Just One Thing with Amelia Valasek

Amelia Valasek’s story “Mud Season” points a magnifying glass at strange happenings disrupting life across a small town. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“A while back I was deep-cleaning my office and came across a bunch of random scribbles and story starts and other bits and bobs that I didn’t remember writing. It was an odd sensation, to read these things that certainly sounded like me, but which I had no recollection of creating–almost like a benevolent doppelganger had crafted and left them behind for me to discover. This strange moment of “doubling” wormed its way into my subconscious and I’ve been a little obsessed ever since.

Of course, doppelgangers are not benevolent. They are a threat to the core of how we exist in the world. The idea that someone (or something) could be running around wearing your face and fucking with your life is terrifying on a primal level; not only does it upend our sense of identity, but also our understanding of reality. I’d like to claim that I set out to explore these grand themes of identity and reality, but really I just poked the anthill of this quiet little town and that’s what came scurrying out.”