When I was travelling into a library in Manchester researching the Napoleonic Wars for Dream Paris, it occurred to me that I was living on the edge of a city that had gone through these changes in the nineteenth century and I’d not been writing about it. Since then, it seems like I’ve walked the length and breadth of the city’s streets thinking about fantasy stories. I’ve filled Evernote with notes and pictures. Now I just need the characters to populate those backdrops . . .

 I think this is probably the closest to “hard” science fiction of any story I’ve written. As I said above, my understanding of the physics here is pretty spotty, so my apologies to any scientists who spot something wrong! And a fun personal fact that made it into this story: my deep and hopefully irrational fear of losing my wedding ring.

Reconciliation, to me, in its meaning of “to bring back together,” implies that all parties have openly communicated with each other to restore relations. It implies a kind of forgiveness, and releasing each other from the past. I imagine some people will see a relationship between mother and daughter worth salvaging. I do not subscribe to the notion that it is necessary, or even desirable, to tidy up one’s relationship to one’s parents according to common wisdom of what that relationship should be.

Sometimes readers want to hear that a story is autobiographical, sometimes (understandably) they don’t; and sometimes they’d really rather have the writer shut up and write more stories—which is probably what he should indeed do. But since you ask and since it’s important to me where stories come from, I should go ahead and say that I lived in a magical village just like the one in “Ink” when I was David’s age. By “magical,” I don’t mean just the feeling of it; I mean literal events.

“An Inflexible Truth” grew out of my love for the conspiracy thriller genre—especially those classics from the 1970s, with an intrepid hero who gets wind of systemic corruption and undertakes to expose it. There’s an implicit, compelling momentum to that kind of tale, as the protagonist’s knowledge of the world’s hidden evil grows. But I also find it psychologically interesting, because the protagonist is usually so isolated and outnumbered by a hidden reality he doesn’t quite grasp.