I wrote the bulk of the first draft while I was on a cruise ship and experiencing the deep ennui that comes from being on a cruise ship. So that’s intrinsically buried deep in the DNA of this narrative in many mysterious and arcane ways. The second piece of inspiration is that a couple of years ago, on social media, I had seen an image of a mermaid in a bathtub with a bunch of tally marks written on the wall, and that painting really struck me. It’s always fun to take things seriously, an...
