What inspired you to write this story?

Nematodes. You can’t see these tiny roundworms with the naked eye. But I learned about them from Dr. Fatma Kaplan, co-founder and CEO of Pheronym. Her company developed a method of nontoxic pest control, using pheromones to control nematode behavior.

I first interviewed Dr. Kaplan in 2018 for a journalism piece. She holds a Ph.D. in plant molecular and cellular biology, with postdoctoral training in natural product chemistry (specializing in isolating biologically active compounds). Yeah, the real deal. Dr. Kaplan and her research compelled me to explore her discovery through a speculative lens. Around that same time, I’d been trying to crack a noir murder mystery idea about a journalist who gets caught up in a seductive web.

Ultimately, this story became an experiment in itself, the synthesis of hard science and soft sensuality into a new form: the sapiosexual thriller.

What was the more challenging part of writing this story?

For one thing, the erotic thriller subgenre is complicated. With modern views on sex, consent and power dynamics, I had to navigate this story with sensitivity.

But what helped was Roger Abbott’s confession.

He confided that he was attracted to Dr. Lyra Manning’s mind. The way she thought about scientific concepts and communicated ideas. This intellectual stimulation shifted the narrative away from more conventional depictions of arousal, which can minimize erotic imagination.

The key elements then came together—the fusion of chemistry and biological urges into something more subversive—revolving around the brain, the most powerful sex organ.

I find the structure of this story fascinating where the protagonist makes a disclosure in the beginning and the end display. It makes them both pitiable and menacing. What kind of character did you want to create through the form of this story?

During the writing process, I discovered this was a story about control. Before Roger Abbott was convicted, he was a jaded man. Pessimistic and hopeless. A disgraced journalist who lost his family and found himself in a pit of disillusionment.

But he wanted to share his story. His whole truth. He was desperate to tell me about his uncanny encounter with awe—how, in the presence and wonder of Dr. Manning, he also lost any illusions of control.

He asked me to hear him out, to listen to his “perspective” of what went down at that Grass Valley compound. Given the position the man was in, how could I refuse?

Is there a project you are working on currently? And if not are there any themes, objects, or news that might be tickling your fingers?

Wonder. That’s a subject that’s been on my mind lately. Right now, I’m reading Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner. He drops a lot of gems in this book, but this is a quote I’ve been reflecting on recently:

“So often, vast circumstances confine us, like a life sentence in prison or tending to people who are dying, or racist immigration law, or combat, circumstances that seem to ‘always win.’ But in recognizing the vastness of such fates, that we are ‘a tiny speck’ in a ‘huge place,’ we can find a ‘freeing feeling’ and even an urge to build ‘real joy for all people.’ We so often experience transformative awe in the hardest of circumstances.”

The truth of the matter is, we’re all basically nematodes—tiny creatures in a huge space. And in uncertain times such as these, it seems, if you don’t seek awe, it will find you, one way or another.