Jennifer Moffatt’s short stories have appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines. She has published four queer romance novels, including her first of a three-book deal with St. Martin’s Romance. Jennifer is based in BC, Canada.

Jennifer’s story ‘If We Are Bold’—in which a fallen angel finds acceptance in a human and begins to develop feelings—features in THE BARE BONES BOOK OF SPECULATIVE FICTION. The anthology’s editor Tejaswinee Roychowdhury interviewed her to find out about her literary influences.

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

I am primarily an author of contemporary queer romance novels, but I sometimes write short stories in the horror or fantasy genres. The romances that primarily made me want to be a writer are THE HATING GAME by Sally Thorne, RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE by Casey McQuiston, and THE GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO VICE AND VIRTUE by Mackenzie Li. I love the tension in romances and I think romantic storylines can make speculative stories all the richer. I have always enjoyed speculative fiction rooted in the modern world about fantastical creatures with superpowers who fall in love, often with awestruck humans, like The Old Guard, Stranger Things, Twilight, and True Blood. These types of stories lend themselves well to queer reinterpretations.

Tell us about the creative process behind your story.

The first short story I ever submitted to a writing contest, ‘Love Comes Into Our Sight’, came to me when I imagined an angel dropped naked in the middle of the street on a cold December morning, and I wondered what would happen if a human fell in love with them. This story was shortlisted and published by Chicken House Press in an anthology called THE THINGS WE LEAVE BEHIND. I enjoyed writing that universe so much that I wrote a second story, ‘Coiled in Shells of Loneliness’, with a much crankier angel. This was accepted for publication in an anthology titled THINGS IMPROBABLE from Improbable Press. My story in this anthology, ‘If We Are Bold’, is the third story I have written in this “fallen angel” universe and is perhaps the most current and hopeful. There is also a fourth, ‘Unaccustomed to Courage’, still waiting for a home, and a fifth, ‘Memories of Pleasure’, set much farther back in time, published by the literary magazine Suburban Witchcraft. The titles of all five come from Maya Angelou’s poem ‘Touched by an Angel’. All of the stories feature couples who fall outside of the typical heterosexual binary male-female pairing, and in each, the angel has a particular superpower that affects how they interact with the world. I hope to write more fallen angel stories in the future and publish them in a collection.

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

Speculative fiction stories often use symbols with deep cultural meaning, but offer a new twist. Angels have long been a powerful cultural symbol of goodness, purity, and protection. In my (non-religious) stories, angels have been cast down from the cruel realm of gods above as a punishment and must now make their way in a messy and, at times, unforgiving world. The angels encounter humans who fear them, and others who see them for the kindness and empathy they represent. The humans who fall in love with these angels represent the best of us—the ones that will lead us forward through this chaos and into a better, gentler world.