Welcome to Fantasy Magazine! We’re so pleased to bring your story “The Dead Return in Strange Shapes” to our readers. Can you tell us how this story came to be?

Thanks! I’m thrilled to be a part of Fantasy Magazine!

I started writing “The Dead Return in Strange Shapes” during the summer, when I was in the middle of my Elden Ring playthrough. Elden Ring is a game steeped in obscure, surreal lore that must be pieced together from a combination of environmental storytelling and stylized dialogue.

I was particularly inspired by the gods’ complicated family dynamics and the recurring motif of dual identities (so many of the characters are two individuals who collectively form a single entity). I wanted to try to capture a snapshot of this in my own work, which led to my considering the following questions: How would conflicts between the gods affect the lives of others? How can I explore the duality between an identity created by mythology and an identity created by lived experiences?

Also, I decided to make the ghosts look like animals, because that’s cool.

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

Usually when I draft a short story, I start with the dialogue and gradually build up more of the narration and description. This story absolutely took that to the extreme. The plot is primarily driven by a single conversation, which is complemented by Liosse and Thais’ pilgrimage, as opposed to the action being complemented by the dialogue.

As a result, the dialogue flowed very naturally. But in the early stages of the draft, it felt like the characters were simply telling us the story rather than actually experiencing the story in front of the reader. I recognized that I was writing the story this way because so many character-defining moments occurred in the past, to be recalled later—in many ways, we find both Liosse and Thais at the end of their stories, and we’re only able to witness bits and pieces of the beginning and middle. Ultimately, this structure works to reinforce the overall atmosphere of grief and inevitability, but I ended up doing multiple rounds of edits to balance the expository dialogue with character action that’s engaging and narratively impactful.

What authors or stories have most influenced your work?

My writing is influenced by the works of Roger Zelazny, Junji Ito, and Mary Renault. In fact, Zelazny is the first author that inspired me to write short fiction. I still remember picking his anthologies out of my dad’s book collection. (I know I mentioned Elden Ring previously, but no, George R. R. Martin is not usually on my list of inspirations).

Are there themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

Many of my stories return to the theme of consumption as love. My characters form relationships that are unusual, dysfunctional, and removed from the human experience in ways that I find fascinating.

Liosse and Aima are a great example of this. Both are creatures that are uncomfortably close to humanity but still distinctly removed from it. When writing characters like this, I like to question every assumption I’ve made about them. Conformity to social mores, normal behavior, and even emotional responses are all assumptions made based on how people act in the real world. These assumptions that don’t necessarily make sense for characters in a fantasy setting. Liosse and Aima’s relationship more closely resembles that between predator and prey, but even this metaphor isn’t entirely grounded in reality: The antelope’s behavior is an intentional subversion of expectations, and one that I hope instills a sense of uneasiness in the reader.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m currently drafting a science fiction novelette about a species of bird that has evolved to live in space. The birds are used by humans for exploratory navigation, but our main character—a pilot trained to work with these birds—suspects that her bird is attempting to communicate with her. The story explores the ethicality behind the captivity of an animal that may have human-like intelligence, told through the lens of those entangled in this system of exploitation. I’m very excited about this project, and I’m even more excited to see where the story leads me.