“I had a story I really wanted to tell about a child being raised in isolation, ignorant of an apocalyptic infection raging in the outside world, so my approach to ‘Patient Zero’ was probably something like ‘A spoonful of science helps the narrative go down.'”

Steampunk tends to live in the space between science fiction and fantasy, depending on how it’s utilized in each particular piece. I think that both the science fiction canon and the science fiction community have accepted steampunk elements for a long time; I think that as steampunk earns its permanent place in the canon, it will do so via the examination of some of the tropes on which previous steampunk has been built, which will both broaden and strengthen the collective canon.

Mostly I became interested in memory loss when I started reading about the fact that people are starting to figure out how to erase, block, and alter memories in labs. And I began thinking, since corporations are always viewing everything as a potential acquirable resource, why wouldn’t they own someone else’s memories? As a down payment on services? You can walk away from a house that’s been pledged as collateral, or savings. But your identity? They’d really own you.

The initial seed of inspiration was my ocean-going characters, who made their livelihood by the sea. I had to find a world to put them in, and I thought about what a positive post-apocalyptic future would look like. That is, the civilization-shattering disaster happened, but humanity didn’t lose its technology.”

“The version of history I was taught in school as a child was wildly inaccurate: Columbus proved that the world was round, the pilgrims and Indians were best friends, and America is the best at everything and is always on the right side of everything, and so on. […]”

“SETI has been trying to pick up signs of technological civilizations for more than half a century. I can remember thinking when they first started that it wouldn’t take long. Too many stars out there. But here we are, a couple of generations later and we haven’t heard so much as a hiccup. Why not? […]”

“I have some friends in a multi-decade on-again/off-again relationship. Like the characters in the story, they get together, break up, see other people, reconnect, and do it all over again. They love each other, but they’ve never been able to make it work. […]”