Well, NASA has been supporting us. Maria Zuber—who’s a card-carrying planetary scientist, she’s a real space person—and I have been working on this together for almost twenty years, and NASA has supported it. It’s a high-risk endeavor that they’re willing to throw some dough at, but they have not approved it for flight yet. Tell us about the characters of dogs. I deliberately say character, rather than say the figure of the dog, which may be a more appropriate term. I feel that there are many things you use (dog, flag, coconut), usually one in each story, which have a certain catalyst-function. Now, that is how a scholar in me would approach it at first, but I cannot do it because these elements are much more than mere functions. I see these things as character-like. Can you tell us how do you think about this? A. J. Ashworth captures, with honesty, the collisions that can happen between human beings, whether it’s a couple facing up to life after the death of a child, or lovers broken apart by infidelities either real or imagined. She explores those moments of realisation, those turning points, which will continue to resonate throughout the lives of her characters – those people who, even in small ways, will be forever changed, forever cut loose from their earlier selves. She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, `That's easily managed. You can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like, as Lily's too young to play; and you're in the Second Square to began with: when you get to the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen -- ' Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.

Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. `And where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time.' I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. `I'm quite content to stay here -- only I AM so hot and thirsty!' The collection was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. She is the recipient of Arts Council England funding as well as a K. Blundell Trust Award and Authors' Foundation Grant from The Society of Authors. She is the editor of 'Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontes' and is currently working on a novel as part of a PhD in creative writing. I definitely go on a journey whenever I write. Occasionally I have an idea where I want to end up but I don’t always know how I’m going to get there. That’s the way I like it though. I’m not the kind of person who plans as I like to be surprised by what I’m writing. How did you go about choosing which stories went into the collection?The book is a collection of 14 stories which were written over about three years. I started them for my MA so most of them were written as part of that. I wrote another two stories after the course, so that the collection would be the right size for The Scott Prize. The stories are quite different, with characters ranging from a woman who sees her future husband in a museum to a teenage boy who decides to build a bonfire in the basement of his school. They’re dark in subject matter, I suppose, but I think there’s also hope in many of them too – the light and dark of life. What I particularly love about the stories in the collection is how you zoom in on aspects of human frailty and imperfection, treating them honestly but with great compassion. How did the particular instances crystallize in your mind? Did the characters come first or their situation? She's coming!' cried the Larkspur. `I hear her footstep, thump, thump, thump, along the gravel-walk!' AM: I agree. You stories have a strong individual tone or style. How close are they in terms of the writing process? Do you usually finish one and then start the next or does the writing of one overlap with the writing of another? If so, how do you think it affects the finished pieces? Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked `Does she ever come out here?' Are there any more people in the garden besides me?' Alice said, not choosing to notice the Rose's last remark.

There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,' said the Rose. `I wonder how you do it -- ' (`You're always wondering,' said the Tiger-lily), `but she's more bushy than you are.' Success in the short story genre, to my mind, is contingent on the dexterity with which the author wields the primary tool at his or her disposal: the scalpel. A. J. Ashworth does so with the delicacy and precision of the surgeon. Here are fourteen stories from which every irrelevance has been excised, to provide a ruthlessly fine focus on the minutiae that matter...In this collection of short stories Ms Ashworth has peered through life’s keyhole and found all-too-human characters confronting the familiar and the beguiling, creating a series of coruscating cameos that sparkle with simple honesty and intelligent insights. These stories are impeccably crafted and easy to read, and a useful collection for dissection by the reading group.' John Oakley, Newbooks. Now! Now!' cried the Queen. `Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

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The collection was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. She is the recipient of Arts Council England funding as well as a K. Blundell Trust Award and Authors' Foundation Gra A. J. Ashworth is a prize-winning writer whose debut collection of short stories, 'Somewhere Else, or Even Here', was published by Salt Publishing after she won their Scott Prize. So you’re saying that life came here as it spread to other places, too. And, so, if we send the DNA sequencer out and we find that it suggests that this stuff was spreading and then came to Earth, not that we are the origins of everything— Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen. `She's grown a good deal!' was her first remark. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three inches high -- and here she was, half a head taller than Alice herself!

The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. `I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, `Faster! Don't try to talk!' It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.Paper Lanterns — 4.5 stars [sad...about a couple losing their 8-year-old son...it was well written, and I didn’t think it was over the top] So I sent you a link, or I told you to search for the video? [ Ruvkun had suggested that I watch a YouTube video of his views on “life away from earth.”] AM: Start small and stay small, I like that a lot. I guess when you’re not trying to squeeze in the word you somehow actually do it, or expose it, or hint at it. Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. `Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?'