The stories that I’m most proud of are the ones that have been written for a specific reason beyond “hey, here’s an idea.” As part of my writer’s journey, I’ve been gathering my thoughts on what inspired those stories. These thoughts are going to be released as part of a project that frames each story, but I thought I’d share them here, too.

The Maiden Voyage of Novyy Mir (written 2015)

In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine, taking possession of Crimea. Frustrated by the lack of any real response from the Obama administration, I started thinking about what Russia might want in return for leaving Crimea peacefully. One idea stood out: A head start on their space program, perhaps an orbital platform around the moon. That planted the seeds for this story. Obviously, history hasn’t gone that way, preferring violence, as it often does.

Last Breath Day (written 2017)

I rarely write in the first person, yet this has been my most successful story, being reprinted in three different publications (one each in the US, the UK and Australia). One reason I avoid writing in the first person is because of the very real limit that the protagonist can’t die if they’re the narrator. In this story I played against that assumption to see how I’d handle it.

Sylvester, Down (written 2016)

This was a fun story to write. I wanted to explore both non-linear storytelling (which this story starts with, but then abandons) and the trope of withholding crucial information from the reader, basically creating a twist. Then, me being me, I named the ship Sylvester to drop a clue about the twist.

Graceful Degradation (written 2017)

When I worked in UX design, we always talked about escalators and how they best represented the idea of graceful degradation – even when they broke down they could still fulfil their function of giving access to a different floor. I liked the idea of applying some kind of graceful degradation to music, and the seeds of this story were born.

Dee, for the Win (written 2016)

As a former teacher, I’ve met many cocky, completely unselfaware kids. I anted to write one. I was already developing a cocky adult character for a story, so the leap of telling a story from his childhood wasn’t to far to jump.

Death vs Taxes (written 2015)

Please read this story twice. A guiding principle of my story creation process is that stories should read differently the second time. This is one of my first efforts at that. Everything that Death says has a different meaning once you know what he knows.

The Mating Rituals of Clouds (written 2019)

More than just a story of a secretive alien invasion, this story was one where I wanted to play around with narrative voice. The alien’s perspective is always told in the second person singular (for plot reasons). The humans’ perspectives are always told in third person omniscient. The epilogue is told in first person plural(!).

For now, that’s it. I hooe you enjoyed these insights into how my mind works. As I go deeper into my back catalogue, I may post more reflections here.