Here’s some advice for other writers but also advice for myself: don’t care so much about pleasing everyone with your writing. Know that some people are going to like what you write and some people are not going to like what you write and that’s okay. Remember a person’s opinion of a story or a book generally says more about their reading preferences than about the quality of the story or the book. Also leave positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon for the books you love. And if you read something you love, drop the author a line and let them know.

This is where the interviewee wishes he could report that the book currently in hand is a work of unparalleled genius. Alas, it is not. I am fortunately also reading the current issue of Pulphouse # 18 and enjoying it thoroughly.

The initial framework for this story came from me thinking about the Little Mermaid fairy tale and wondering what her story would look like if turning into a human wasn’t a deal or a choice but rather a transformation she was always destined to go through. How would that gradual change play out and affect her, her family and community? I had also been thinking about the old movie: Creature from the Black Lagoon and how poignant the underwater scenes in that movie are. The creature is such a lonely figure and his loneliness comes across without any words.

Food replicators have always bothered me. I get that for us to enjoy watching a bunch of people who are actually on a soundstage pretend they’re traveling through space, we have to shorthand a few technological advances—artificial gravity and inertial dampeners come to mind—but instant food on demand is the only thing that nobody ever really tries to explain, and the one that most functions like magic. I decided I wanted to work out how a scientific explanation for the replicators would actually play out.

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?