Goodreads asked Ruth Buchanan:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Ruth Buchanan In 2013, I broke my ankle just before I had to move. If that weren’t disastrous enough, my fire alarm system started fritzing out, requiring me to routinely climb onto a chair with my cast and crutches to fiddle with the ceiling unit. Around this same time, a maintenance worker who had been dispatched to deal with a separate crisis discovered black mold in my closet. He returned the next day while I was at work and chopped away a massive section of drywall, oblivious to the half-packed boxes littering my bedroom. I came home to plastic sheeting for a wall and a fine mist of drywall dust coating everything. Then my phone died. It seemed impossible to imagine a more complete disaster.

Over the next few days, as I crutched through the shambles of my apartment, I began plotting this book.

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