We’re honoured to share your story “A Week at the Raven Feather Salon” with our readers. Can you talk a bit about how this story took shape and what inspirations fed into it?

This is one of those cases where the story has a very specific inspiration. I’m lucky to have the Denver Art Museum in my area. I’m a member and I try to go as often as I can, particularly to see the special exhibits. A couple of years ago, the museum featured an exhibit, Her Brush: Japanese Women Artists from the Fong-Johnstone Collection, that was so inspiring. The art itself, but also how it was presented, is full of context and meaning. I learned about the Floating World, a kind of “pleasure district” that was a focus of art, theater, and sex work. A display of tanzaku, slips of paper containing poetry and calligraphy, really stayed with me.

Here’s the online guide to the exhibit that gives you some idea: denverartmuseum.org/en/her-brush-companion-guide

I confess to engaging in some appropriation here, taking these ideas and transforming them for my own fantasy world. I loved the idea of a community of women focused on art, and that art having real, sought-after power in this world.

Often I’m hoping for stories to start accelerating as soon as they begin, but here I found the slow deliberateness of the story’s first quarter to be unexpectedly comforting, as if I was luxuriating in the salon like a customer would. What led you to structure the story this way?

The setting is such a big part of the story, and I really wanted to lead readers into it, to convey the idea that this is a refuge, its own world. Envelop the reader in that sense of calm and magic, to make them feel a part of this community. I think I had to establish the setting before I did anything else in the story, so the rest of it would make sense.

I wasn’t halfway through before the warmth of this story enfolded me with its love of skilled creative work. Its mention of the importance of learning “the work for its own sake, and not for the power they thought it would bring them” immediately made me think of LLM prompters. Were you hoping readers would approach it this way, or did you have something else in mind?

Not specifically, but now that you bring it up, I can see that. But I think this is true of any work that requires practice and skill, and doesn’t have immediate rewards. Playing an instrument, painting, sculpting. And definitely writing. You have to love the process, because those tangible rewards that come with success aren’t always guaranteed. I’ve heard the same thing about elite-level sports—people who want to be successful need to really love what they’re doing. It’s the only thing that makes it all worthwhile.

For all that the stakes are high in the background—the aftermath of a war, the fate of a country—I found it fascinating how even the story’s climax made catching a spy feel like a calm whisper. Given how the real world is more like an endless, terrified yell, was setting out to provide an alternative a goal you had from the beginning for this story, or was it a case of the moment rising to meet it?

I think Sparrow’s whole philosophy is looking for alternatives to direct confrontation. And using the tools at her disposal, which includes the serenity of her salon. As a writer, I think I’m also always looking for alternatives, for unexpected ways to resolve stories, to work against the tropes and story beats that people might be expecting in a story like this. I’ve never been a fan of direct, violent resolutions in my work. That plays out here.

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?

Readers who want to know more about Sparrow: I have a prequel story about her that tells some of the background alluded to here. “A War of Dust and Feathers” is in Brigid’s Sisters: The Art of Elizabeth Leggett, accompanied by Elizabeth’s wonderful artwork.

The novels I’m working on now are historical fantasy, about an alternate world where binomial nomenclature grants powers to certain people studying the natural sciences. The Naturalist Society came out last year, and the sequel, The Glass Slide World, will be out in October.