I have a deep and abiding love for the transformation of older myths and stories into modern settings. In “Where the Heather Grows,” you take a classic tale of sibling rivalry and murder and twist it like a fine harp string into something unapologetically dark, where Clara begins as sympathetic and is later revealed to be nothing of the sort. Do you feel that horror or ghost stories have changed over the centuries? What is it about such tales that keep us coming back for more?

Humans have always told stories about what frightens them. Sometimes a story is the only way to process a fear, especially if it’s a fear you’ve shoved down so deep you barely remember it’s there. As someone who researches the relationship between society and stories of the fantastical and horrifying, I’m endlessly intrigued by how the nature of horror fiction changes from time to time and place to place. The Child Ballads are a great example of this, which is why I became obsessed enough with one of them to twist it to my purposes in this story: “The Cruel Sister,” also known as “Two Sisters” or “Wind and Rain.”

For those who aren’t familiar, the Child Ballads are a selection of English and Scottish folk songs collected by folklorist Francis James Child in the middle of the nineteenth century. They clearly belong to a different time and place—the language is often archaic and the characters’ choices are often so culturally influenced as to be incomprehensible to me. And yet they’re still hauntingly resonant in a way I can’t explain. Some days I think they’re fascinating because they portray troubles strikingly different from the troubles we face in the twenty-first century and some days I think they’re fascinating because they center on ultimately universal themes. If I ever figure out which one it is, I’ll let you know.

This story spans the ages with the vivid descriptions of the sounds of moving currents and disturbed water. I found it interesting how sound is both a weapon and a shield—running water, the supermarket, pinning her tongue with her fingers—and how the sound of running water blends with the song itself to reveal the murderous deed. Tell us something about the inspiration behind this interpretation of the story.

I’ve always been fascinated by rising waters. I grew up moving between Goleta, California, a minute’s walk from the Pacific Ocean, and Kolkata, India, where the monsoons regularly turn the city’s streets into rivers. More recently, I’ve been having long conversations with my mother (she’s a historian) about the role of rivers in Bengali history over the past few centuries. The swelling of rivers with rain is absolutely essential to the life and livelihood of the people around it, but rivers inevitably flood, and a sudden flood is among the most deadly and frightening things you can possibly encounter. The nature of flooding has changed over the centuries—nowadays sea level rise and erratic weather patterns contribute to riverine floods in India, for example—but flooding itself has never gone away. All those thoughts about rivers and floods and time coalesced within this story.

You are a prolific writer and researcher. Is this your first exploration into reimagining a story? Do you have a particular love of older tales or was this unexplored territory?

Believe it or not, I used to hate retellings. When I was devouring novels and short fiction as a kid, retellings of myths and fairytales were a dime a dozen, and eventually I was so overexposed to them that it didn’t matter how fresh or clever a particular retelling was, I couldn’t muster up much interest. It wasn’t just contemporary retellings that I found boring—myths and fairytales lost their sense of power and mystery for me because I’d seen them rehashed too many times.

I was only able to recover that spark of power and mystery a couple years ago, when I encountered the Child Ballads for the first time. The ballads were utterly new to me, and that meant they hit me like a truck. At turns cheerful and tragic, the Child Ballads are shockingly dark and surprisingly sensual. I was enchanted by their haunting strangeness. It was basically inevitable that I would try my hand at retelling a few of them.

I wrote a couple of truly terrible first drafts: a far-future version of “Geordie,” a science-fantasy remix of “King Orfeo,” and even a confusing mess of nonsensical fantasy worldbuilding that was supposed to be an adaptation of “The Dewy Dells of Yarrow.” It all fell flat. I only managed to write something I felt was interesting when I conceptualized the harp in “Where the Heather Grows,” which is (of course) an echo of the harp in “The Cruel Sister.” The harp was capable of holding my interest because it embodied the power the Child Ballads hold for me. Their melodies seep through time, emerge in unexpected forms, occasionally fade to a murmur—but never quite die.

How many times has Clara drowned?

You know, I have no idea? With short stories, I actively avoid knowing more about the world than what gets on the page. The more I know, the more danger there is that it’ll mutate into a novel.

If you could write a letter to young Shaoni with a word of advice about writing and their future, what would you tell them?

It’s tempting to motivate yourself based on concrete goals, especially ones that have to do with external validation. You can tell yourself that once you’ve had your first story published, you’ll be content, but the moment you reach that milestone you’ll just start looking toward the next. Soon enough you’ll start thinking that you’ll be content once you’ve been published in so-and-so magazine, or been nominated for so-and-so award, or whatever. The satisfaction of reaching those milestones is incredibly fleeting. In writing, there’s only one kind of delight that actually matters, and it’s the delight of actually writing. Stop thinking about bylines and focus on having fun inventing messed up fictional people!

What can eager fans look forward to in 2022?

I’ve got a couple short stories and poems coming out, but I’m most excited for the debut of ROGUEMAKER, an audio drama podcast that I worked on as a script editor. It’s part comedy, part hard science fiction drama, part mystery, part pandemic lockdown sort-of-metaphor and I cannot wait for y’all to find out about the twist.