Goodreads asked Nikki Stern:

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

Nikki Stern It began with a painting I saw of a woman looking across a body of water. That's the opening scene of the book. At some point, the writing became about the challenges my assassin, Suzanne, faced--how her old choices affected her new ones and whether she could reclaim her life in middle age, etc. Additionally, I used to be interested in marksmanship. I engaged in target shooting from age 8 to age eighteen. I was quite serious about it at one point. I thought it would be interesting to revisit the feeling of holding and aiming a rifle--separate, of course from the moral and psychological consequences of aiming a gun at a living being.

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