When asked the inevitable “where did you get the idea for this story” question, writers will often cite something that happened in their real lives. And while that’s what writer Yoon Ha Lee did in the following email interview about his silkpunk historical fantasy novel Phoenix Extravagant (which is now available in paperback a year after being released in hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook), the real life something he cited was a paint. Not a painting, not his cat getting into his paints, but an actual paint.