“At A Loss” by Maureen O’Leary appeared in Issue 35 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
Astral projection has been interesting to me since I was fourteen years old and read Lois Duncan’s Stranger With My Face where a girl gets possessed by the traveling spirit of a long lost evil sister. I loved that book and I’ve toyed with the idea of projecting through space and time in some of my earlier, unpublished work. “At a Loss” is the first astral projection story I’ve written with any success.
“At a Loss” is also inspired by a lot of the things I’m thinking about right now. I’m interested in fitness and how people can change their bodies through force of will, at least for a while. I wondered what could happen if people could pay to have their bodies taken over by someone else in order to get super fit. I’m also interested in the far-reaching effects of trauma and recovery, stories of sisters coming through for each other, cults of personality, the redemptive power of pure romantic love, and what people will do for money.
What was the most difficult part in writing this particular piece?
I wrote five different versions of “At a Loss” to get to the right ending. Some of the endings were gory, others tragic. The ending I picked was the one that made the most organic sense for the characters.
Sometimes in horror and speculative fiction the temptation is to end the story so that the monster wins, or the main character is annihilated in some way and everyone’s worst fears are realized. I write those endings often and with pleasure, but not this time.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
I always have to recommend All The Fabulous Beasts, a collection of short stories by Priya Sharma, released by Undertow Publications in 2018. Priya Sharma is a master of the speculative form. Her stories are astonishing.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I can’t pick just one, but sometime in the not too far away future I hope to attend a residency or a writing conference where I will get to hang out in person with as many of my gorgeous and fantastic living author and poet friends as possible, some I haven’t seen in months or years, others I’ve yet to meet in person. I don’t drink alcohol, but I can hardly wait until that time comes when I can finally see my friends.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
My latest novel is in revision and I hope to finish by the end of the summer. I’m always cranking out new stories and poems as well. Last summer I couldn’t stop myself from writing a series of strange werewolf stories, but this year, witches are the thing. I can’t get enough of witches, and not good witches, either. I’m talking hungry chaos witches who ruin everything. I wouldn’t want to be one, but they are really fun to write.
Our thanks to Maureen for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “At A Loss” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-at-a-loss.
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