Lovestruck Maggot follows a scarred, middle-aged, fiercely competent woman working on a brutal alien world where scavengers harvest volatile creatures for profit, who risks everything to rescue the man she loves. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I’ve found that writing’s first step—determining what you want to write about—is by far the most difficult. Therefore, I’ve started giving myself “challenges” to simplify this step. For my last novel, Children of Madness, I challenged myself to write a story that had giant snails at its center. For this one, I was intrigued with the idea of writing a love story with the word “maggot” in the title. With this in hand, I simply began asking myself questions. What would a human “maggot” do? Would this “maggot” be a male or female? etc. Once I settled on a female main character, I asked myself what would put such an obviously tough woman on “love tilt.”

After the particulars of their love affair were figured out, I was reminded of the 80s movie Romancing the Stone, and everything started to come together. I was going to write a sci-fi Romancing the Stone—words that no one would ever put together in a sentence.

Kalderra feels alive, toxic, and strangely beautiful. What inspired the planet’s ecosystem and tone?

Two things led to the creation of Kalderra. First, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea and visuals of bioluminescent plants/forests. You can see this in my novels Station and Children of Madness. So, I knew I wanted the planet to have such flora. Then, when I was playing around with potential names for the planet, I stumbled upon the word “caldera,” which is a large crater formed by the collapse of the ground surface after a massive volcanic eruption. I thought that these craters could be the perfect places to “plant” my magic forest. Once that decision was made, endless possibilities blossomed regarding the planet, its history, and its potential desirability on the galactic economic scale.

The novel moves between humor, violence, and emotional vulnerability with confidence. How did you manage those tonal pivots?

Honestly, I don’t have a great answer for this. One of my favorite book genres is the “new weird,” which usually entails severe tonal shifts. I like books that keep me on my toes, finding humor in the horrific and allowing characters to be both strong and weak at the same time. I think the key to this is creating fully fleshed-out, multidimensional characters and understanding how these characters would interact with each other. After that, it’s simply a matter of letting them talk to each other and acting more like a stenographer than a writer. In my opinion, my best stuff comes when I’m thinking the least. Not sure what that says about me lol.

Mona’s love for Darien is intense, but also complicated. Did you want readers to question it, believe in it, or both?

Oh, so this is an easy one for me. Please… question it! Love is a strange thing because it can often have more to do with yourself than the other person, which can make the mind do cartwheels. For example, being with this person makes me feel better about myself, and I think I love them for it. But is this the purest form of love? Is it even love? Just questions to be pondered.

I thought of successful people with “trophy” partners (individuals with little to offer beyond their glossy exteriors) and asked myself, “What would make a successful and confident but hardened woman love someone she had nothing in common with?” The answer came quite easily.

Throw this in the pot with my idea for a sci-fi Romancing the Stone, and you have Lovestruck Maggot, an odd fireball of a novel that burns fast and hot and is over before you know it… much like many love affairs.

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