Goldfish Grimm: If we could peek into your office (coffee shop, kitchen table, wherever you write), what would your writing process look like?
K. C. Norton: I mostly write in bed. I actually have a pretty nice desk with a very comfy chair, but my dog gets grumpy when she can’t snuggle me while I work. When I get stuck, we’ll pop out for walks. I also talk to myself a lot when I’m writing, so my writing process is basically “act like an oddball while taking orders from a tiny dog.”
GFG: Was there anything in particular that inspired “After”?
KCN: I was thinking about the idea of things that are meant to be – would we still love the people we love, even under completely different circumstances, even if they were essentially different people? Even if we were different people? Some things certainly seem inevitable.
GFG: What’s the most important thing you’ve ever forgotten?
KCN: How to be completely unguarded in the company of the people I love.
GFG: What is the part of the writing process you enjoy the most and why?
KCN: When I’m writing, I very rarely know what will happen next. I like discovering some new dimension to a character that makes them more human, and figuring out an ending that will make it all come together. I like getting really lost in a story, in another world.
GFG: Do you have anything you’d like to plug or promote?
KCN: A story of mine was recently published in Writers of the Future Volume 30, alongside some truly excellent work. You can also tweet me @KC_Norton if that tickles your fancy.
K. C. Norton
K. C. Norton’s work has appeared in Writers of the Future, Crossed Genres Magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Daily Science Fiction, and her short story “Canth” is forthcoming in Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue. She shares her apartment with a small dog who is not named after a superhero.