You’ve only been publishing fiction for the last six years but already have an impressive number of publications and accolades. I’m curious how and why you got started. What led up to sending off your first round of stories?

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. I feel like there are always other people doing more and accomplishing great things. But I’m glad to have written what I’ve written.

As for how I got started, I think the short version is that I was working as an attorney and always hoped to try my hand at writing one day. I wrote for myself for most of my life as a hobby but never had the time or energy to devote to it as a career. But things started to shift after my kids were born. I ended up taking care of them full-time for a variety of reasons. It was very rewarding and might have been a temporary arrangement. But it was also around that same time that the COVID-19 lockdowns hit, and what might have been temporary became a new status quo. With everything feeling so tenuous and precarious, I think that felt like the time to try writing more methodically, i.e. not self-rejecting, submitting to magazines regularly. Gradually, after a lot of rejections, I started getting published, bit by bit, until I formed a body of work.

Shifting gears to “Jempo,” what was the writing process like for this one?

This one started with the character of Aga—someone who doesn’t quite operate like others in her world. She thinks differently and is slightly out-of-step because of it. I find something interesting about a character like that, her commitment to her work.

But sometimes that isn’t enough to carry a story on its own, or I have a mental block in talking about that kind of character. So, my way around that is to use the perspective of another character as a throughway. My narrators and my “main characters” are often not one and the same. Ruth became that narrator/perspective character for me in “Jempo.” Someone slightly more relatable, if less sympathetic. Her goals are more practical and tangible and ordinary. It’s really her observations about Aga, the inherent tension that arises from their differing approaches, that gave me more to explore in the story.

And with characters like Aga and Ruth, the plot beats tend to write themselves. I think Ruth’s central decision about whether to use illicit information to her advantage was always a big part of the story. But there were versions that didn’t involve her revealing Jempo’s injuries to the man trying to rig the games. Or versions where the girls rematched in the final round. The version I settled on, though, I think, heightens the hollow sense Ruth is left with at the end of the tournament. She uses every angle she can, including ones she shouldn’t, wins by an empty default, and then doesn’t seem to improve herself in any lasting way. There’s a real thudding feeling for Ruth I get every time I read the end of that story. That final contrast between her on the one hand, and Aga and Jempo on the other, what Ruth seems to lack. Just a real “oof” sort of feeling. I want it to go another way for her. But that version felt like the one that fit most.

I am fascinated by the choice to name these matches “dialectics,” a term that suggests more conversational philosophy than gladiatorial spectacle. It pairs in a really interesting way with what seems to be the central conflict between Ruth and Aga over why they compete and what their goals are. I am admittedly a writer looking at everything through a writer’s filter, but I couldn’t help but think about how some creators remain focused on creating for the love of creation itself while others are climbing rungs, always intent on the next goal or landmark. I obviously have my own biases here, but I wonder if you could unpack your thinking around the choice to use “dialectics”?

I think you’re on to something. I try not to tie my stories to one meaning in case readers look up these interviews later. So the difference in mindset between Ruth and Aga could apply to other things. Any kind of competition, sport, or act of creation, has that potential to divide people and their approaches. But I’d be lying if I said that the reasons I create, or others create, weren’t on my mind in some way. There are definitely some aspects of writing that could apply when looking at Ruth and Aga.

As for the choice of “dialectic” for the name of the game, I think that is definitely part of that idea. People in conversation, testing their values and philosophies. We’re told there are multiple ways of winning the competition. At least two: the assembly of rings and direct, physical domination. But there are potentially more formats that are alluded to (duo, teams, etc.). I think the implication is that there might be more approaches out there. I also think of Ruth and Aga as two representative types. But anyone who creates or competes has a mixture of motives. I don’t think this fully answers anything you asked, other than to say, I wanted the dialectic to have the connotations you picked up on! So that’s great!

I love the elegant confidence of the world-building in this story. You offer just enough to hint at a much larger, more lived-in setting, but leave out so many details that could bog it down. Do you have any tips for how to find the balance?

Thanks. I appreciate that. I think the balance is different for every story, and I’m not convinced I always get it right. Sometimes, I load on too much information. Sometimes (often?), I strip out too much. Readers differ, too, about what feels obvious and heavy-handed versus what is inscrutable and frustrating.

I guess my general advice (if any) is that I try to think up a lot about the world of the story, but I plan on scrapping most of it. I try to scale back the information as much as possible, unless it’s directly relevant to the story at hand. Backstories, mechanics, little details, are usually taken out. I think however much you think you need to take out, most of the time, it’s worth taking out a percentage point or two more.

“Jempo” is a bit of an outlier, though, and maybe more on the information-heavy side than most of what I write. Usually, my characters don’t dwell on the mechanics of their world, because I think we don’t really dwell on the mechanics of our own world day-to-day. But I think, in this instance, because the characters are competitors sizing each other up and discussing each other’s techniques, it felt okay to break down their thoughts a little more. They seem like people who would discuss their máquina and approaches in detail, so I let that guide where the conversations went. Again, not my typical method, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

Finally, what can Lightspeed readers expect from you next?

I usually keep a running list of my latest publications in a bibliography on my website (bit.ly/4w39DjD). You can also find me on Bluesky, where I’m mostly messing around and not talking about writing seriously, but I do try to keep people updated on my work there as well. If folks are interested in my work but prefer physical media, I also have a debut short story collection that came out last fall, Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, which is available at Undertow Publications and wherever books are sold. I also might have something coming up to announce in the near future (maybe around the time this story drops), so stay tuned!