The germ of this story was a little flight of fancy I had one day, involving a young dragon that went into a cave and then grew so much that it couldn’t get out. Then I realized it fit into a series of stories I’ve been writing off and on for (eek) fifteen years now. This is the fourth to be published, after “Wizard’s Six,” “Dragon’s Teeth,” and “Chisel and Chime.” Several more are in progress. The twin guideposts for all of them are Earthsea and Viriconium.

In stories like this one, particularly when the central conflict is built around a pandemic or climate change, happy endings often come in the form of restoring the status quo—we win by overcoming the new threat and setting things back the way they were. In reality, this thinking doesn’t work for climate change because “the way things were” is what got us into this mess in the first place. The only way we win now is by embracing radical change: in ourselves, our behaviour and our society. I wanted to write a story that made the metaphor literal.

Here’s some advice for other writers but also advice for myself: don’t care so much about pleasing everyone with your writing. Know that some people are going to like what you write and some people are not going to like what you write and that’s okay. Remember a person’s opinion of a story or a book generally says more about their reading preferences than about the quality of the story or the book. Also leave positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon for the books you love. And if you read something you love, drop the author a line and let them know.

This is where the interviewee wishes he could report that the book currently in hand is a work of unparalleled genius. Alas, it is not. I am fortunately also reading the current issue of Pulphouse # 18 and enjoying it thoroughly.

The initial framework for this story came from me thinking about the Little Mermaid fairy tale and wondering what her story would look like if turning into a human wasn’t a deal or a choice but rather a transformation she was always destined to go through. How would that gradual change play out and affect her, her family and community? I had also been thinking about the old movie: Creature from the Black Lagoon and how poignant the underwater scenes in that movie are. The creature is such a lonely figure and his loneliness comes across without any words.

Food replicators have always bothered me. I get that for us to enjoy watching a bunch of people who are actually on a soundstage pretend they’re traveling through space, we have to shorthand a few technological advances—artificial gravity and inertial dampeners come to mind—but instant food on demand is the only thing that nobody ever really tries to explain, and the one that most functions like magic. I decided I wanted to work out how a scientific explanation for the replicators would actually play out.

The seed this story sprang from was a question I asked myself: what would a coffin look like to immortals who had never experienced death but were about to? Throughout human history, we’ve had myriad answers for how to honor our dead and what to do with their remains. As this story started sprouting from that first question, I wanted to challenge myself on a worldbuilding and narrative level. Why have these people never died before? What exactly has brought about death for the first time in their history?

For inspiration, I definitely had thoughts of the Alien-style “workforce in space” undertones (though with decidedly less acidic drippings in my result). I like the idea of a person just trying to carry out a normal life in space, and the economies that crop up in that “landscape.” I thought of how tired that person might get with so much darkness stretching between them and the nearest human. How burnt out on the daily grind. How old they could feel while still so young. And—depending on the profession they took up—how chronic injuries might be a huge part of their life.

I often draw from the Russian folklore I grew up hearing, and with this particular story wanted to try working with an invented myth rather than an established one. Lake Baikal is of course a real place, and one that’s special and fascinating to me, as I have family living in the nearby city of Irkutsk and visited occasionally as a child. The seals, or nerpa, endemic to the lake are real as well, and though some mystery surrounds them—like how they came to be there in the first place—the queen and her mythology aren’t part of that mystery (not in our world anyway).

I am a multi-instrumentalist (acoustic and electric guitar, keys, drums and bass). I’m also trying to learn the saxophone. I used to make beats but haven’t had time for that in a while. I’m one of those outlier writers who can never write to music because then my music brain kicks in and I’ll spend the session analysing the vocal harmonies, chord progressions, and key changes that I won’t be able to focus on writing. So I write in silence.