How did this story originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

At some point in 2022, I binged the entirety of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series back to back (at least, those that were published at that point). That series is such a comfort series now. But it also got me thinking a lot about examining and subverting the portal fantasy genre, and the ways in which the narrative device of the portal world could be used to engage with wider themes. Wayward Children has a lot of resonance with queerness in particular, I think (I also read it on the back of the pandemic and the grief of losing a world you thought was yours definitely resonated there too)—but I started thinking about portal fantasy as diaspora. If you think about it, the character is tossed into this alien land with alien customs in which they suddenly find themselves quite alone. If you put aside the sense of wonder and chosen-one-ness, there’s a lot of scope for thinking about displacement and assimilation.

If I was going to be in conversation with the genre, I wanted to riff on the most canonical and absurdist example of that genre. I love Wonderland because it’s so whimsical and yet actually has some pretty dark stuff in it, and obviously it’s also so canonical that it makes it easy to use as the stage for genre discussion because people will get your references, although I’ve put my own spin on it. I think the absurdity of the setting in this story juxtaposed with the violence and the serious emotional arc made it a lot more impactful than it would have been otherwise. Violence packaged in absurdity can somehow be really striking (me, weeping over the hallway fight from Everything Everywhere All At Once).

It was also fun to subvert the portal fantasy trope with that diasporic lens and think about how a kid who’s grown up in Wonderland would find Wonderland normal, and find their “human world,” which they don’t remember, the actual fantasy land. This story was written for my first workshop at Clarion West in 2022, and I think either P. Djèlí Clark (the week’s instructor) or one of my classmates commented on the fact that the Beyond that Creed comes from, as revealed, isn’t Earth, but is also a fantasy world. I don’t think that was a deliberate choice, just something that came out and felt right, but I like the fact that the story’s not anchored in our context while also hopefully being very relevant.

And then I thought it was such an interesting positioning that these interlopers who enter the portal world usually end up heroes or royals. (There’s potentially an interesting other angle there about using the trope to interrogate coloniality. Although Carroll’s Alice actually isn’t any kind of hero, which I find interesting. It’s more a series of misadventures.) I wanted to cross the Chosen One trope with the immigrant position and see what complications could be drawn from that. Ultimately, I wanted to explore what happens when a character who’s risen to his position by being the sole representative of this fantastical place and legacy meets someone else from that same world, and how it might go wrong.

Where are you in this story?

This story is a lot about being a storyteller, obviously, and I was exploring a lot of prickly thoughts that have drifted through my mind at some point as I increasingly start to think about my own work being packaged for consumption, who I’m writing stories for, and why and how I tell them. Creed obviously does some not very good things, but I hope the story doesn’t come across as ungenerous. It’s an incredibly complicated positioning and I hope that thorniness and sympathy come through.

Is there anything you want to make sure readers noticed?

All the Wonderland references—to both Carroll and Swift. (Kidding—but I do have fun squeezing in easter eggs whenever I do retelling-type things, so I hope spotting them brings people an equal amount of enjoyment.)

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

My debut novel, The Dark We Know, is out August 13, 2024! It’s a crossover YA horror about an art student who returns to her haunted hometown and reunites with her last surviving childhood best friend to finally confront the evil that killed their other friends two years ago. And I’m currently working on my adult book, which is a historical fantasy set in postcolonial Singapore’s Chinese secret societies—hopefully, I’ll be able to share more about that soon (or will have by the time this interview is out!)