
because I have one more question.
>> Victor Manibo: Sure.
>> Miwa Messer: I wasn't kidding when I 
said I had a lot.
Why do you write?
>> Rob Hart: I literally can't imagine 
doing anything else. You know, the
idea of not writing to me is 
abhorrent. You know, it’s like, what
would I do with my time? I
just I mean, I’d probably take more naps
and watch more movies.
But, you know, I’ve always been
attracted to artistic 
expression. And actually, when I
was a kid, I used to draw a 
lot. And I went to college for for art and
graphic design and then
nearly failed out my first semester
because I learned like,
oh, like, this is not the thing for me to
be doing. And for some 
reason it just like I was lucky enough
to realize like, No, no 
writing, though writing could work.
Let's try this. And then I 
fell into it and I was like, Oh, like
I'm home now. Cool.
>> Victor Manibo: I love stories. 
Stories. Help me understand the
world. Help me 
connect with people. And I’ve
always been an avid
reader. And at one point I just had all
these feelings and 
ideas that I wanted to share, and I
thought, Well, I 
could do that in my day job as a
lawyer, I suppose.
But I could also try my hand at
writing stories.
And when I did, it just felt so
natural and still 
does. And my sense was, why
haven't I been doing
this all this time? I could have been
doing this since 
forever. There’s a little bit of regret
about starting a 
little bit late, but now that I’m in it,
I'm like, Yes, this 
is the only thing that I want to do
and I want to keep 
doing it. Especially as a Filipino, as a
queer person, 
writing in sci fi, writing in mysteries,
I feel like there's 
 specific kind of story that needs to be
told and I want to 
tell those stories.
>> Miwa Messer: Regret is overrated.
>> Victor Manibo: I know people keep 
telling me. i’m still learning that I’m
still learning.
>> Miwa Messer: I'm just glad you're 
both here. I want to thank both
Rob Hart and Victor 
Manibo. If you would like more time
with both of these 
gentlemen, there is a book signing
in the lower level in 
Hall C. Please go hang out with them.
I have been able to hog 
them all morning, so I'm delighted. But
I'm going to hand them 
over now because you really do want
more time with these. 
Thank you also to the Library of
Congress for getting us 
all back out into the world because
there’s nothing 
better than being around book lovers.
>> Rob Hart: Thank you.
[applause]
>> Miwa Messer: Thanks guys.
Thank you.
>> Rob Hart: And if anyone picks up a 
copy of Paradox, I have Paradox Hotel
key cards to give away, so I
will give them away until supplies run
out.