A Goodreads user asked Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev:

Hi Moses, This isn't really a question, but a comment to say that I read and reviewed your book, Olivia & the Gentleman from Outer Space, and really enjoyed reading it. I am now currently reading Vanishing Bodies with Netgalley, and so far find it very fascinating. I didn't even realise that you wrote both of them. How awesome. Where do you get the ideas for your books? Thank you so much.

Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev Hi, Dea! I suppose I could go with the answer many writers go with: I’m super special and have superpowers. But I think the truth is more boring than that! Mostly I begin with a scene or an idea. For Vanishing Bodies, it was a scene that’s no longer in the novel. Originally, the book was set in Harvard, and was a contemporary romance. I don’t enjoy writing contemporary romances (at least I don’t think I do!), and so, at some point in time, the novel began to lean toward science fiction. I will say in the original, ur-text the scene I eliminated was a student at Harvard committing suicide under mysterious circumstances. I couldn’t get the novel to work the way I wanted it to. One night after a miserable day of writing, maybe around two or three in the morning, I woke up and realized I had an epiphany, dream, vision, whatever—the student commits suicide and vanishes. So I went back and re-wrote the ur-text with that new vision. (I also changed the setting to Emory University per a friend’s recommendation—“Why Harvard? You never went to Harvard. F**k Harvard. This book needs to be set in Emory, where we actually went.”) So Emory it was. As for the rest of the novel, it took many rewrites and such to get it to where it’s at today. Nearly a decade of work, I believe. Hope you enjoy the ending.

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