Inside the Industry: World-building and Filipino fiction with Mickey Ingles

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If you google the name Mickey Ingles, chances are you’ll see information related to his law practice – specifically his expertise in sports law. (Well, his twitter handle is @MickeyInglesLaw.)

You’ll probably also see all the interviews he did after he topped the bar exams in 2012.

However, this September, the already multi-hyphenated lawyer-professor-columnist is getting another title to his name: young adult (YA) fiction author.

Inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Mickey started drafting his book Alinam 11 years ago as a creative outlet from the stresses of law school.

In the book, he imagines the titular alternate city of Alinam – a version of old Manila (get it?) that’s part-magic, part-steampunk, and with race and class tensions at an all-time high. He then asks: what happens when a shy high-schooler and his friends are thrown in the middle of this strange, strange world?

For this episode of Inside the Industry, we talk to Mickey about the rules of world-building, Filipino genre and YA fiction, and – just like his book’s protagonist – how does he straddle the multiple worlds he is in.

If you like this episode, you might also enjoy “Inside the Industry: Comicbooks and Collectibles with Comic Odyssey,” and “Who is the Filipino? Superhero worship.”

And if you haven’t subscribed yet, Inside the Industry has a new episode every #HustleMonday. – Rappler.com