Fret not, dear readers, we still have plenty of Issue 045 author interviews coming your way! Today we’re sharing what K. A. Tutin had to say about her story “Little, Little, Little“.
LSQ: Ooh, this is a beautiful story and leaves me satisfied as a reader while also feeling incredibly curious, so great job on striking that balance! How did you decide where to start this story? Did you always know you wanted to begin with the mystery of a little girl lying in the snow?
K. A.: Thank you for your kind words! My main focus going into “Little, Little, Little,” was the theme of accepting change expressed through transformative body horror, which was inspired by reading The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka during my university degree. The opening scene of Little lying in the snow popped into my mind, and I ran with it. The sense of mystery attached to it was not something I’d planned from the start, but something I noticed later on in revisions and took advantage of.
LSQ: The only ones with names in the story are Little and Paula, her host’s deceased daughter. Was that deliberate? Why not name the woman living in the cottage?
K. A.: Not naming The Woman was a deliberate choice, yes. I wanted her and Little to share the feeling of being lost. In their lives and identities.
LSQ: The woman in the cottage seems to know more than we initially think. She and the crows create two different paths for Little, yet also seem to have worked together to give her a sanctuary. Is the alliance I sense there a real one, or just expertly implied?
K. A.: An alliance between the two of them was not something I planned on either – though it
certainly sounds like a great way to describe it! On writing the story, I’d not established their relationship that way knowingly, so it would lean more toward implied, but it was definitely real in that there was a shared understanding and acknowledgment between them regarding Little’s choice on which path to take.