Q: Your story is really disturbing.
A: Oops. Sorry. It was meant to be interesting, a little sexy and a little thought-provoking. But if you don't like H.R. Giger's Biomechanics, I guess the odds are good that you won't like mine. Most people haven't so far.
Q: Uh-oh, you're not breaking up with Alan are you?
A: No. Nathan in the first scene is based partly on Alan, but after that the disintegration of that relationship is more based on Heather and Roach, some people I knew who reacted very differently to grad school and broke up because of it.
Q: Well, the sex scenes are still really sudden. There's not enough transition and you use the word fuck.
A: Tess doesn't see sex as being separate from the rest of her life, and she doesn't have to shift mental gears much to think about it. As for the word fuck, Tess thinks this is the best word for quick, intense sexual intercourse where the focus is entirely on lust and not at all on caring. I think so too. And while we're on this topic, she's bisexual because most people are to some extent, and in the future it's only going to become more common to admit it.
Q: Are Christine and Dmitri some sort of fairy moon people, or are they just colonists?
A: That's entirely up to you.
Q: I'm starting to hate you for not choosing a genre.
A: Actually, the way I break things down, Biomechanics is definitely a horror story because its universe is essentially unknowable. Admittedly, it does have some SF genre elements and one fantasy one (the moontanning). If it were wholly fantasy, SF or both, the universe would have been understandable and manageable through magic, science or both. Still, this does have a happy ending and isn't splatterpunk or anything, so I'd like to think of it as a cheerful horror story. There are such things.
Q: So... the crumbling mice, lesbian fantasies and Prudential tower fixation I got, but I still don't get it. What's this really about?
A: It's all about going home (and figuring out what home means). Tess makes Boston her home over a period of time, Nathan Seven realizes that SF is his home and goes there, the sexy moon people go home to Roxbury, and the mice spend the whole story going home. It's good to have such a place, and all my characters know it.