I’ve had this image in my head for a long time—two old friends, moon colonists and blue-collar workers, whacking golf balls off a lunar escarpment and jawing about the first time anyone (Alan Shepard, Apollo Astronaut) ever teed off on the moon. I’m not particularly a golf fan, but the image was so compelling I was determined to build a story around it. The second inspiration was decidedly less fun—the heart-wrenching experience of watching my mother-in-law slowly decline with dementia over a period of about fifteen years.

I have a word quota, best described as, “If I get 1000 words down, I did not fail today.” I try to get substantially more done, and when zooming along on a project that’s going well, I manage two or three or four times that much. In practice, this does not mean I produce the equivalent amount in publishable fiction, as a substantial number of stories trail off and must be abandoned, and some, inevitably, don’t find anybody who loves them.

The language of shipping and fandom is part of the lexicon, at least among me and my friends, so dropping a little reference doesn’t feel like a big deal to me. I have complicated feelings about fanfic in general, in that I think it is great tool, particularly for people who aren’t represented in mainstream media, to appropriate and contextualize mass culture in interesting and vital ways (plus it’s a fun, fulfilling thing to participate in in a world often lacking in pleasures), but I also sort of worry about how fanfic can function as free advertising for massive media conglomerates.

Being a publishing writer requires a certain amount of inherent arrogance—on at least some level, you believe your work is better than the rest of the slush pile and deserves to be read. But you’ll need that arrogance to sustain you through the years of rejection and apathy headed your way. I have a toddler, a marriage, and a menial full-time job, so my “creative process” mostly looks like carving out what writing time I can at erratic intervals, then feeling frustrated with myself for not having the energy to turn out anything good. Hopefully this situation will improve as my kid gets a little older and more independent!

When my grandmother passed away in 2016, I had to go through her belongings and choose which items to take away with me. It’s very strange looking through someone’s things without their permission like that, especially if it’s someone you think you know very well. There were items I came across—family oddments and photographs—that made me wish I’d known her a little better as a person, or asked more questions when I had the chance. That feeling of having to piece together someone you love after the fact, when they’re no longer around to provide context, was a major inspiration.