I have no carpentry training, although I have used a saw, hatchet, axe, and hammer back in the day. I had already done research on architecture (it’s a thing of mine), and for the second two Spiritwalker books I researched early nineteenth-century woodworking techniques and tools because they were important for the story. So I used that research as well as some very handy YouTube videos to decide on what details I could reasonably highlight.

The idea for the story came when my wife and I—before we were married—got a dog together, our first dog together, and he was a rescue and a freakazoid when we first got him, and how strange it was suddenly sharing a house with another sentient creature that seemed to take up its own space but also seemed to be constantly watching us, observing us, judging us—he wasn’t, but it felt like he was—and so that is where the strange sense of benign paranoia came out.

Before I knew Jeri’s background, I knew she wasn’t someone who felt at home in space. She found it dark, and deeply lonely. She was the sort of person who, if she wasn’t part of a crew, would come to personally need Cleo, even more than other pilots might. On the other hand, I knew she was someone who chose a life in space, so it couldn’t be completely intolerable for her.

I think Wild Bill represents a very specific kind of harmful, destructive masculinity—one that’s got a very hard surface, but an interior that’s mostly made up of weakness and insecurity. He’s constantly putting pressure on himself, very tired and very alone, and that gives him a strong desire to connect with someone while feeling he shouldn’t. I think this kind of masculinity is damaging both inside and outside.