“A Foreign Country” is about a third-party presidential candidate who inexplicably wins with huge majorities. Then he sits behind his desk and apparently does nothing but eat. He says he likes the food here. Crime stops, criminals (among others) disappear, peace and quiet descends, and a lot of people lose chunks of their memories. But they’re happy in an impaired kind of way. Of course, there’s a little romance, attempted assassination, madness… the usual. The story is told from the point of view of a very ordinary, unimaginative pool reporter who trails the candidate around, goes to the White House with him, and spends most of his time being bewildered.

What’s the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

Two identifiable sources: First, the question, “What if a flaky third-party no-chance candidate won?” And, second, a mean-spirited party game called “Extermination,” where the goal is to reduce the population of the earth by half (or a third or whatever—it’s all approximation) by selecting groups (with no exceptions within that group) that will cease to exist, like people who have killed other people (soldiers and policemen have to be included here), people who’ve killed anything for fun, etc. But how I got from those two things to the final story is a mystery to me. It’s no mystery to me that the ancient Greeks believed the muses whispered their poetry into their ears.

Did the writing of this story present you with any significant challenges (i.e., was it particularly difficult to write, etc.)?

Once I discovered who was going to tell the story, it wrote itself. There were so many possibilities it was only a matter of deciding what to leave out.

Most authors say all their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, in what way was this story personal to you?

Some of the people in the story are friends, acting like they really act and saying things they’ve actually said. They find this amusing.

After spending several decades teaching people how to write, it was a lot of fun writing like a beginner—like someone who went to the thesaurus too often and came up with “Cryptic, sphinxlike, perplexing, and conundrumatic” and “I felt disconcertedness and indeterminate emotions.”

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

I had to scour a thesaurus.

Tell me a bit about the technology and science and/or worldbuilding used in the story.

My stories tend to wreck our current world, rather than imagine new ones. However, the presidential candidate is the one who has built our world and is watching it develop.

What are you working on now?

Two stories are on my HD: "Instruments of Torture and Delight" and "Nihilism and Threatening Mania." The first is 90% finished; the second is about half done.

Anything else you’d like to add?

A local publisher has a novel, Earthrise, that could come out in the next six months—as if all the world needs is another novel.

“Arkfall” is a story about three inadvertent explorers who find themselves on a journey across the undersea depths of an ice-bound planet. Osaji is a dutiful young woman who secretly rebels against the social demands of her communal society; Jack is a raging individualist haunted by his past; Mota, Osaji’s grandmother, is a gentle old lady slipping into dementia after a lifetime of self-sacrifice. The three of them end up on parallel, but not identical, journeys of discovery.

What’s the genesis of the story—what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

Stories never have just one inspiration for me; they need several. In this case, the story evolved from a daisy chain of speculations, starting with the setting. I was reading about Europa, a planet-sized moon covered by a global sea that is capped with ice, and I naturally thought, “What if there are deep sea rift zones there, as on Earth? Couldn’t life evolve there as it did here, based on the heat and minerals from deep-sea vents rather than photosynthesis from sunlight?” This was before we knew about Enceladus, which almost certainly does have volcanic activity under the ice, since it spews out eruptions of water vapor laced with organic compounds.

That first speculation led to: “What would it be like to live in such an environment?” As I thought about it, it seemed like life under an ice-capped sea would be claustrophobic and cautious, so I invented the sort of society that would be needed to cope with such an environment. But it also seemed to me like a failure of imagination to assume that residents of such a world would stick with our mechanistic technologies. So I posited a type of technology that doesn’t start with physics, but with biology. Rather than building habitats and ships inspired by the brittle clockwork mechanism, this society would invent things modeled on the pliable living cell. That is where the idea for the arks came from. They are essentially giant cells in which human beings live like resident mitochondria, drifting on the cyclical currents of the sea.

All of this added up to an interesting setting, but not to a story. The story came from more personal experiences—watching my family members cope with the old age and death of my grandmother a number of years ago. In traditional science fiction adventures, characters are magically isolated from the normal responsibilities of family and community. I wanted to write a story where people still have obligations like caring for elderly relatives—but manage to make discoveries and have adventures all the same. Although, as I think the story makes clear, I don’t think it would be easy.

Did the writing of this story present you with any significant challenges (i.e., was it particularly difficult to write?)

It took me years to write this story, because some parts of it were very hard to get through. If it had just been a straight adventure, I could have whipped it off in no time—but I was also working in some very personal territory, and it was hard to achieve a detached perspective and get the balance right. I have files stuffed with material I cut out.

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

I read a lot about deep-sea vents and submersibles, but also about dementia and Alzheimer’s. I am aware that I have fudged some of the real technical challenges of living on the sea floor, but I didn’t think readers would be interested in long-winded explanations. At some point you just have to say, “They solved that problem. Let’s move on.”

What are you working on now?

I have a two-volume novel manuscript for sale to a good publisher, and some other short fiction in the works. But my biggest upcoming project is a nonfiction history book about the American Revolution on the frontier—the theater of the American Revolution no one knows about, between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. It is a dramatic and Shakespearian story with some characters I would love to have invented.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I have been thinking a lot about the literature of exploration and discovery. In this story I wanted to redefine the boundaries of exploration for myself. Much as I would love to experience the mysteries and wonders my characters do, my explorations will probably be in more personal and interpersonal arenas. So this story is about those, too.

I suppose I could say “Run! Run!” is about unicorns, but that would be simplistic. I could say it’s also about family dynamics and religious oppression, but that would make it sound terrifically pedantic.

Ultimately, it’s about the opportunities you missed in life. Things happen, and you can never go back and choose differently.

The other thing, and I don’t know if this will make sense until you’ve read the story, is that in the final paragraph Mary doesn’t even know what she has missed. The culture in which she lives has so impoverished her that she only has a dim, flickering sense that maybe things could have been different. That dim, flickering sense — those are the unicorns.

What’s the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

I had been reading fantasy stories, and noticed a trend toward starting a story as if it’s mainstream and then sneaking the fantasy element in through the side door when the story is about halfway along. This is not a bad way to write a story — I’ve done it a number of times myself. But on this particular day I was in a contrary mood. I felt it might be fun to write a story that proclaimed loudly, in the very first paragraph, that it’s fantasy.

So I wrote the two opening paragraphs of “Run! Run!”, ending with the description of what unicorn droppings look like (something I don’t believe Thurber ever mentioned, though the idea of unicorns eating flower petals out of your hand is Thurber’s, not mine), and then I had to come up with a story to go along with the opening.

One of the useful ways of generating a story from an initial idea is to ask, “Who is having a problem?” In this case, who could possibly have a problem with unicorns? The first people who came to mind were the people who want Harry Potter taken off the shelves of school libraries because it’s about witchcraft. Those people really do seem to want to drain the magic out of life. So I made them the villains.

The business about Christianity having triumphed is as much a fantasy as unicorns, but it’s their fantasy, not mine. I once played in a Christian music concert (I got paid good money, too — I wouldn’t have done it for free), in which the singer/songwriter had a lyric about looking forward to the day when the entire world would kneel before Jesus. These people really do believe that will happen someday.

Did the writing of this story present you with any significant challenges?

No special challenges. A woman at a cocktail party once asked Robert Frost (in a gushing tone, we can assume), “Oh, Mr. Frost, you must tell me: Is it hard to write poetry?” Frost answered, “Madam, either it is easy or it is impossible.” I wouldn’t dream of trying to improve on that.

On the other hand, another magazine just bought a story of mine that went through 12 drafts. “Run! Run!” was a stroll in the park by comparison. The business about the key to the gun cabinet — that just came to me. I did not sweat over it.

Most authors say all their stories are personal.  If that’s true for you, in what way was this story personal to you?

I don’t care much for Christianity. Given the choice between one fantasy and another, I’ll take the unicorns every time.

What kind of research did you have to do for the story?

When I was 22 years old I lived for a couple of years in upstate New York, not too far from Elmira. I had the fields along Mecklenburg Road outside of Ithaca very much in mind as I wrote this.

What are you working on now?

It’s difficult to keep myself psyched up to produce more stories when the market can’t absorb the new ones I wrote in the first half of the year. I’m amazingly grateful that F&SF picked up this story (and also “An Elvish Sword of Great Antiquity,” which I hope will be published soon — and boy, is there a story about how that one came to be written! I hope we can talk about it when the time comes), but I currently have four or five other stories languishing in in-baskets here and abroad.

The state of the publishing industry — feh. Don’t get me started on that topic. I’m not griping about my personal situation, I’m just saying, “It’s tough.” Tough for everybody.
I write a lot for nonfiction magazines. I’m very involved in professional music technology, primarily synthesizers and recording software. What I’m working on this morning is thrashing out a column topic for Electronic Musician. The nice thing about these magazines is that (with only one exception in the past six years out of a couple of hundred submissions), they buy what I write. I never have to shop anything around.

Three years ago I wrote a very long fantasy novel called The Leafstone Shield, but my agent (Howard Morhaim) didn’t feel it would be viable in today’s market. He felt it was too long, but my personal opinion is that “too long” is agent-speak for “not exciting enough.” He’s probably right.

The prospect of rewriting it, or writing another novel from scratch — why would I want to beat my head against that wall again? If somebody offers me an advance based on a chapter and outline, that would be different. But it would have to be a nice advance. And nobody is going to do that.

***

“Run! Run!” appears in our September 2008 issue. To learn more about Jim Aikin, visit his website at www.musicwords.net.

Laidlaw came up with Gorlen Vizenfirthe in his teens, when he was under the spell of Jack Vance. “Originally, I wrote a full Gorlen novel, a clumsy picaresque ‘Cugel the Clever’ pastiche entitled Mistress of Shadows,” he said. “This went through several iterations until, in my mid 20s, it struck me as too adolescent and derivative to deserve even a shadow life; instead of trying to fix it, I destroyed it.”

He never forgot about Gorlen, though–any more than he got over his love for the work of Jack Vance. “I also missed the sort of freedom that fantasy gives one to simply luxuriate in language,” Laidlaw said. “A number of years ago I started thinking about Gorlen again, and decided to try picking up his story after the events of Mistress.  Gorlen has a rich backstory, but it’s never been fully disclosed to readers.  I thought I might eventually get around to rewriting that original novel, but now I think I’ll gradually reveal his history in such a way that it makes that old book irrelevant.  Every few years I get the urge to look in on Gorlen, to see how his life might have progress in parallel to my own.  He’s like an old friend now.”

Gorlen Vizenfirthe is your basic fantasy bard. “I remember when the Alaric stories appeared, James Turner (of Arkham House, whom I was bombarding with crappy Lovecraft pastiches) pointed them out to me as the finest sort of writing in the field; and I was despondent because I knew I wasn’t going to come up with anything that serious and affecting,” Laidlaw said. “Eventually I came to terms with that.  Gorlen is more of a joker, despite his…affliction.  The primary thing that distinguishes him from other fantasy bards is his right stone hand, a graft from a gargoyle who was countergrafted with Gorlen’s flesh hand.  So although Gorlen appears to be aimlessly wandering in the grand bardic tradition, he’s actually aimlessly tracking his nemesis.”

“Childrun” came easily and all at once after a long period of having written very little. “I was blowing cruft out of the pipes, in a way…having fun reacquainting myself with my tools,” Laidlaw said. “I hope readers will detect and respond to the fun I was having in writing it.  As a result of this exercise, two more Gorlen stories followed quickly.”

Laidlaw has lived with Gorlen for about thirty years, so he feels a lot of affection for the character.  “I like the way he talks, the way he makes his way through the world, and I enjoy the kind of trouble he gets into,” he said. “I don’t have any other characters like this in my repertoire.  I always envied the writers who did.  How awesome for Fritz Leiber to always be able to hang out with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser!  I wanted some friends like that.”

Since Gorlen is a bard, it seemed important to finally bring music into his stories somehow, so when writing the story, Laidlaw thought of the Pied Piper. “I think future episodes deserve more music themes, if only because it’s a huge part of his character, and its always good if stories have something intrinsic to do with the people who star in them,” he said.

Childrun is basically a detour or an aside, reintroducing readers to this forgotten character. “It doesn’t really add anything to Gorlen’s main quest, and for that I heartily apologize,” Laidlaw said. “The next story, ‘Quickstone,’ is a significant event for Gorlen—right up there with losing his hand.  And the one after that, ‘Songwood,’ is my favorite of the three—even though it is also very much a detour from Gorlen’s main course.”

Laidlaw reports that he has an idea for the next Gorlen story, and maybe the one after that.  “One of them might require the scope of a novel…it’s still too early to tell,” he said. “I figure eventually I’ll have enough short pieces to collect into something vaguely booklengthish, but I’m not quite there yet either.  Like Gorlen, I tend to pursue my prey rather aimlessly.”

For more about Laidlaw and Gorlen, visit Laidlaw’s website at www.marclaidlaw.com.

The story is a sequel to Finlay’s Hugo and Nebula Award-finalist “The Political Officer,” a space opera spy novella originally published in our April 2002 issue.  “Even before I finished the first story, I knew I wanted to write more about Max, but take it out of spaceships and down to the planet Jesusalem where he lived,” Finlay said. “What would a culture look like that feared change, trying to hold on to parts of the 20th century the same way the Amish hold on to the 17th century? Especially after the religious power structure breaks down.”

The protagonist, Maxim Nikomedes, is the ultimate insider in his culture. “He’s a double agent within his own government, who spies and kills secretly for the old regime while working on the surface for forces committed to change,” Finlay said. “He’s invested his whole life in this political process, feeling both pride and creeping shame at what he’s done.”

“The Political Prisoner” ended up being a very hard story to finish. “I had a rough draft done in 2003, when Gordon asked me for a sequel after ‘The Political Officer’ made the Hugo and Nebula award ballots,” Finlay said. “But Gordon always says that one of the biggest problems he sees as an editor is stories that are rushed out too soon.  I didn’t want to do that.  So I workshopped it as part of a novel at the Blue Heaven retreat in 2004 and fixed some things but still wasn’t happy with the reclamation camp scenes, which are essential to the story.  I rewrote it again in 2006, workshopped it with Paul Melko and Tobias Buckell, who are super smart critiquers, and then revised it in 2007.  Even then, Gordon made me do another rewrite before he bought it.  So from start to finish it took five or six years, but I’m glad I took my time.  I needed to mature as a writer to make it a better story than the first one.”

The themes of the story–what does it mean to be human, what are our obligations to strangers, how can we do right in the face of persistent evil, is right even possible–are core themes for Finlay. “It’s the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night, if I let it,” he said.

Much of the research for the story came from Finlay’s college years. “I went through a phase in college where I read and reread concentration camp survivors like Tadeusz Borowski (This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen), especially, and Primo Levi (Survival in Auschwitz),” he said. “There’s also a writer named Isaak Babel, a Russian Jew who survived a pogrom only to serve in the Russian cavalry with the Cossacks during the invasion of Poland. I deliberately avoided rereading those books, because–aside from adapting Levi’s distinction between the drowned and the saved to drowners and swimmers–I didn’t want be overly influenced by them.  But they were definitely part of my background.”

He also read up on planet formation and terraforming. “Robert Scherrer, who’s written stories for Analog, helped me out in the early drafts, telling me about the availability of uranium on the surface of young planets and that sort of thing,” Finlay said.

Finlay is currently working on book three of a novel series for Del Rey about witches fighting in the American Revolution.  “A short story about Proctor Brown, one of the witches caught up in the fighting, is scheduled to come out in F&SF sometime soon,” he said. “I also have a third Maxim Nikomedes novella outlined where he gets exiled to Adares, the technologically advanced planet he’s been fighting his whole life, and I’ve written thirty thousand words of a novella prequel, a very rough draft about his life as a boy on the planet leading up to the civil war.  But it could be years before I get around to finishing either of those.  The last Max story took a long time to gestate and I’m focusing my attention on novels right now.”

To learn more about Finlay, visit his website at www.ccfinlay.com and his blog at ccfinlay.livejournal.com.

"Enfant Terrible" is the story of really bright kids and what makes them really bright.  "The story started with an image, as most of my stories do," Dalrymple said. "In this case, it had to do with a typical brainstorming exercise I’ve seen given to kids:  tell them that two cars are speeding toward each other at 60 mph.  Quick– what happens?  The idea is to get them thinking creatively, beyond the obvious (they crash).  A bright kid might suggest that the cars fly off into the air, or something like that."

Dalrymple had an image of a kid offering a more disturbing answer.  "’Nothing of consequence,’ he replies, ‘because one car is in Boston and the other is in Topeka.  They are headed directly toward each other, as you say, but are hundreds of miles apart, which you didn’t say.’  That alone is a rather bizarre answer, but this kid goes on to give dark details about the people in those cars," Dalrymple said. "It’s unsettling, at least to me."

One blogger who reviewed the story called it "quick and creepy," and while Dalrymple hopes those words are rarely used to describe him, they nail what he was going for in this story. "It’s a mood piece," he said. "I spend a lot of time thinking about the voice of a story, the sound of it, the mouth-feel of it.  And for this one, I found that the second-person, present tense voice just felt creepy to me.  I actually wrote it in a few different voices, and this is the one that conveyed the mood I wanted.  It’s been interesting to learn that some readers automatically react negatively to second person, figuring on the face of it that it must be some sort of literary stunt.  Or suggesting that there should be some sort of plot-driven reason to use second person in order to validate the choice.  I understand those thoughts, but my logic was much more simple:  it just sounded right to me."

"An Open Letter to Earth" could hardly be more different.  "It’s written by a cranky, smart-ass alien who has some things to get off his chest, or whatever it is he has instead of a chest," Dalrymple said. "I have no idea what my inspiration was for this piece, and perhaps we’re better off not knowing.  But I’m happy to finally provide the answer to the age-old question, ‘What’s with all the anal probing?’"

Since making his first sales, Dalrymple has completed a number of other stories. "One is another short SF humor piece, one is fantasy, two are horror, and a couple are hard to describe," he said. "I enjoy experimenting with wildly different styles and voices. For now I’m a short story guy. I find it hard to write anything over 7,000 words or so– perhaps because I’m a perfectionist, perhaps because I have the attention span of a gerbil. My current goal is to improve my craft at the really short lengths, say under 4,000 words. That’s what I enjoy reading, and it’s what I enjoy writing. I like stories that can change my mood in 15 pages or less.  That’s harder to accomplish than you might think."

Dalrymple said he’s tried to write out of genre, but fantastical elements always seem to creep in whether he wants them to or not. "Besides, if I want realism I’ll go to a Waffle House," he said. "What’s so great about reality? Besides the waffles, I mean."

The story idea grew out of Michaud’s longtime interest in haunting cases that are alleged to be true.  "My bookshelves are weighted down with that kind of stuff — some are very obscure cases, while others are more in the mainstream, with Amityville Horror likely being the most recognizable of the lot," he said. "From reading such accounts I began to wonder what it would be like to escape one of these supernaturally-diseased houses only to discover that the place had never been infested at all — it was you who was playing host to the paranormal parasite!  I placed the concept in a humorous framework that I’d used before and the story wrote itself from there."

The protagonist of the story, Clem Crowder, previously appeared in two other of Michaud’s stories published in F&SF (“Clem Crowder’s Catch” and “Ayuh, Clawdius”).  "Clem Crowder is a lobster-fisherman who resides on a small island off the coast of Maine," Michaud said. "You’ve probably seen Clem on the packaging for Gorton’s Fish Sticks, but don’t let that fool you: he’s put on weight since that picture was snapped, and years of continual browbeating by the persnickety Mrs. Crowder have given him an ineffaceable hangdog look.  His life is best described as ‘one damn thing after another.’"

Michaud said that the story was not personal in any meaningful way, other than the amusement he gained from writing it.  "Hopefully the reader can experience that fun along with me," he said. "My fiction aspires to nothing more than straightforward entertainment."

The research for the story was minimal, but Michaud does draw heavily from his background as far as characterization and theme are concerned. "Though I currently reside in the heart of Dixie, I was born and bred in the more northerly reaches of New England," he said. "That corner of the world stands solidly on two traditions.  One is the horror story, which has been a major export of the region through a whole slew of authors from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King.  The other is a peculiar brand of drollery sustained by provincial raconteurs — mostly from Maine and Vermont –generally known as ‘down-east humorists.’  I try to incorporate both of these longstanding traditions into my repertoire when writing a Clem Crowder story."

Michaud said that he’s afraid more horrors (and laughs) are in store for Clem Crowder and his cohabitants: He’s currently writing three new adventures with several more in the works.

"Here in the West, we think of capitalism as a driving force behind scientific advancement, but what happens when advancement is at odds with corporate profits?" Kosmatka said. "In this story, Veronica, a high-level corporate bureaucrat for a huge, multi-national steel company, is contacted by a man who carries a secret that could change the world.  It’s the holy grail of materials science– the secret to producing structural-quality carbon nanotubes on massive scale.  But why bring that information to a steel company?  The answer: for the same reason you’d bring an engine that could run on water to an oil company.  Because they’d be sure to buy it.  Veronica knows her company will bury the discovery, so she enlists the help of one of the corporate scientists, and together they take steps to release the information to the public.  But the company finds out and sends a problem solver to deal with the issue once and for all."

If this story has a genesis, it happened during a metallurgy class Kosmatka was taking. "God has made it pretty clear, I think, that He has a favorite element: carbon," he said. "Carbon was given a special twist, a certain kind of magic.  Carbon is what changes iron into steel.  It is what our bodies are made of.  It will be the building material of the future. … I’ve read a lot of science fiction stories where future advances in materials science are taken for granted. (For example, any space-elevator story; a cable strong enough to do that does not now exist.) I wanted to write a story about those advances themselves, rather than skipping over them."

Kosmatka usually struggles with his stories, but this one came easier than most.  "I wrote the opening few pages in a single sitting, focusing on this incredible character, Veronica, that I’d been wanting to capture on paper for a while," he said. "She seems so sad to me, and I wanted to know why.  The story was at least partially about finding the reason for that.  The rest just kind of filled itself in."

Kosmatka has always wanted to write a story that was set against the backdrop of the Indiana steel mills.  "The mills have been good to my family," he said. "They’re an important part of the culture here, and they put food on a lot of tables.  But there’s another side to them, too.  I wanted to capture both sides, and I wanted to look ahead to the future to where things might be going as society cedes more and more control to these huge corporations."

Because Kosmatka has worked in various labs for the last eight years, a lot of the research for the story came in the form of life experience.  "There’s actually a ton of technical geek stuff I was dying to include, but I restrained myself for the sake of story flow," he said.

For more information about Kosmatka and his work, visit his website at www.tedkosmatka.com.

The grey-eyed man is Rafael Anderssen, who comes to the New Mexican village of La Llorona claiming to be a writer, and rents a modest house from a local real estate agent. "He is subject to fainting fits in which he has apocalyptic visions, and when he shakes hands with people, he is flooded with data concerning their physical condition, emotional background, spiritual state, and the future cause of their death," Lee said. "

Anderssen is pursued to the village by shape-shifters. "Drawn into the lives of the humans of the village, he makes a stand against the shifters, and discovers that he has possessed … all along [what he was seeking]."

The story, when it came, came quickly, with few rewrites. "The main difficulty lay in presenting the fantasy elements in such a way that they would not overwhelm the reader’s attention and detract from the human dramas of the story," Lee said. "It was also important to me that Anderssen not come off as omnipotent, because as a lifelong reader (and writer) of fantasy I’ve learned that, in a story where the hero is capable of anything, there is no sustained tension (that’s why Superman needs kryptonite)."

Rafael’s search for home resonated with Lee. "I’ve never felt much at home anywhere, neither in the dominant culture or in the subculture to which, as a gay man, I am assumed to relate emotionally," Lee said. "Like Rafael, too, I’m a dog-lover: I’ve always adopted abandoned or abused animals from the local shelter (my current is a female Siberian husky named Blessing and a male Asiatic cat named Urdwill)."

Lee also strongly identified with Rafael’s rebellion against the One (his name for the Creator or God). "I converted to Fundamentalist Christianity when I was 20 as a result of a psychological collapse I endured at the sudden death of my father," Lee said. "I identified myself as a Bible-believing Christian for 7 years, and although most of the Christians I lived and worked with were wonderful, sincere, loving people, it took me years to realize that my unconscious reasons for becoming a Christian had much more to do with internalized homophobia than any genuine spiritual renewal. I no longer consider myself religious in any traditional sense."

The village of La Llorona is very much like the Northern New Mexico in which Lee currently lives. "I’ve known something of the history of the area from my reading over the years," he said. "However, the Varela ranch, the ruined spa, the animal rescue group mentioned in the story, and all named persons are completely fictitious."

Lee said that he is always surprised and gratified when readers respond emotionally to his stories. "I write because I have to –my parents were both writers, and I’d write even if nobody gave me feedback –but it’s a rush when folks say, ‘Yes! I was really moved by that!’"

There are always about a dozen short stories on Lee’s desktop whining for attention, but right now he’s working on a science fiction novel and murder mystery tentatively entitled Centaur Station. "It’s set on a space station staffed equally by Humans and an alien race I’ve written stories about before, the Damánakíppith/fy," he said.

Part of Cunningham’s success in the speed department comes from pre-existing characters. "One of those story fragments in the closet is the tale of the thief Shakaru and his stolen soul sword, which has picked him as its new wielder and now won’t leave him alone," She said. "Ji at this time is an eight-year-old war orphan who leads a gang of homeless children. When Shakaru first meets her, she’s robbing a corpse. The story didn’t really go very far, but I knew right off the bat Ji was the more interesting character. I started wondering what kind of a story I could put her in. Then the anthology came up, and things came together."

The relationship between Shakaru and Ji is a long and complex one. "He’s still human when he meets her, and becomes her mentor, protector and friend," Cunningham said. "He might have been more, except he got killed before she came of legal age, and his spirit was forged into a soul sword. So he still protects and nags her, and she still ignores him because she thinks she knows it all. She’s remarkably unfazable. Talking to swords, getting changed into a monkey, nothing bothers her. She was robbing dead bodies at eight years old. She’s seen it all before, or at least most of it. Shakaru’s invested in seeing she reaches mature adulthood without getting killed, but it’s an uphill struggle."

But none of that made it into the story, because it wasn’t relevant. "I was looking to write a quick, humorous tale, no deep meaning but maybe some smiles," Cunningham said. "I like putting humor into my work. Knowing their background certainly helped with the dialogue. She’s known this guy/sword most of her life, he’s her closest friend, probably the only being she trusts, and she still ignores his advice. She never admitted she was wrong. He’s got his work cut out for him. I said there was no deep, hidden meaning. However, if anyone wants to draw parallels between our current political situation and monkeys who start wars, well, be my guest."

Cunningham is currently working on some projects in the paranormal romance sub-genre. "[That] market is like a gift from above to me because I get to combine all my interests: romance, action, myths and the supernatural, all tied up with a funny twist," she said. "I was a finalist in Romantic Times Magazine’s latest American Title contest with a story involving angels, demons, and a Latino werewolf street gang. I’m trying my darnedest to sell a novel, so maybe I’d better write a few more. I may haul some of those fantasy fragments out of the closet. Maybe it won’t take me another 18 years to send [F&SF] a story again."