This is the story about moving to a very unusual house. What’s the weirdest place you ever lived?

Uh, I guess a little apartment in a doya-gai neighborhood in Yokohama. My partner is 6’5”, so multiply all the funny “tall guy in Japan” stories you know by all the “big guy in an ancient and tiny apartment” stories, and that was our life. The area was yakuza-run, which you mostly didn’t have to think about during the day-to-day, and then once in a while something would happen to remind you very sharply.

So, I had to Google “Garth Marenghi,” the horror show/character the cat is named for. (And clearly, I need to watch more British television!) What made you pick that name, and what other offbeat horror shows or movies should I be watching?

Wow, I wish I had some cool recommendations, but I’m one of those people who responded to pandemic stress by deep-diving comfort watches. You wanna live tweet season 2 Deep Space 9 episode “The Rivals”? I’m there! Are you engaging with hip and challenging content that’s helping you grow artistically? I’m, uh . . . still watching The Rivals, oops.

For me, one of the creepiest elements of this story was all the dead little birds. They’re sort of an unusual touch in a story that’s mostly focused on the indoors. Do you know how you came up with them?

We have a mink, numerous house cats, hawks, coyotes, foxes, and owls as regular visitors on our thoroughly suburban (but adequately wooded, apparently) property, so I find pieces of dead animals on the reg. It’s not always unsettling . . . but it usually is.

What’s the biggest home improvement project you’ve ever tackled?

My construction know-how starts and stops at the “redecorate a room” level.

Do you think you’ll ever write a novel? Please say yes. If not, please alleviate my sadness with updates about other writing projects you’ve got simmering right now.

I’d like to! I really like the idea of writing a novel. Hell, I really like the idea of writing at all. Hopefully one of these days I’ll do it regularly again?