When I wrote this story I was playing around with a technique where I take several flash stories and combine them into one longer piece. I thought it’d be fun to write a flash story for each of the seven wonders of the world, with future wonders instead of ancient wonders. To link all the stories together, my initial plan was to have one character visit all seven wonders, and I came up with Mei.

My oldest son was assigned Edith Hamilton’s MYTHOLOGY to read over the summer. I remember when I first discovered that book back in fifth grade and it was transformative for me. It helped stoke my love of stories. In fact, I so couldn’t get enough of the myths, I often got in trouble from my teachers because I would end up reading them rather than pay attention in class.

This story was from an idea that I had as a teenager, and tried (and failed) to write as a teenager. I have always wondered if this world is someone’s dream. And if so, who? And what happens to the rest of us when that person gets hurt or dies? Now I’m an adult, and I have realized that my memory isn’t perfect. A lot of the fear of forgetting my life also went into this story.

The SCA fed my creative processes to the point of medical danger, but not in the way you might think. It actually filled in a huge number of small gaps in my background knowledge: what it was like to be a medieval leader, how hard it is to get into armour without help, the relationship between romance and fighting, how easy it is to ignore injuries during a tournament, toleration for wildlife in the food, and the use of grass as toilet paper.

I want three things out of a story, whether I’m writing it or reading it: an interesting character, an unusual situation, and a strong, distinctive voice. I’m tempted to add “atmosphere” to that list, although it’s a pretty nebulous concept. Basically, I want to either experience something I’ve never experienced before, or to look at a familiar experience in a new way. The best thing about speculative fiction is that it lets you do both at once.

I’d often wondered whether, with a little common sense and willingness to break out of social roles, nineteenth-century characters like Tess of the D’Urbervilles could have had happy endings. And I sympathized with the villainized, like Bertha Rochester. I thought even Sherlock Holmes deserved human happiness. So I created a professor who had imaged her own reality, given her favorite characters happier lives.

These stories were definitely inspired by straight-up steampunk. I had been costuming in a steampunk style for years, but it took really sticking my feet in the steampunk community before I was inspired to write stories myself. Sourcing the technology from aliens rather than extrapolating from existing steam technology is the spin I put on my world to make it different and more intriguing.

I don’t remember how the notion of a werewolf in love with a mermaid — or maybe it was a mermaid in love with a werewolf — came up one night during the 2006 Worldcon in L.A., but I remember that Daryl Gregory and I thought it was hilarious, and should be a web comic. Unfortunately, neither of us can draw.