I am the Lemondrilla. I was hired as a mascot. Nobody mentioned that the job also included supervising a writer.
The specimen
His name is Adam Porkolab. He is Hungarian, which explains a great deal, and he writes science fiction, horror and dark literary fiction, which explains the rest. He writes in two languages so that he can be rejected in both. As of today he has collected 566 NOs and 51 YESes. I keep the count. He keeps writing. One of us is the sensible one, and it is not the one in the suit. (We both wear suits. It is still not him.)
Origin story
He grew up with Palóc roots in the coal country of northern Hungary, which is where people learn to dig. Then he got a PhD in linguistics, which means he can explain why your sentence is wrong in three theoretical frameworks, and then he went off to build enterprise software, which means he can also explain why your server is down. Somewhere between the grammar and the code he found the only thing he actually wants to write about: the exact moment a system fails a human being and something tender leaks out through the crack.
He calls this LOVE-FI. He also invented a subgenre called liturgicore, in which the sacred is conducted in the language of technical manuals, and an entire space empire, PRONEKO, that worships a living body. Nobody asked him to. That has never stopped him.
Observed behaviour
- Sends stories to magazines in the morning. Gets them back in the afternoon. Repeats.
- Reads ninety-nine science fiction novels on a schedule, then argues with their authors on this blog. Several of them are dead. He argues anyway.
- Queries literary agents about a novel in which Hell is a bureaucracy. The agents have opinions. Mostly the same one.
- Still writes love poems to his wife after fifteen years. I have read them. Disgusting. Wonderful. Disgusting.
Achievements (he made me include these)
- A full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association: other writers have formally agreed that he is one of them. I have filed an appeal.
- A finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest, third quarter of 2026.
- Laureates’ Choice at the 2026 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. A sonnet. In this century. With a straight face.
- Stories and poems in magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, a horror story read aloud on Tales to Terrify, and a novel, The Melchizedek Variant, forthcoming from Pink Hydra Press. The date is to be confirmed. So is everything, in this business.
Habitat
He lives in Pécs, Hungary, with his wife and son, and refuses, on principle, to choose between his two careers. I have tried to make him choose. He wrote a poem about it.
The respectable version
There is a tidier edition of him, with a bibliography, an awards page and a straight face. It lives at adamporkolab.com. This place is where he comes to scream. I hold the lemon.
— The Lemondrilla, management