I was thinking a lot about bodies when I wrote this story, in particular that being infected by or being turned into a zombie is an enforced physical and mental change, a concept that borrows from the Haitian zombie history. I was wondering how a character who has changed his body would react to being in this world where an enforced change is possible from a terrifying exterior source. My character is also used to hiding, to navigating unsafe spaces, which reflects the unfortunate reality that many queer and trans people experience on a daily basis.

Good horror movies are thinner on the ground than good written horror, in part because some of the folks who make them think sadism is enough. (More so, in recent years.) What I want from them is what I want in all good stories: an interesting perspective, a reason to care, a lack of compromise . . . and because the genre presents this pitfall, best avoided, a lack of nihilism for its own sake.

It’s been close to eight years since I last visited Puerto Rico. Since then, so much has changed, including the destruction that occurred because of Hurricane Maria. I’ve had so many conversations with my father regarding places that have disappeared, plazas completely missing because of the hurricane. When I was writing “Crave” I wanted to try to remember the smells of the island on my first visit at five years old. The island was in so many ways a magical place for me, so outside of the concrete jungle I grew up in in the Bronx, New York.

One of my favorite words is chiaroscuro. I adore black and white films and the specific structure and design that goes into filming for that style, especially noir—and on the other hand, I also love super-rich-color-palette visual eye-feasts that are also abundant. So when it comes to my writing, I think I have a mix of intuitive flow and very specific, controlled architecture. (Great descriptors, by the way! I really like those.) I often think of stories in word clusters that evoke a style, or mood, or texture: so like, for “Mr. Try Again,” the words were vicious, teeth-filled, frigid.