Welcome to Fantasy Magazine! We’re so happy to bring your poignant story “The Typewriter” to our readers. Can you tell us how this story came to be?

This story began in a prompt writing event run by my lovely fiancée and writer Lindz McLeod. This particular exercise gave us sentences to incorporate into a free-form 5-7 minute prompt. I remember the initial sentence provided: “The sun always draped itself over the left armrest of the couch at 5am.” This inspired a heady, haunted feeling in me. I immediately thought of a woman sitting in her apartment, in between night and day. From here, and the few other sentences given (which were just starting points and were ultimately not in my final version), I had the first page of a story which I edited and changed until I had the premise for this story.

Writing is often a process of cannibalizing our own lives and the lives of others for material—memories, overheard conversations, or (in Sadie and Zella’s case) old family photos can all turn up in a story in obscure ways. Are there experiences or prompts that you return to often for inspiration?

I find I often return to images of light at sunrise and sunset; to descriptions of dusty rooms; to the tension between a hesitant and interior main character encountering some bolder or more mysterious person/presence. I often am inspired by images used by Romantic poets.

What was the most challenging part of writing this story? What came easiest?

I think the most challenging part was figuring out the progression and ending. The set up (per usual) came more easily, as I was swept up in the imagery, tone, and idea of a supernatural element in the neighbor. However, I was not sure how exactly the neighbor would manifest her magic/possession/influence. Was she a spirit? A ghost? A demon? I am still not sure, but I figured out how to weave together the photographs, the typewriter’s hypnotic rhythm, the dreams, the story that the neighbor is writing and the main character’s life situation and repression.

So many people have creative ambitions that they’ve given up on, whether due to family, career, or circumstance. What advice would you give to anyone like Zella who is waiting for the perfect moment—or permission from their personal Sadie—to begin?

I think oppressive expectations and self-criticism, and the negative emotions associated with these, are the main deterrents to beginning writing. We have many obligations and demands we prioritize and manage on a daily basis because we have to, because they are habits, because we don’t have expectation/emotion tied up with these items, and because we often value what is expected/imposed on us as inherently more worthy of our time and sacrifice. Writing can be easy when we are more fair with ourselves. Fifty words here, a fun poem here, a line jotted down here. But we have these massive inhibitions, like Zella, because we feel all this negative stuff when we go to write. Shame, guilt, anxiety, our assumptions, others’ assumptions, etc. So, if we can self-soothe, be self-compassionate, be self-validating, and be gentle with ourselves, that is more motivating than anything else.

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

I have a short story and poem upcoming in a wonderful anthology, The Dark Side of Purity, as well as a flash fiction piece about Big Bird in Bear Creek Gazette.

I am finishing up my second novel, a speculative/literary hybrid with a working title of either Moonbitch or Earthshine. I will be doing a commissioned performance for the Scottish Storytelling Centre at the end of November 2022.