I found middle school to be one of the most awful experiences of my life, so I guess it’s not surprising that I eventually got around to exploring middle school in a story. The SF aspect of the story was something that had been sitting in my idea file for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a story. Lately I’ve written a few young adult and middle grade books, and that felt like the right setting.

 This one’s based on a feeling that I sometimes get about fantasy: that sometimes it’s an escape in all the wrong ways. Please don’t think I’m saying I’m above it. I wrote a six-volume series of middle-grade portal fantasy. But every once in a while, the nagging question comes: Are these stories, with their easily identifiable villains and ultimately solvable problems, a denial of the world as it is, an abdication of the sad truth? That we are watching evil be defeated while our civilization is being nibbled by ducks?

 With this story, I actually knew the title before anything else. I was watching some nature documentary about elephants, and the phrase “elephants’ crematorium” sprang into my head. While I knew that elephants’ graveyards aren’t actually real, that idea stuck with me and began percolating. The rest of the story came as I developed just why this group of elephants would be self-immolating, and then the parallel human aspects came from that.

Storybook romances like those seen in Hollywood are popular for a reason: They offer a sense of certainty and security that doesn’t exist in the real world. Lovers in these stories are “destined” to be together, are “perfect” for each other, feel “completed” by their “true love.” These phrases all carry with them a sense of finality, of having reached the conclusion of the story: You have found your love, and now you’ll never have to worry again.