Author Colin Winnette grew up in the relatively small town of Denton in north Texas, and as he ends a long day working as a narrative designer for a Bay Area mobile game company, you can hear a soft drawl settle into his voice like a dog curling up on a porch. His novels have an appropriate Southern, yarn-like quality that embraces bizarre tangents. His latest, “Users” from Soft Skull, touches on everything from the virtual reality revolution to the proper way to kill fire ants.

“It’s definitely the way my brain works and writes,” he told The Chronicle by phone from his home in the Mission. “I’m trying to capture what it feels like to be alive, and life is baffling and disturbing. I like to keep a reader on their back foot.”

“Users” is the story of Miles, a frustrated California creative who has failed upward at a company that makes VR games. Its current hit is one where the game mines user memories to create a haunting by a dead ex-lover. As Miles struggles with what he is doing with his life, a set of bizarre death threats are pushed through his mail slot. Desperate to define his own reality even as his company commodifies the virtual space, Miles slowly falls apart.

But a synopsis really doesn’t do “Users” justice, or capture the creeping existential dread of Miles’ breakdown. It doesn’t have the overt haunted setting of his previous novel, “The Job of the Wasp,” but makes up for it in the unease that technology’s erosion of real life creates.

“It’s weird because the book became much closer to reality than it started out as,” he said. “I thought it was a hyperbolic story, but looking at the direction companies are headed when it came to blending augmented and virtual reality, so many, including me and a lot of people in San Francisco, feel it’s really changing the way we think.

“Reality gets further and further from the tangible. We’re altering the way we communicate with each other. Now, (Facebook’s virtual reality service Metaverse) is launching, and Google and Microsoft are right behind. It’s much closer to true than I thought it would be. I live in the center of a tech vortex, and it has a lot of power over many aspects of life.”

Like his protagonist, Winnette has spent a lot of his life on an escape trajectory. While Denton is “bluer and queerer” than most people expect of a small Texas town, he was eager to leave it to make his way as an artist elsewhere. Writing programs often bored him, though, and he didn’t find much to love living in New York or Vermont.

“For younger people, there’s an intense pressure to think a certain way,” he said of writing workshops. “You have to defend any thought that’s not part of the curriculum. It started to feel so claustrophobic. The value is going out there and finding yourself.”

Eventually, Winnette returned to Texas to open an art gallery before heading to the Art Institute of Chicago. Suddenly, surrounded by artists from many different disciplines, his love of writing was rekindled. On a trip to San Francisco in 2012, he found not only another vibrant art community but the love of his life. He got engaged to his wife, Andi, after only three months of dating and moved to the city to be with her.

He’s found some of his greatest inspirations in the Bay Area. Eager to see the coast after growing up on the plains, he spends as much time as he can doing morning swims at the Dolphin Swimming & Boating Club. His best brain work happens as he paddles around for hours in frigid waters looking out at Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge, then relaxing in a sauna.

One of the Bay Area’s most famous creepy landmarks has a counterpart in “Users.” As his marriage deteriorates, Miles’ wife, Claire, becomes obsessed with redesigning their home to become more and more maze-like. Miles feels like a prisoner there, unable or unwilling to embrace Claire’s creative vision. The plot point brings to mind the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, where legend says owner Sarah Winchester ordered continuous construction to thwart vengeful ghosts. Winnette, who has visited the home-turned-attraction, sees the stories of Winchester and Claire as examples of demonized creativity.

“有人说(莎拉·温彻斯特)实际上是一个skilled architect, and the weird stuff is just unfinished and in disrepair,” he said. “Claire thinks this project is extremely meaningful, and found an artist that helps her believe she is creating something of value. For me, it was ultimately talking about their alienation. It starts as conventional, then it’s literally walls.

“Miles had this fantasy of being a creative person and kept making decisions that pushed him further and further away from himself. I used to feel that way if I wasn’t writing every day.”

Winnette’s near worship of odd creativity is reflected in his upcoming appearance at Booksmith in San Francisco. Rather than just a reading, he plans to host what he calls a “variety show,” inviting local artists to “rebut” his work after he reads selected passages. Among those expected are writers Daniel Handler, Rachel Khong, Anna Wiener and Aku Ammah-Tagoe, as well as illustrator Casey Jarman presenting hand-drawn animation with music by Kyle Morton of Typhoon and Sam Sax.

“For me it was born of doing art school, and the idea of taking the expected and doing something different,” he said. “More writers are doing that because it’s hard to get people to go to readings, but we’re aware of making this time together more special. Not that novels aren’t worth it, but a night to remember is a celebration rather than just asking people to come listen to me talk.”

Jef Rouner is a freelance writer.