It seemed a beautiful image of sunlight made solid, of the fact that food is sunlight. At the beginning of the story, Alan reflects that the light of the sun is still present, even in the darkness, in the energy that’s fuelling his and Jan’s bodies as they break into the lab. In a way, he’s already made of light.

I think that ultra-specialization will continue to be the trend until advances in AI/robotics begin to surpass all human abilities, at which point we will all be generalists again because there will be no point in devoting your life to a single narrow occupation (like writing!) just to be half as good as a machine. I’d also note that the benefits of specialization may outweigh the costs. My short story is a dystopia, but that may only be because it doesn’t show all of the benefits of specialization.

I wrote the first paragraph last. It was important to get the reader grounded quickly: This is genre, this is about women, this is not going to have a happy ending. I wanted to instil the reader with a sense of foreboding, because the narrator already knows what she’s about to tell you.

I love the most unlikely characters in any giving adventuring group. The one who isn’t the strongest or most powerful, who doesn’t have any particular talents and skills.

I love his stories where the whole nature of perceived reality turns out to be untrue. I’m also interested in meta-fiction, where there’s usually a rupture in the text, a place where the story is no longer what you thought you were reading. It’s a version of the same device, only one is inside the story, and the other is outside.

It’s my own tongue-in-cheek response to the current state of the paranormal romance subgenre. I want to love paranormal romances, but I feel like that subgenre takes itself overly seriously, and by doing so has limited the types of paranormal romances that it could explore.