Kali was actually created out of body parts of different Hindu gods. They were unable to defeat a powerful demon themselves, so they each contributed a body part, which came with that god’s greatest power or weapon, and created Kali. But they hadn’t anticipated how powerful she would be now that she had all their powers (duh). She was a wrecking ball. An unstoppable force of destruction.

In our society, we valorize dissent. We’re literally taught in school that if one man refuses to knuckle under, then the entire world can change. That’s also a key element of so many fantasy stories. But it’s just not true. Oftentimes, you lose. The problem is, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know if you’ll win or lose. You don’t know what courage is. So it’s impossible to know, ahead of time, what’s the right thing to do.

I’m a psycholinguist who’s also a first language speaker of a language (Hungarian) that often defies received wisdom about “language universals.” A lot of “facts which are true of all languages” simply do not hold for Hungarian. I am less of an expert about emotions, but my knowledge of languages has in general made me skeptical of claims of cognitive universals. All the research that I mention in the story is real.

Growing up in Malaysia, really, and listening to the usual doctrine. The wife is an asset, an advantageous acquisition for the husband’s family. She has to be. Because otherwise, what’s the point of her? There’s definitely a growing awareness of women’s rights in the country, but a lot of the older generation still subscribe to the idea that women are almost property. And you do see its impact on men of my generation

 I’m fascinated by stage magic. There’s definitely a similarity between stage magic and fiction, not just in the reliance on the audience to suspend disbelief, but also in the power of misdirection. Writers choose what readers see, and when they see it. What’s background or set, what detail will be important to the story? We control the timing of what is revealed when, and if we do it right, we reward the careful reader. Style is just one of the tools.