SmokeLong Quarterly

Was there an image or piece of dialogue that got you started when writing this story?

Fake Jesus himself, or, the real fake Jesus. A few years ago a man showed up in my very small hometown dressed as Jesus, and, of course, how do you let go of something like that? And he had Tevas. The Tevas stuck with me. He came up in a few failed drafts of different stories before he ended up here.

In your story fake Jesus couldn’t raise anyone from the dead, but if he could, who would he?

Probably some mysterious false messiah like himself. Elvis, maybe.

There is a sweet yet sad tone to the story. Does most of your other work play with these emotions all at once?

I think so. Or, at least, I find myself drawn to trying to tell stories like that—stories that manage that kind of balancing act between emotional weight and emotional lightness, sadness and sweetness and humor. I try not to tip too much in either direction.

What story are you working on right now?

I’m working on a story about doppelgängers, a phenomenon that has always fascinated me (and very thoroughly creeped me out). It’s a little outside my comfort zone, which makes it exciting.

Do the narrator and her brother ever get to go to Water Wiz?

I think that they do, one way or another. But I don’t think it will be because they asked for it—I think the narrator, at least, is done asking for things like that after this story.