"I explore parental relationships in my books a lot now. My mom passed away, and unfortunately, a few years later, my dad passed away. They were both important in my life, and they were amazing parents. After that happened, I realized the absence of parents is just as important to explore as the presence of parents. How a character or a person reacts to that experience in their life is meaningful in who they will become afterward. You're never in stasis. There's always going to be something that happens to you that changes how you live your life, and that happened to me after my parents passed away. Exploring who I was without them in my life has been difficult, but it's also opened up certain parts of me."Yena is both present and absent in Miyoung's life. She's a great mom, but she does things that are not great. That's something that I'm always interested in. She's a person. I think it's important to treat parents and adults in YA as people, too."