This story began with Spielberg. Specifically, it began with the fridge horror realities lurking in Spielberg movies. (Forgive spoilers—the films are decades old!)
My roomie and I re-watched Close Encounters and spent an hour dissecting the twisted implications of the finale. Imagine you’re the daughter or son of a man who decides to abandon your family and climb aboard a mothership. How would it feel to grow up with the knowledge that your father left you for extraterrestrials? The knowledge that something alien and unknowable was preferable to raising you?
But the essence of this happens all the time. It has happened within my family tree, within the branches of almost every family tree. Sometimes adults leave their children for the unknowable. It’s a hard reality, and exactly the kind of reality the lens of science fiction can help us come to terms with.
E.T. is hardly any better. If you’re Elliott, you’ve literally soul-bonded with an alien and then been ditched by said alien. Where do you go from there? How could you ever feel close to another human being? Would anyone ever “get” you? Again, there are traumas in our world that parallel this experience. I wanted to know Elliott would be okay one day. I wanted to write that story.
When Light Left Us would not exist without the support of my agent, my editor, and the entire Bloomsbury team, who did not flinch when I declared that I wanted to write a weird alien book at last. When Light Left Us would be a lesser book without the help of friends, family, fellow writers, and sensitivity readers who gave up their time to help me with the weird alien book. All remaining mistakes or misjudgments are mine and no one else’s. I am just grateful to have been indulged on this one!
Finally, my fans and readers, few but mighty and hilarious—there will always be days when I wonder why I do this. Thanks to you, those days are fewer.