How did you get the idea for this story?
This story was a combination of wanting to write about a strange, ancient island protected by witches, a haunted house, and a bizarre queer romance. I believe I was reading Cassandra Khaw’s haunted house novella, Nothing But Blackened Teeth, and thought to myself, “Hmmn, I don’t think I’ve ever written a haunted house story.” I’d already been playing around with an idea about witches who functioned as protectors against these spiritual forces called omens (I don’t remember what started that idea) and figured I could combine the two. I’m pretty sure I still have a Post-It somewhere in my bedside table on which is scribbled in near-indecipherable handwriting “the witch falls in love with a GHOST,” that I think I wrote around 3 am one night when this story was just starting to float around in my head. That might be the only time I actually used an idea I wrote down in the middle of the night while half-asleep.
Did any other writers or creators inspire you to explore this subject?
Though I don’t know if I’d call it inspiration, not long before I wrote this story, I watched Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film Promising Young Woman for the first time. There is a lot I could say about how much I hated the ending. To save time and spoilers, I’ll just say that for a few months after I saw it, that film inspired me to write several angry, feminist revenge narratives that ended the way that one should have.
What was the creative process for the narrative timeline in this story? For me, the way you elegantly shifted from past to present was reminiscent of Tarantino’s work.
The timeline was definitely the hardest part. I usually write very linearly—in fact, early drafts of this story were in chronological order. I didn’t get very far in those drafts before I knew the narrative wasn’t working, so I tossed those drafts completely and started over. I was partly inspired by Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, which I’d just read. I admired how seamlessly Mandel slips between timelines in her work, a narrative style I ended up approximating in a concentrated form. While I was writing this version of the story, I didn’t pay attention to order at all, just wrote each section as I thought of it. Once I had most of the sections written, I printed out the story and cut the pages into sections. Then I taped the sections to a wall and moved them around until I was satisfied with the order. I did this a few times, adding or deleting sections as I saw the need. Not my usual method!
Is it possible we will see more of these characters in future stories? I’m curious about how they’ll confront the small god and omens.
As of right now, I don’t have any plans for these particular characters. (I know, the “Preamble” part of the title is misleading!) However, I’ve since started working on a longer project set at a different time in the same world, which will definitely include omens and small gods!
On the first read, the description of the small god’s arrival and the banishment of the people’s way of life brought an instant comparison Western Christianity’s imperialistic treatment of other with religions. Was that an influence to your creative process?
I typed out and then deleted several answers to this question, all of which ended up devolving into a rant about colonization and the Christian theology of salvation, which I think somewhat answers your question. Anyway, I’ll just say that I grew up in a very devout, evangelical Christian household, and I left evangelicalism in my early twenties. I left, probably unsurprisingly, while getting a degree in postcolonial literature, because you can only read so much about the history of British imperialism before you start to question what all those white missionaries whose biographies you pored over as a twelve-year-old were really up to. I didn’t have a particular incident in mind when I wrote this story, but both my research in and my personal experience with Western Christianity seem to influence everything I write whether I want them to or not, even in stories about sapphic witches in haunted houses. Maybe especially then.
What is next for you? Also, with so much skill utilizing description and emotion, are you interested in poetry at all?
While I enjoy occasionally reading poetry, I haven’t written any in probably five or six years, though I used to. My ideas are rarely poetry-shaped these days, but maybe I’ll get back to it eventually! For the moment, other than several short stories at various points in the pipeline, I’ve got a novella and a novel in progress that I’m hoping to have completely finished by the end of the year.
