I think most readers can relate to, or find the horror in, forgetfulness to some degree because, as you say, we deal with these things in real life. Losing a loved one to a disease like Alzheimer’s, even as they’re still with you physically—that’s scary for a lot of people. I suppose loss of memory for me means loss of identity. Without the accumulation of memories to inform and shape us, who are we? Why do we act the way we do? Personally, like the narrator, I would be scared of forgetting my own name.

I originally conceived of this story a few years ago, as a short audio drama. I was listening to a lot of podcasts then, and I think the idea was synthesized from days of listening to The Heart, Knifepoint Horror, and Limetown. Around that same time, my mom moved to an old farmhouse. To get there, you have to drive down a long, creepy dirt road, complete with an old graveyard. So I started from a particular scene on that dirt road: two characters in a car, and one of them unintentionally starting to drive dangerously fast. The story spun out from there

I’ve always liked shadow stuff. I’m the last person alive who doesn’t play video games, so I can’t draw any examples from that medium, but I’m generally into shadows, reflections, non-supernatural doppelgängers, changelings, people’s own skeletons as independent from themselves, that sort of thing. I feel like I ran into a lot of good shadow stuff in the books of my childhood, and that’s why I like it in the first place, but I’m too far removed from them to remember specific examples.

I’m very much drawn to folklore and fairy tales, possibly because I used to adore Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy stories when I was little. They were my first love in terms of books. If I go on holiday, I like to read about the folklore of the area—I like to think it enhances a landscape with the sense of layers of story living within it (though I might just be getting carried away). There’s something magical about drawing on that story pool, and I think that’s why I love it—folklore tells us about the world, but at the same time imbues it with something “other,” and keeps a sense of mystery at its heart.