To be human is to be afraid constantly, if not for yourself at that moment, then for someone you care about deeply. Anyone who’s been a parent, or even a pet owner, or a caregiver, knows constant anxiety. Only the very naive, young and lavishly entitled—or hardcore addicts—live without fear. The most effective horror story captures this sense of constant dread, the anxieties of everyday living, the fear of being victimized by a changing political situation, of being run over while crossing the street, losing a loved one to a terrorist attack or natural disaster.

It sounds like you got from the story exactly what I was trying to evoke! I think the story has several creative roots, but one of the main ones is thinking about what the cap of a Redcap would actually be like. They’re often illustrated with bright red caps, naturally. But if they’re really, actually, dipping their caps in blood as the stories say they do, the cap wouldn’t be red at all. It would be dark, brownish, sticky, dripping, possibly covered in flies, and very stinky. So I wanted to write a story about that. And the fear that the really old fairy stories reference.

I remember reading a newspaper article when I was young about a family who chained their daughter to the radiator because they believed she was possessed. The story stayed with me all those years and I tried to imagine what that would be like if the roles were reversed, if a teenager had to do that to their parents. What types of choices would that young person have to make when their parents are no longer able to parent?

I grew up in the Caribbean. My family is from the Caribbean. It is home for me. It will always feel like home. I find that even in memory I know it more intimately than anywhere else I’ve been. I’m also just really interested in the Caribbean as a place: its complicated relationship with colonialism, its unique relationship with race, its particular prejudices, its variation. I mostly write about the Virgin Islands because it is what I know, but I have family from all over the Caribbean, so I feel connected to those places as well. When I write about other places, I often bring that Caribbean perspective to those locales.

I was in choir from elementary school up into my first year of college. I was a first soprano through and through. Music is one of my passions; I enjoy listening to orchestra, Broadway, video game and animation music. If you want to win me over, tell me what you think of Hamilton or Undertale. In addition, I trained in the basics of violin playing.

I have a fascination with insect hive populations and mega-colonies and their various forms of communication, and I’ve always wondered if at some point, insects will figure out a way to manipulate humans into becoming walking bone radios or wetware smart phones or whatever it is they need us to be. And I think of insects as wholly alien and therefore probably excellent at transmitting messages between dimensions, acting as voice carriers or even as video cameras for beings in other planes of existence.