Your contribution to Obsidian blends cosmic scale with intimate human vulnerability. What sparked the initial idea?
While everything in this story is an original work, I very much consider it a fanfic. There was a string of Sam Neill movies (and one miniseries) in the 90s that had an oversized role in shaping my interests, and one of those was Event Horizon. In the movie, the title ship bores a hole in space and enters what is essentially Hell, or at least a dimension very like it. We get so few glimpses into that dimension in the actual movie, and I’ve always wanted more of it. So I created my own. Flesh Soft as Memory is a story that takes place on the other side. What if you went to Hell and brought your own baggage along with you? What if you were forced to confront that baggage while you were there?
How do you approach building tension in a setting where the environment itself is already hostile and overwhelming?
Space comes with a lot of tension built in. Everything around you can kill you. The pressure of millions of miles of nothingness is ever-present, and your characters are completely alone. Throw in a ticking clock and you’ve got enough tension to cut with a knife.
Many of the anthology’s stories deal with the fragility of the human psyche. How did you interpret that theme in your own way?
I enjoy writing about loss, and the ways people deal with it. I never want to start with an Emotionally Whole character, because that’s not how life works. It takes little bites out of us, bit by bit. I start with characters who have already had a lot of emotional damage dealt to them and see how they react when circumstances pile the stress ever-higher. This story could have been longer, but I wanted to pare it down and focus on the beats that applied that pressure. It’s nonstop, and I enjoy it that way.
What role does technology play in your story — as salvation, threat, or something more ambiguous?
My technology is only lightly defined and used mostly as set dressing. I don’t think this is a flaw, as it serves its purpose well. The very first scene begins with amniotic sacs that literally birth my protagonist into the ship, acting as a method of suspension and protection from the transit dimension. I wanted it to be weird, do its job, and get out of the way. In that way, there are technologies in this story that match all three of those. Salvation, threat, and other more ambiguous tech,
Did you draw inspiration from any particular sci‑fi traditions, authors, or subgenres when crafting your piece?
Obviously we are amalgamations of everything we’ve ever read, watched, experienced, but there were a few key inspirations for this story. Event Horizon, yes, but also Warhammer 40k, and any number of books about fungi and cold sleep. The works of SA Barnes are what I was reading when I started the writing process.
How do you keep your characters grounded and relatable when placing them in such extreme, otherworldly circumstances?
Every character brings themselves into the story. The technology is weird, the situation is unbelievable, but the characters are 100% human. I think when everything else in a story is wholly alien, it is important to have characters that adhere to reality as we know it. These are flawed characters just trying to get through.
If readers take away one lingering question or feeling from your story, what do you hope it is?
I don’t want them to be sad or disappointed. The end is conflicting, but I think there is a certain kind of joy in it, whether that feels appropriate or not. The joy of doing what feels right, even if it is objectively terrifying.
What was the most surprising discovery you made about your story or characters during the writing process?
This story went through several versions in the planning stage, some of them completely different from where it ended up. There were versions without a monster, without a lover, without the fungus. Each had something interesting, though, and by combining those points of interest I found a whole thread of story I would not otherwise have explored. That’s writing, though, isn’t it? You start writing, and no matter what your plan is at the outset, you will discover the real story along the way.
If your story were adapted into another medium — film, audio drama, graphic novella — what element would you be most excited to see translated?
I think this story has a lot of great imagery in the Hellshit, the amniotic sacs, the Watcher. It could really be amazing as a graphic novel, and I would love to see someone bring it new life someday. That would be a HUGE bingo square.
What future projects or themes are you eager to explore after this anthology?
Sometime in the past two years I started focusing almost entirely on horror, and specifically weird horror. Right now I am playing pretty loose with my plans, but whatever happens I want to write weird stories. I want to make people uncomfortable, and I want to show people beauty in things that disgust them.
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