Author's introduction:
I usually start a story with an image in my mind, or an exchange of dialogue. This is something where I started with a title. I mentioned to a writer I knew that I thought this would be a great title for a short story. She laughed and agreed, and then warned me that if I didn’t use it myself, she would. This set me on my mettle, and I wrote this is what was probably a record for me, one year from initial conception to finished story. I never thought of it as an autobiographical story, but, like everything else a writer does, it of course is. This was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
