Image inspired by the short story, 'Cuckoo'
Behind the Stories
Where Do Story Ideas Come From?
​
For me, they bubble up from a melting pot of life experience, curiosity, and happenstance. One thing I know is I do not enjoy repeating myself. I rarely tread over old ground—be it plots, characters, or technological inventions. In fact, only twice have I endeavoured to write a sequel: ‘Walter’s World’ in 2002, and ‘The Disintegrated Man’ shortly after. Beyond these rare exceptions, I prefer the new.
​​
Inspiration often strikes from a headline. A few years back, I read an article on the abhorrent practice of canned hunting—and the justification that it gave wildlife “economic value”. That frustration mutated into a plot about time-travelling poachers hunting a Neanderthal for the thrill of pursuing prehistoric humans in their natural environment. I overlaid this with the onion-layer narrative structure of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which I was re-reading at the time. The result was ‘Survival of the Fittest’, which will appear in my third collection, due out in 2027.
​​
Other times, it is the sheer wonder of the universe. Discoveries like the evidence of ‘diamond rain’ deep within Neptune, or the calculated approach of the star Gliese 710 to our solar system, are tucked away in my mind until they inevitably drive a narrative. If you pick up my novella Virtue of Being (mid-2026), you will see exactly how those cosmic oddities helped shape plot, theme, and a character's motivations.​​​​
​
But not all inspiration is academic. Living on the road with my dog has stripped away the theoretical. Stories like ‘Belonging’ reflect my nomadic life, while ‘I Tell You What’ draws on the experience of an intensely controlling relationship. Both are available in the collection Hegemorony.
​​
Some stories take a long time to come to fruition. The idea behind ‘Planned Obsolescence’, which features in the collection Life As We Know It, was first mapped out in 2004, but it was not until 2020 that I actually finished writing it.
​​​
Ultimately, the creative process is rarely linear. It is a constant act of scavenging—collecting fragments of science, memory, and outrage, then waiting for the right moment to fuse them together. Whether an idea arrives fully formed or needs decades to find its voice, the goal remains the same: to catch the spark before it fades, and turn it into something worth reading.
Image inspired by the short story, 'Survival of the Fittest'