I think it started out in my head with the scene where the eyeball falls out of Muniza’s socket, and this almost sitcom style uh-oh moment where there’s just the worst person in the world witnessing that. The shame of falling apart while under intense, unsympathetic scrutiny. Then I got to thinking: what are the emotional stakes of that situation?

I like grimy stuff. Dirty, menacing, quick-witted exchanges between folks. I like crime fiction and horror that refuses to get world-rending, to get huge, that sticks to singular people. I love writing shakedowns, and that’s what happens to Chuck in that first scene. He’s got a need, and that need gets exploited

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.

Extreme wealth seems to function as mental illness for many people, as it depends on a dehumanisation of everyone else to normalise the excess (like that hit documentary series, Succession). Perhaps it’s entitlement to power; perhaps it’s losing the perspective to see how unreal life becomes.