KRISTIN OSANI (she/her) is a queer fantasy writer who lives with her husband in northeastern Japan, where she works as a Japanese-to-English video game translator and manga editor when she’s not writing, working on nerdy cross-stitching, or cuddling her two cats.
Kristin’s novella, THE EXTRAVAGANZA ETERNIA, about a cursed supernatural circus performer, was published by Ghost Orchid Press in July 2024.
WHAT INSPIRED THE EXTRAVAGANZA ETERNIA?
Usually my ideas are a single spark—a character or a what-if or a certain scene form which the rest of the story sprouts—but this novella came to me in all sorts of bits and pieces that I puzzled together. First was Leathan’s name, which I woke up out of that state of nearly-asleep to frantically scribble down; then, the visual aesthetics of the performers and their curse baubles, which were inspired by pictures that I saw during a virtual writing game event put on by K. Tempest Bradford as part of the 2021 Clarion Write-a-Thon; then, the idea to write a mystery after an agent I spoke to about a different book mentioned she thought I’d be good at writing cozy mysteries. Setting it in a circus was inspired by the Dead Moon Circus in Sailor Moon, an anime I’ve adored since I was five. Leathan’s curse was inspired by my own idle musings of likening myself to a tumbleweed when I did the math and realized I’ve yet to live in one place for longer than a handful of years my entire life.
You can find Kristin on Instagram @Kristin.Osani or at KristinOsani.com.