Gina Nutt: “What Luck” finds two old pals reuniting in the present moment and the meeting reveals old aches from the past. Where did you start? Was it the characters’ history or their reunion that inspired this story? 
Tariq Shah: I started with January, actually—I can't remember where I saw or read it, but I came across a character who'd attempted suicide, failed, and lost almost everything, who'd been crushed by some kind of relationship wrong, and I sort of worked backwards from there, building the scenario that led to that around it and pulling moments from my life, the traits/components of people I knew or had come across, and other material from my own experiences or imagination until it began to feel like its own unique, authentic thing that was independent of all the various elements that contributed to its construction.

GN: The dialogue throughout is energized, infused with affective tones. How do you strike a balance between that fast-talker pace and deeper emotional energy?
TS: There is a lot of trial and error to that. The dialogue-heavy scenes underwent a number of evolutions, until the required information felt organically and compactly conveyed, the characterizations felt natural, and the rhythm and cadence of the speech allowed for, or led to moments where sort of hitting "pause" on the scene felt timely, and I could slip into different modes, either move the narrative forward or offer access to Caspian's interiority in some way.

GN: We spend most of the story with Caspian and Charlie detailing not only their past, but also their past love interest, January. How did you approach steadily bringing her into focus, culminating in the final flashback?
TS: While her time on the page is somewhat brief, she is what the whole story swirls around, and so I felt like I had to really make sure she made an impact, and one of the ways that happens is by portraying her impact on Caspian and Charlie, by withholding detail, preventing a full portrait of her until...well I'm not sure we ever get a full portrait of her. or of anyone. right?😬

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
TS: vis. art: goya's black paintings, vasily vereshchagin, james webb telescope, skies 
     books: wrong norma, chilean poet, frankenstein, ponyboy, hamlet, nadja, james, closer, blackouts, a thousand acres, mouthful of birds, the tartar steppe, getem young treatem tough tellem nothin
     music: being dead, geld, purity control, christopher owens, hooded fang, perp walk, silver jews, cindy lee, pharmakon, bummer