One of the real joys of collaborating is that when one author finds something tricky, it might be something that plays to the strengths of the other writer—or if that’s not the case, any challenges are usually solved by the fresh perspective a collaborator brings. With our collaborations, we each always argue that we’ve done less than half of the work—there’s that magic extra bit that neither of us takes credit for.

I love the ideas of cities as mythic places. And not just cities of myth, but the cities that exist in our world that we build up myths and stories around. I think a good case can be made that New York is the premier mythic city in America. We tell stories about it, we sing songs about what it means to make it there, it has a certain symbolic weight. I wanted to pull the unicorn hunt out of tapestries (although those live in New York as well, at The Cloisters) and into a modern myth.

“The Dark Age” comes entirely from that place of feeling that I was doing exactly what my family needed me to do in order to care and provide for them, and by doing so, I was constantly orbiting them, missing out on all of the moments I so badly longed to witness. To this day, “The Dark Age” takes me back to that place.

I tried to ponder about the essential differences between artificial and so-called natural. It was a pleasure to describe such digital beings, which are so odd and so beautiful. But I also tried—and am still trying—to understand the relation between the inner secret world and the external self, biological or non-biological.

I’ve had the idea for a body-swapping SF story in my head for quite a number of years, I think; it’s just one of those things that occupies my attention every now and then, possibly to a far unhealthier extent than it should.

When I lived in Savannah, there were tour trolleys cruising around the historic district all day long, basically all saying the same things about the same historic sites. I once commented to a friend that if I had a tour trolley business, I’d do something totally different. When she asked me what that something totally different would be, I came up with the idea for a Liar’s Tour.

This was an unusual story for me because it began with physics, and then I had to go back and add characters and stuff to that. I had the idea for a story in which time travel also involved spatial displacement, and that was the original engine for the story. And I had a lot of fun imagining how that would work out—but that wasn’t a story, in itself. I needed characters and an emotional hook and something to carry the story forward.

I don’t paint, but I’ve dabbled enough to have some concept of what painting entails. […] I will admit to drawing, but ninety-eight percent of the time, this takes the form of detailed contour maps, invented landscapes meant to either mimic or outdo existing physiography. I recycle most of these, but once in a while, I come up with a piece that sucks me in, demands my attention, and somehow renders in two dimensions what really ought to exist in three.

The process that works best for me is to think of an interesting character and start the story when they are in trouble. Then give them a difficult decision to make. Readers have such different reactions, but for most people, characters are the key to a story. If the reader doesn’t care about the characters, it’s that much harder to interest them in the conflict. It helps to make the story more memorable if a reader can identify with the choices the character faces.