Can you talk a bit about how “Long Goodbyes” took shape and what inspirations fed into it?

Always a great pleasure and my own honour to be included in Lightspeed! “The Long Goodbye” was a phrase I heard once online in reference to having to take care of elderly, ailing pets. I’ve been caring for a cat with multiple issues for years—he is now eighteen, and every day having to help him relieve himself, groom himself, and move him around has been a bit of a challenge. I think it’s not just an act of love but also of reciprocity—my cat has been there almost all of my adult life and made it better for it. I think as with other forms of love, the love someone shares with a pet is a form of familial love, a concept the story explores in its various iterations.

Sui read to me as someone whose life has been so dominated and wrecked by a forever war that they can’t imagine functioning outside it, which is unfortunately common. Did you have the ending in mind from the start, or did it shift during the writing process?

I’ve always been a pacifist, and recent global trends have only enforced that view. Many of my stories have an anti-war slant, theme, or reference in some way and Sui’s character and the narrative is built with that in mind.

When it comes to giant battle-cats I can’t think of many examples beyond He-Man, and if you’re riffing on something that already exists I’m not familiar with it. Where did the idea of the Zheng come from, and why contract-bound demonic cats in particular?

Exotic animal mounts are a common trope in the xianxia genre, and I’ve been playing a few games where mounts beyond the norm are available like Where Winds Meet, though I don’t have the cat mount (yet?) in that game. There are also cat mounts in World of Warcraft, etc.—if a game has a cat mount, I usually try to get it! It’s a trope that I personally love seeing in any media, and I’m also a big cat lover. Perhaps strangely, beyond the latest Masters of the Universe film I’ve actually not been much of a He-Man fan—when I was a kid I was more into She-Ra. Loved how Cringer looked in the film though!

I thought it was an interesting choice to start off with the undignified details of Taxue’s bladder and bowels, considering what’s revealed of the Zheng later in the story. What led you to start with this?

Having to help my elderly cat brush his teeth, relieve himself, then medicate and feed him is how I start my day every day caring for an older pet, so I felt like it was only natural to begin the narrative structured with the routine as well. After all this time it feels like a general extension of pet care doesn’t define what my cat means to be, however. Similarly, it’s only a routine that doesn’t define what the Zheng is to Sui, at the beginning or at the very end.

Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m always working on my next book, though this particular one has been taking a while to get going since I keep rewriting the start. Hopefully in the future readers can get that into their hands—and as always, a big thank you to everyone for reading!