While some short story collections have a theme or framing device that loosely ties them together — see Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man — S. Qiouyi Lu’s new novella, In The Watchful City (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), goes one step further by having all of the stories be part of a larger narrative. Or, to put it another way, In The Watchful City isn’t a short story collection at all; it’s a mosaic story. In the following email interview, S. discusses what inspired and influenced this collective scifantasy tale.