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.

While I was writing this story, I was thinking about this infuriating trend wherein women are expected to conform to beauty standards, but the products and industries and practices that they use to conform to those beauty standards are dismissed as frivolous and stupid. That line of thinking brought me back to fairy tales. In my view, the modern tendency to sneer at fashion and makeup while still expecting women to conform in certain ways is connected with the old trope in folktales where women are supposed to be passively beautiful.