Amelia Weissman is a mom of six with her master’s in marine biology. She is based out of the United States and has been published as a scientific writer in research journals and as a fiction writer in anthologies published by Black Hare Press, WolfSinger Publications, and Dragon Soul Press.

Amelia’s story ‘Just A World Away’—in which a little girl from a parallel universe gets stranded in ours—features in THE BARE BONES BOOK OF SPECULATIVE FICTION. The anthology’s editor Tejaswinee Roychowdhury interviewed her to find out about her literary influences.

How do you perceive speculative fiction via-à-vis the world around you?

I like to get lost in imagining the spectacular in the ordinary world. I’ll take something completely normal like a moth found at the gas pump and transform it into a shapeshifting fae set on a mission to avenge her sister who fell victim to a sadistic collector. Or take an ordinary natural concept—like a tornado made of wind—and change the dynamic—a tornado made of lava. The ordinary, which in and of itself is extraordinary if you think about it, inspires me to imagine the extraordinary.

Who and/or what are some of your influences while writing speculative fiction?

Nature and dreams are large influences on my speculative writing, but my kids have become some of my biggest inspirations. I listen to the stories they come up with and the imaginative play they participate in and find myself inspired and spinning tales of my own which I never would have thought of without their influence.

Tell us about the creative process behind your story.

The story ‘Just a World Away’ started off as a “what if” and the world within unravelled from there. I tried to see how one change in the environment would affect the entire ecosystem and how humans interacted with the world. It wasn’t enough to build the world though—it needed a story. So I wondered what would happen if a character from that world could see what our world was like and how strange it would be to her. The ideas that were born from this short story are still lingering in my brain and I’m intrigued by the idea of us having doppelgangers in different worlds which we may switch places with unexpectedly. Who knows what else might come from it?