The Story Behind the Story: The Claws That Catch

The Claws That Catch, the second story in my Applied Science series, is now online at Big Pulp.
This story introduces Danielle Taylor, who appears in Brain From Outer Space as the lover of my protagonist (who won’t appear until next month’s story, The Spider Strikes). I’d established that before becoming a National Guard medic, she had some heroism during a battle in Boston with something called the Devilfish, so I decided that was the story I’d tell.
It soon turned very much into a Cloverfield kind of story, a monster story about the people running around trying to survive (or in Dani’s case, help others survive) rather than taking on or stopping the monster. Which I’d originally conceived as some sort of mutated squid; when the time came for the story, mutated lobster-men worked better.
I really like this one. Let me know what you think.