“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their Inspirations and Influences. In this feature, we invite writers to talk about their new books, older titles, and their writing overall. Today we are delighted to give the floor to guest author Cassandra Khaw, talking about the inspirations and influences behind her novella Hammers on Bone. (Trigger warning: domestic abuse). Stripped of its tentacles and its noir vernacular, Hammers on Bone is, more than anything else, an allegory of domestic abuse. The idea for its conception isn’t something I’m going to go into here – I’ve talked about it in other guest blogs already, and it’s not a pleasant subject to bring up. But there’s merit in discussing what lives at the heart of the novella. Domestic abuse is unfortunately common. For all our pretenses at civity, our species hasn’t outgrown the idea of asserting dominance through violence. We chip at each other over social media. We snip, we argue, we undermine enemies with gossip, we circle each other like dogs in a ring, starved for openings to strike. Every day, we’re subjected to and we subject others to shows […]