But I have to tell you, the biggest nachas (joy) came from some of my interactions with the kids who read my Gustav Gloom novels for middle-graders. Hearing from a problem reader that they worked their way through the whole series and are better at this book-absorption thing, or being sent a photograph of a potato that’s been painted to resemble my protagonist as school project, is an award of a whole different color.

Style-wise, I wanted to establish early on that the reader is in a sort of epic poem being written by the main character, Anisah, and so I specifically tried to reference the style of Beowulf and The Illiad—stories that generally start with the author calling the audience to attention (“Hwæt!”) or invoking a deity (“Sing in me, Muse,” the first line of Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Illiad, which I also cribbed for the title).

I blame authors Phoebe Barton and Derek Künsken. One day on Twitter, they were discussing the various irregularities in English plurals: mouses in houses, oxen in boxen, and hooves on the rooves. With that phrase—hooves on the rooves—I caught the feel of the story all at once. Brilliantly cold midwinter, a deer stalking the night. I’m not sure why. It’s possible that hooves on the rooves made me think of reindeer and my subconscious took a Yuletide leap from there.

The story is a pseudo-sequel to a story I published back in 2010 in Interzone called “Saving Diego” about two estranged friends who meet on Gilder Nefan after a decade of being apart. I’ve always loved that setting and have wished to go back to it forever. Also, at the time I wrote “Still You Linger,” I’d been reading a lot of Carl Jung, specifically his book Man and His Symbols, which explores in great detail the symbology of dream imagery and the collective unconscious.

Before having kids, I expected to love them. I did not expect that love to be so cataclysmic and terrible. I did not realize the universe would hand me a door to the meaning of life in the shape of a little person, or that invisible golden wires would extend from her every twitch and blink and pierce my skin and burrow into my core. Before I had Aviva, the worst the universe could do was kill me, and it was planning to get around to that eventually anyway.

I’m interested in philosophical ideas, and science, and using those things to speculate about what might be, or could have been, or about how what is happening now could be different. But at the core of it, I am interested in what it is to be human. There is so much we don’t understand at all about ourselves—even about something as simple as what it is to be a self, an individual, an entity on this planet relating to other humans, to our environment. Why am I me, and aware of being myself?

Neverland has pirates and mermaids, making it the perfect setting for a story about pirates and mermaids! Especially since the novel assures us that most of the Neverland stories have not been told. But also, for all of its enticements—nothing but play and ongoing adventure!—Neverland is a deeply troubling, terrifying place, more so than the other famed childhood worlds of Wonderland and Oz and Narnia. And that makes it a rich source for stories.

My favorite advice to writers is to wring the emotional reaction from yourself, first. When writing humor, you need to barely stand how witty you’re being; when you’re writing tragedy, you need to weep; when writing horror, you need to be appalled that this monstrous stuff is coming out of you. Hell, if you’re writing a thriller, you need to fear for your characters. Honestly, if you don’t react yourself, if it’s just a technical exercise, no one else is going to care either.

In “Baba Yaga and the Seven Hills,” I wanted to see what would happen if I dropped this ancient, powerful force into a modern context that rendered her pretty powerless. I think it’s her ambiguous nature that made her a good character to follow to a place of vulnerability. Because, yes, ultimately, it’s a story about home and the different things home means to us. Is it where you are or who you’re with? Is it familiarity or discovery, stillness or movement? For me, there’s no easy definition.

Most of my stories draw heavily on my lived experiences, but this story felt like an exception. While there were elements that came from life—a nightmarish episode with a bear, a beloved aunt, my years living in the mountains—most of it was invented. Flash forward to the present where I’m quarantined in a one-bedroom apartment with my best friend and my girlfriend. I wish I’d written something with a happier ending.