Worldbuilding to me is taking the consequences of an idea.

I come from a nation where fantastic fiction has a very low status, unless it fits into some very specific categories or is written by already established authors. I don't by any means try to hide what I write, but the way people think in categories here is pretty extreme: it blots out discussing the actual work on its own terms. That's made me loath to talk about my own work in terms of genre, because once you get a label, it sticks and poof go a slew of potential readers and reviewers because eww, fantasy cooties.

I do love the weird, and I realize that I write much in that tradition, so I'm happy to be counted in among some of my favorite authors.

I'm just being honest about the fact that a second language won't resonate with you like the first does.

I don't go out of my way to write Weird Fiction, or in any other genre. Some of my stuff easily slips into the Weird slot.

When I returned to short stories, I'd started working on what is still central to much of what I try to do: putting myself in the place of the alien rather than describing it from an outside point of view.

My early stories revolved around reality and faith. I wrote a series of stories about the darker aspects of Christian myth: a woman who hides in the attic and watches the Apocalypse, a cult whose members preserve themselves in huge formalin tubs waiting for the Second Coming, and so on.