Curtis Garcia, writing under the pen name Duo Valentine, is an award-winning speculative fiction writer with a knack for the romantic and grotesque. He wrote his first story in the second grade — a comic of a knockoff Spider-Man called Ninja Man who fights the evil-doings of Karate Man — and has kept pen to paper ever since, finding solace and freedom with fantasy, superheroes, magical realism, and horror.
You can view sample writing below.
Recipient of the 2019 Steiner Award
Yesteryear short story excerpt
Winner of the J. Lee Taylor Creative Writing Award Yesteryear excerpt
Recipient of the J. Lee Taylor Creative Writing Award
About
I have over seven years of professional writing experience in games, genre, and workshopping/revising various forms of story, some of which have won awards.
Projects
Games:
Fish Fable: Metroidvania Month 19 submission, Narrative Design Lead (2023)
The Apartment: Scream Jam 2022+1 submission, Narrative Design Lead
DungeonJam: DungeonJam 2023 submission, Narrative Design Lead
Scripts:
Now It’s Dark: working title debut film script (2021)
Dog Eat Dog: NYC Midnight short screenplay top 10 (2022)
The Restful Dead: NYC Midnight short screenplay (2022)
Scene: Pardis Dabashi, Ph.D.’s Global Cinema course midterm scene (2022)
Prose:
Bodies Beneath Us: short story, recipient of the Steiner Award, 2019
The Freya Incident: short story trilogy, to be released in Yesteryear: Tales from the Recent Future collection, 2019-2022
A Night at Jötunheim: novella, recipient of the J. Lee Taylor Creative Writing Award, to be released in the Yesteryear: Tales from the Recent Future collection, 2019
Frogs: short story, to be released in Yesteryear: Tales from the Recent Future collection, 2021
Alchemilla: debut novel, coming Q1 2023
Yesteryear: Tales from the Recent Future: short story collection Q3/4 2022
Affiliated Projects:
International Student Workshop: since 2019 - Working with fellow student Zara Abubakar of the American University of Paris to workshop and develop stories of the next generation.
MUST BE NICE BRIGATA: show assistant for Sandy Lee Wyatt III, creator and creative director for MUST BE NICE, an art movement highlighting unconventional Black subjects, features, and imagery with an Afrofuturism twist based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Yesteryear: Tales from the Recent Future
A Short Story
Collection
Launching 2022
Extras
I’m always working on something on the side.
Currently designing art with artist P♭ for my short story collection and finishing the fourth draft of my novel for release in 2023. Drafting a fantasy project via CampFire Pro. Working on landscape designs via Unreal Engine 5