Money and religion go way back: If you try to trace the origins of money, you find yourself in Sumerian temples, looking at cuneiform tax and granary records. Many religions discuss the question of “creation debt”—the question of what humans owe their divine creators (and whether this debt can ever be repaid). Sacrifices are often conceived as a kind of payment to God (which also has the benefit, from priests’ perspectives, of supporting the life of priests).

When I first read about the Andean agricultural practice waru waru, I knew I wanted to write a story that incorporated it, but I wasn’t sure how. It kicked around in the back of my brain for a couple years, trying to attach itself to some kind of story, until something terrible happened: My aunt had a stroke.

I fought this story on and off for years, and it’s changed almost entirely, except for the two main characters. The very first draft dealt more with the westernized interpretation of genies and wishes that folks are familiar with. Still set in the same place but quite different than the end product. But the main idea I wanted to explore then and now was the dynamic between two characters like Nassim and Khaizaran amidst that setting.

Initially, I started with trying to envision a positive future. I came up with the Overview Initiative concept, then immediately realized all the reasons it is a terrible idea. That tension, as well as a tension I’ve been feeling around what the “point” of science fiction writing is more broadly (as if there is one singular point), drove this story.

The location is loosely based on the Round Table Foundation, an occult and psychic research facility that existed on the Maine coast in the mid-20th century. It was led by one Henry Puharić, who is well known in paranormal conspiracy circles, and a guy named Harry Stump, whose biography has to be read to be believed. Aldous Huxley used to stop by.

The story came directly out of two incidents around the same time last summer: a con released a panel description complaining about the existence of too many lesbian stories, and a couple of gaming websites started mass-censoring/banning queer games and creators. The way these events overlapped made both even more frustrating; looking back at my early handwritten notes for this story, the first line is “too many lesbians” in scare quotes.

I have been a professional writer since I was sixteen—which is fifty years now. I have always wanted to write. I think it comes from being the youngest of four. One of my earliest memories is of five adults (my parents and siblings) sitting in the living room reading, while I went from person to person begging them to play. They were reading instead.

“Ten Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord” originated at Can*Con 2024. There was a masterclass workshop at the convention called “Write a Story in a Weekend,” hosted by Brandon Butler and David Schultz of the Toronto SFF Writers Group. I like writing challenges, and I like deadlines, and I decided that writing the first draft of a whole short story in forty-eight hours while also attending a convention sounded like exactly the kind of bad idea I would enjoy.

This story very much started from its opening paragraphs, which spilled easily onto the page. It followed pretty quickly that the narrator had been dreaming about his dog and mother, even though he knew that he never had a dog and couldn’t remember his mother. At that point, I thought, Oh my gosh! What’s going on here? What is this story about?

Like a lot of people, my head is buried in news and social media and talks with my neighbors. I’m always in the center of the most politically awkward conversation at the con bar, but I can’t point to too many specific references that inspired this story. It kind of came out of the subconscious soup that paying attention to the world cooks up.