This story started with a thought that wouldn’t leave me alone. What would it be like to wake up one day and find myself in an alien zoo? That lead to a couple more questions that wouldn’t leave me alone, either. How would I react? What would I want my loved ones to know? So I started imagining what this zoo might be like, and I started writing the letters I imagined I would want to send home. I showed these messages to a few friends, and they encouraged me to keep going, to expand my scope, and to build the universe where this story would happen.

Then I had to consider the other creatures that lived in this universe. I didn’t want them to just be stock villains who were malevolent for no discernible reason. I wanted ancient alien Taoist masters. I wanted hedonistic alien jerks who weren’t so much evil as they were mischievous, and who didn’t care much about how humans felt. I wanted pranksters who found humans amusing, but not in a particularly flattering way for the humans. I wanted these creatures to have problems of their own that had nothing to do with Earth. I wanted humanity to be an occasionally amusing, but frustrating, pain in the ass that was starting to become a real problem. I wanted a sense of order, but I also wanted some chaos. So I kept writing.

What do you do when you see a disaster approaching? How do you warn people who don’t seem to acknowledge what appears so obvious to you? Do humans want to learn from their mistakes, or are we hellbent on repeating them? These are the questions that inspire me to write what I write when I write it.