Goodreads asked Dylan Callens:

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

Dylan Callens The idea came in two parts. First, there was the horrible book that I wrote in university. There was this vignette where God was asked to perform a miracle but he said that he couldn't do it because there was too much paperwork. That idea hung in the back of my mind for a long time.

Then, about six years ago, I was teaching Nietzsche in a philosophy class. The phrase from the Madman's Parable came up, "God is dead." I started thinking what if Nietzsche was God's boss and he was out to fire God. He could stand up and deliver a different version of the line, "God is fired." I connected that back to the idea of paperwork, incorporating Heaven, and so on. In fact, it seemed like every time that I had a new idea that I wanted to include, there were these strange connections to other themes that I had already established. The ideas all came together in a really interesting way.

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