The inspiration for ‘not a very good story’ came when I saw an episode of Australian Story called ‘Million to One’, which was about the breast cancer cluster at the ABC studios in Toowong, Queensland. It's quite a horrible story, in the end seventeen women who worked at the Toowong site developed breast cancer, and no cause has ever been found to explain why. Eventually the ABC commissioned an independent report, which still didn’t find any likely cause, but calculated the odds of this many people getting sick as being a million to one (hence the episode title). And so, basically purely on the laws of probability, the ABC ended up moving their studios to a different site. But what really struck me about the story was that it seemed like a really slow-moving slasher film. The seventeen women didn’t all fall ill at the same time, it happened over a period of more than thirteen years. So it’s understandable that no-one really noticed for a while. But at some stage people started to look around and go, “Wait, how many of us is that now? Isn't it weird that I know so many other people who’ve had chemo? Or a mastectomy?” Six of the women sat in the same cluster of desks. Imagine watching people around you fall ill, one after the other, like dominos. So that was the initial spark. From there I just needed to change the setting from TV studio to drab call centre (I’ve never worked in a TV studio, but I’ve sure spent a lot of time in shitty call centre jobs). And then find the sweetest, most endearing character I could and throw in the middle of this horror show, which turned out to be Stephanie. Still my favourite character I’ve ever written, and I’ll always be a little sad that she didn’t find her way into a happier story, but what can you do.