“The Horror of Party Beach” is part of a longer series of stories I’ve been doing, in which I borrow the titles of cheesy SF/horror movies from the 1950s (and in this case the ’60s), and use them as the inspiration for a new piece. The original intent was to write emotionally serious stories around these ridiculous titles—to take the situations they suggested and treat them with the seriousness a mainstream literary writer might bring to his or her material.

“Super-Luminous Spiral” started with a question: Why do so many literary short stories center on cheating? Instead of trying to find the truth, I decided to make my own answer through a very bisexual speculative story. Hopefully, that story seed grew into something more interesting and complex than a jab at literature’s cheating obsession . . . Also, I’m pretty sure now that I’ve written this, I’m condemned to only writing about cheating from here on out.

Refractin, the cosmetic procedure, was born of a few of my obsessions pooling together—modern art, Vantablack, body modification, and the act of reading people’s nonverbal communication. Oh, and the one illustration of the Terrible Trivium from The Phantom Tollbooth, which scared me so much as a kid I had to skip that chapter.

I spent a large chunk of my childhood in Gainesville, Florida, where the local fauna are as much a part of your property as the front door. We had gators in our yard after it rained, an armadillo living under the porch, and a long pile of rocks against one side of the house that sheltered a huge snake. Every so often, we’d find one of its shed skins wedged between the rocks.