This is not the first story in this world or with these characters. Is your approach to writing a new Churchlands story different from writing a standalone story? How did this one come about?

I write all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, but any time I set a story in or near the Churchlands, the priority is emotional honesty. I want the Churchlands stories to feel familiar to people who’ve worked themselves out of similar situations or wish they could. So I make it all as real as I can, take it as seriously as I can, as a matter of respect.

“Crickets in Lost Light” grew from a few seeds. I’d often tried to write a story about generic looters in the Mount and Blade sense. I wanted more room to explore Liste’s agency and Carmora’s realization that the way he thinks is even more difficult to change than his allegiance. The scriptural quotes, the little two-line paradoxes, took the most work of all, and how I wrote those is its own story.

“Crickets in Lost Light” takes place on the edges of a land under an authoritarian rule, something that seems all too topical right now. How does approaching authoritarianism through fiction allow you to engage with it and critique it differently than writing nonfiction?

Most nonfiction on the subject has a shelf life. If I’m going to write in a way that will still feel true to me next year, I lean in to how people feel impacted by an institution—as they understand it, and themselves, at a point in time. That’s a level of personal subjectivity I’m happy to explore in fiction but won’t be publishing in memoir. (I will say that Dr. Tara Westover’s Educated informed the Churchlands stories’ emphasis on “Here’s how I felt about it and why; this was my reality.”)

This story features a visceral and thrilling fight scene. How do you go about choreographing a scene like that?

The closest I came to choreography was knowing that Carmora needed to get knocked on his butt. I’d also been looking at how economically and un-valiantly a Canadian First World War vet named R.T.M. Scott wrote about brutality in Weird Tales. Mostly I just ran with the familiar sensory palette of shoveling slop in the rain.

As you write more interconnected stories with these characters, can you share with us how you manage your world-building and story continuity?

I keep basic lists of characters with accoutrements and identifying marks, as well as sketched maps, but my main tool is a handwritten flow chart. I’ve done several versions. It has three columns: the Churchlands, the adjacent Five Deserts setting, and their intersection. My main Churchlands/Five Deserts characters weave their way down the columns in different colors, bumping into each other and taking turns as protagonist, opposition, employer, love interest, foil, regret.

Finally, what’s next for Carmora, Liste, the Churchlands, and you?

I wrote an Ander Carmora novelette, “Fletcher’s Flights,” coming soon from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Once that’s out, I’ll have ten Churchlands/Five Deserts stories in print. I have a weird high-concept Liste Bluelark story (written exclusively to Queen) in the works, among others. I’m also excited to say that one of my Five Deserts stories, “On Slate and Skin,” will be in Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction.