How did “Her Five Farewells” originate? What inspirations did you draw on?

The seed this story sprang from was a question I asked myself: what would a coffin look like to immortals who had never experienced death but were about to? Throughout human history, we’ve had myriad answers for how to honor our dead and what to do with their remains. As this story started sprouting from that first question, I wanted to challenge myself on a worldbuilding and narrative level. Why have these people never died before? What exactly has brought about death for the first time in their history? And what display of death does Mr. Chrym decide on in this story to have the impact it needs for both the reader and the people within it? I was inspired by various forms of funeral rites and interment, the lifecycle and ecosystem of plants, the role of psychopomps in history and mythology, and fell in love with the sort of fungal/biopunk aesthetic that helped inform the Exechar. Along the way, the story began to interrogate, challenge, and dismantle ideas that drive imperialism, colonialism, tyranny, and more, and hopefully celebrate community, freedom, and collective grief as well as collective healing.

What is your writing process like? Did this story fit the pattern?

My writing process is very much in the vein of building my parachute on the way down, except I’m also drafting the blueprints of said parachute while plummeting through the sky and quickly swapping in different color swatches and types of fabrics, “you know, just to see how it feels,” as the ground rushes toward me.

Often, the ground symbolizes a deadline for submission or my own skewed sense of timing and confidence. “Her Five Farewells” absolutely fit the pattern, alas, and I’m grateful for writer and friend Manish Melwani for critiquing this story very quickly and asking incredibly pertinent questions in record time, helping this story achieve its final form. In the metaphor, Manish acted as a huge red X on the ground, shouting, “Your parachute is useless if you land badly and shatter both of your kneecaps, narratively speaking!” So I’m very grateful for his keen eye and mind; if you want to read some damn good stories, go check out his work, (I’m partial to “The Plague Puller,” at Nightmare Magazine and “The Dominion of Leviathan,” at Tor.com).

Where are you in this story?

Just a heads-up, friends, this answer deals pretty heavily with death, dying, and cancer. For about seven months, I watched my grandmother die from pancreatic cancer in 2012. Just before graduating college, I got a call about her diagnosis. No one was saying terminal, but in their speaking around it, its shape became clear. Discussions of chemo and treatments turned into statements of, “You should get up to Massachusetts and try to see her,” and “Yeah, it’s not looking great, sooner is better than later,” and all those things we say when we know death is in the room, as though it can’t hear us if we whisper. We spoke on the phone a lot, her and I, and we saw each other when we could. Death is a different beast when it takes its time as opposed to suddenly, though its teeth are still as sharp.

The pain and struggle of my grandmother’s dying, of Dorothy’s slow march into death’s embrace, is alive in the Asphodel Queen. What’s also in this story is the love she had for her immense, beautiful family, the love the two of us exchanged throughout the first twenty-two years of my life, and the dignity, acceptance, and grace that she exhibited in those last few months alongside the abysmal pain and torturous waiting for the end. Sometimes, all we can do is say goodbye and thank someone for holding us in their hearts. The act of witnessing alchemizes at the touch of grief and becomes remembrance. That is where I am in this story, and I can only hope I honored my grandmother’s journey well and paid good tribute to the queen of our family.

What would be your advice for other writers?

Finish your work. Read broadly and for fun, as much as you read specifically and for growth. Challenge yourself to write something goofy as hell or totally outside your norm. Join a book club or a writing group or an intramural sports league. Take inspiration from a butterfly, and then take inspiration from a billboard you see in the middle of nowhere encouraging you to rent a small crane. Finish your work. Set a deadline, blow past it, and then set another deadline, and try to only blow past it by a little this time. Write a story in 2000 words. Write a story in a sentence. Watch the moon for a little too long and begrudgingly agree that the poets were right and she is a source of endless celebration. Finish your goddamn work, please do it. And breathe. Remember to breathe. You are a writer. A good one, too. Stop putting pressure on yourself and remember that at the end of the day, you should enjoy writing. Enjoy the work. Everything is going to be okay, I promise. Just keep writing.

What are you working on lately? Where else can fans look for your work?

This has been a rather busy year for me! Between September 2021 through September 2022, I’ve published six new short stories in the SF/F world. It’s very surreal and I’m very grateful after three years of not publishing any short fiction. You can find a list of my work at my website (bit.ly/MCahill), and if you’re so moved to read other works of mine, please know I’m grateful and I hope you enjoy them.

I’ve also recently finished a time traveling trickster god novella that I hope to find a home for soon. In the meantime, I’m continuing work on a new novel in progress which gives consciousness to a piece of rather large architecture and excoriates toxic, late-stage capitalism with a brass aesthetic and robot chefs, so I’m having a lot of fun with it. Otherwise, I’m just continually tinkering on new short stories and flash fiction, and I’ve recently taken up game design, so plenty to keep me busy and hopefully will have some fun things to announce in the near future! Thank you all so much for reading; I’m immensely grateful for each and every one of you.