Castle Talk: Cassandra Khaw, author of FIND ME WHERE IT ENDS

your writing reminds me a lot of some very very intense writers like poppy bright who doesn't write anymore and isn't poppy bright anymore but uh but i don't know did you ever read poppy bright yes when he was doing vampire work um it must be difficult to live in a commercial for video games.

That's a very commercial.

But your writing is so artistic and so poetic that it is more to me like a Bright or a Bradbury for that matter.

Thank you.

And less commercial.

And yet you've got to constantly be thinking about the commercial universe.

And so I don't know how to state this question other than, what do you want? Do you want to figure out how to meld those, how to have a New York Times bestselling novel, but written in Cassandra's particular poetic way? Or what are you trying to do with your career?

So I have a full time like career in like tech and video games and that like pays the bills and I'm very happy with it.

But that's what I do with my writing.

So a long, long time, well, not a long time ago.

I read one of Octavia Butler's short story collection.

I think it was Blood Child and other stories.

I can't remember off the top of my head.

Again, having this is just killing me and my intellect.

I don't have very many brain cells that it is.

All I remember that story collection was there would be a short story and then these essays that touched me to know and the way they described being a person of color working in like a very white dominated field, the struggles, et cetera, et cetera.

I remember reading through it.

The moment I was done, it was like I have she's probably never going to read this email and never pay attention to me on Twitter.

I need to reach out to her.

I need to say thank you.

I need to say how much this book had affected me.

And I discovered she had passed several years ago.

And it struck me because it felt like I had a conversation with a ghost for a week on end.

That a ghost sat down and nodded at me and told me all the things I needed to hear at that very moment.

And It was the eeriest feeling.