Stephen Rowley

Now I don't think I, I give people weird nicknames like shoelaces or backpacker Mountain Dew or whatever their names are.

I forget offhand, but, but yeah, it's, it stems from a very true place.

I get overwhelmed.

You know, we meet a lot of people as writers, you know, in a signing line at a book sign, you know, at a, at a conference or whatever, and I can't keep everyone's name straight.

So.

That stems from that.

But hopefully it's also a lot of fun.

It's also very challenging.

There's a dinner party scene in this that sort of the book sort of culminates in.

And I love these big, messy group scenes.

I love writing them.

I love writing them.

But they're a challenge.

Yeah, I think as a writer, I spend so much of my time alone.

And I'm married to another writer.

We're very, we live a lot in our own heads, sadly.

And so that's sort of what I'm used to.

In Lily and the Octopus, I wrote that in the first person.

And so I think I was afraid of, there not being enough material for a book if I didn't have full access to the character's interiority.

I now write in the third person and it's much harder, as you mentioned, that interiority is harder to access.