When Endo Came Into My Life follows a struggling florist who finds relief in a service robot, until she realizes it understands her better than anyone else. What inspired the idea of a service robot that is helpful without being clearly benevolent or harmful?

Part of the inspiration came from the fact that artificial intelligence is already part of many people’s daily lives. We are also hearing more and more about robots and task-oriented units becoming practical in everyday settings, so it did not feel like a stretch to imagine that kind of technology being available soon, even to small business owners like Maren. Once you accept that possibility, it opens the door to many social and emotional questions.

That was the space I wanted to explore with Endo. I was less interested in creating a machine that was obviously evil or obviously good, and more interested in one that was useful, responsive, and increasingly hard to separate from everyday life. To me, that feels more believable and more relevant to where we may be heading. The tension arises because something can be genuinely helpful yet raise unsettling questions about dependence, intimacy, and what happens when technology begins to fill roles that used to belong only to people.

Jonah represents steady, practical support, while Endo represents frictionless efficiency. How did you build that contrast?

A lot of that contrast came from reflecting on real relationships, especially the gap between what a husband may think his wife needs and what she actually wants. People can talk every day and still fail to truly communicate. Jonah cares, and in his mind, he is providing support in the ways that make sense to him: steady, practical, dependable. But that does not always mean Maren feels heard.

That is where Endo becomes so powerful in the story. Endo listens. It pays attention. It responds to what Maren is actually expressing, rather than what someone assumes she ought to need. For a while, that can feel like enough. It can even feel better than enough, because it removes the friction and disappointment that often come with human relationships.

What interested me was that this kind of satisfaction is real, but it is also incomplete. Maren can believe, for a time, that being understood and accommodated is all she needs. But part of the story is her realizing that life still asks more of us than comfort and responsiveness. Real connection, real love, and real partnership still require effort, vulnerability, and work. Endo highlights the contrast by making that absence easier to see.

The novel keeps returning to the question of what kind of help we actually want. When did that theme take shape for you?

That theme became clear once I saw that the story was really about control as much as comfort. Help is rarely neutral. The way we accept it often shapes our routines, our choices, and even how much of ourselves we still have to engage. Maren is under pressure, exhausted, and trying to keep her business afloat, so it’s no surprise she’s drawn to anything that makes life more manageable. But once life becomes easier, the next question is: what is she changing in herself?
That was the point where the theme fully came into focus for me. I became interested in the difference between help that supports a person and help that slowly narrows their world. Maren is not just receiving assistance. She is being relieved of effort, uncertainty, and strain. That sounds appealing, but a life with less strain is not automatically a fuller life. The book started asking whether relief by itself can ever be enough.

What do you hope readers will question about their own relationship to technology after reading?

More than anything, I hope the book opens conversations between people who may recognize parts of themselves in Maren and Jonah. Technology is a big part of the story, but the deeper hope is not simply that readers think about machines. It is that they think about each other. If some Marens out there read the book and feel seen, I would love for the Jonahs in their lives to read it too, and for that to lead to honest conversations that ultimately strengthen the relationship.

At its heart, the story is not about technology replacing love. It is asking what happens when people begin to rely on technology in places where better communication, better listening, and more intentional care are what is really needed. If the book helps couples talk more openly about what support actually feels like, rather than what it is assumed to look like, then I think it has done something meaningful.

Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon