Blog – Page 2 – Author Dom Merenda

Story Surgery: The City That Listens

This story forced me to get comfortable with long silences. Not just on the page, but in my own process. There were versions where the Listener narrated everything, where it gave long internal monologues explaining its logic. Those versions were technically impressive—and […]

dmerendaApril 17, 2025April 17, 2025

Author's Notes

Author’s Notes: The City That Listens

This story was born from a single discomforting question: What if the most ethically advanced surveillance system on Earth still violated something sacred? That’s what I wanted to explore—not just whether AI could be kind, or gentle, or empathetic, but whether its […]

dmerendaApril 17, 2025April 17, 2025

Story Surgery

Story Surgery: Bridge at Crowsleep Market

When I sat down to write this story, I didn’t think of it as speculative fiction at all. I thought of it as silence. Not metaphorical silence, but real—the kind that follows you out of a temple or settles in the car […]

dmerendaApril 17, 2025April 17, 2025

Author's Notes

Author’s Notes: Bridge at Crowsleep Market

I didn’t set out to write a ghost story. Not really. Bridge at Crowsleep Market began with a festival—the Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day—and the sense of reverence and familial grief that clings to it like incense smoke. My family had just […]

dmerendaApril 17, 2025April 17, 2025

Dom Merenda

Dom Merenda is a Senior Software Development Manager at Amazon by day and a speculative fiction writer by night—when his cat isn’t sprawled across the keyboard. His work explores the quiet magic hidden in overlooked places, drawing on a lifelong fascination with technology, memory, and the uncanny. When he’s not writing or wrangling code, he’s probably deep in a book, building something strange, or dreaming up new worlds over a strong cup of coffee. We Are Made of Stories Left Behind is his debut collection in fiction.