Just One Thing with Melissa Lore

The author’s portrait of Chris Ross.

Given that we’re all living through a global pandemic, the sense of anxiety in Melissa Lore’s January issue story “Channel A” fits right in. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“I wrote the first draft of ‘Channel A’ years ago, when my oldest, Ruby (now 11), was in her baby monitor days. When you have a newborn, you think a lot about things that can go wrong—at least I did. I lived in NYC at the time, so I knew you could pick up other people’s monitor feeds when the wind was right. That was the kernel of the story, which ended up forgotten in a folder on my laptop until a writer friend, Chris Ross, reminded me that I’d written it. The moral of the story is that it’s important for a writer to send every piece to at least one other person so they can hold it in their mind and help keep it alive. The picture is a portrait I drew of Chris, who also trusts me with his amazing work.”