A very personal interview with me about "Parasocial."

(And a humbling confession.)

Video credit: Future Tense Fiction at ASU in partnership with Issues in Science and Technology.

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Thank you to everyone who's said such lovely things about my new short story, "Parasocial"! I was already proud of it, and now I'm even prouder!

Go read it if you haven't yet. There are also gorgeous illustrations by Rey Velasquez Sagcal and a great response essay by Vance Ricks. Also, I want to take a moment to say this: the story benefited HUGELY from consultation with my friend Christina Tesoro. She's a sex educator and therapist, and her work has opened my eyes and heart to the realities of sex work for years. Her feedback on the story was just as brilliant as she is, so however good "Parasocial" is, she's a big reason why. Go check out her work here. If you're in New York—that's where she practices.

Anyway, back to the interview. You can watch it here. I talk about where the story came from: a hard period of my life after my father died, when I was too much in grief to even think about dating. But in the vacuum of a "real" relationship, I developed another kind of relationship...entirely in my head. And I was very aware that it was all in my head. And it was incredibly comforting to me, almost like having an imaginary friend. When I didn't need it anymore, it died out.

A few years later I was walking down the street in St. Paul and thought, "What if we could really do that? In fact, why hasn't a company tried it yet??" I was so excited that I wrote my reps about it the next day. Here's that email:

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...I'm glad it finally came to fruition, years later. (And man I would still LOVE to develop it into a feature film.)

Much love and more soon,

Monica