Nghi Vo became a writer because while there were alternatives, none of them suited her as well as a lifetime of endless research combined with simply making things up. She is the author of Siren Queen, The Chosen and the Beautiful, and The Singing Hills Cycle, including The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and Into the Riverlands. “Stitched to Skin like Family Is” is her second appearance in Uncanny, a powerful tale of lost loved ones, vengeance, and magical clothes.

Uncanny Magazine: “Stitched to Skin like Family Is” is a poignant story of family and loss, depicting racism and violence contrasted with small moments of kindness, set in 1930s Illinois. What was your starting point or inspiration for the story?

Nghi Vo: Like a lot of my short stories, “Stitched” is what happens when a few random things crash together in my head. Some of it came from this thin quilt my maternal grandmother sewed, which had these bright patches of turquoise and raspberry fabric, and some of it came from a brief research jag I went on for the Bloody Benders, the serial killing family from Kansas. Some of it came from the idea of how easy it was to just disappear less than a hundred years ago, and some of it came from my love of old clothes and the history that travels invisibly with them.

Uncanny Magazine: What research did you do for this story? Did you turn up anything interesting that didn’t fit into finished piece?

Nghi Vo: I already had a fair amount of the information on serial killers, and I sew enough that I knew where to find the information to write about how our nameless heroine does her work. I did look into laundry techniques for the last bit, and I was a little sad I couldn’t include anything about isinglass, which refers to the swim bladders of sturgeon and was once refined into laundry starch.

Uncanny Magazine: “Stitched to Skin like Family Is” has an excellent fight scene. When you’re writing action sequences, do you visualize them in your head? Do you have any favorite fight scenes from movies or other media?

Nghi Vo: Mostly writing fight scenes is like writing sex scenes: if you can remember where all the limbs are, you’re halfway there! When I write fight scenes, there’s a few key moments I know I need to hit. In “Stitched,” the heroine needs to climb to her feet, and the only way for her to do that is to grab onto one of her attackers, and I sort of write around that until I’m done.

When it comes to movie fight scenes, I’m very fond of the fight between Lucille and Edith in Crimson Peak, which doesn’t pass in my household without a chant of “nightgown knifefight!” and the hallway fight scene between Martin Blank and the man who’s come to kill him in Grosse Pointe Blank. Those fights look exhausting and fast in the right way, and they’re a good reminder of how little time it takes to really mess someone up.

Uncanny Magazine: The scene at the end, where moonlight fills the empty clothes, is beautiful and powerful. Did you know this was where the story was going all along, or did it come to you as you were writing?

Nghi Vo: That scene was absolutely my reward for writing this piece. I was very much looking forward to introducing everyone to the heroine’s family through how they once dressed and what she kept of them, and I wanted to show how much she cared about them. I knew that at some point, we would see what she had been carrying around in her suitcase, and I knew that we would see how very much she was loved as well.

Uncanny Magazine: Who are some of your literary influences? What is something you read recently and loved?

Nghi Vo: Angela Carter, T. Kingfisher, and Indra Das are writers who have influenced me in recent years. Most recently, I read and loved Kim Bo-Young’s I’m Waiting for You and Moses Ose Utomi’s The Lies of the Ajungo.

Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?

Nghi Vo: At the moment, I’m working on Singing Hills #6 and a short story about what happens when a riverside preacher becomes infatuated with a small-town undertaker in a 1930s that never existed. I probably can’t work in the fact that Civil War embalmers used to put out preserved corpses as guarantees of their work, but I’m still very excited!

Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!