Smoke And Mirrors

The Facts in the Case of the Disappearance of Miss Finch

This began when I was shown a Frank Frazetta painting and asked to write a story to accompany it. I couldn't think of a story so I told what happened to Miss Finch instead.

Lisa Tuttle phoned me one day to ask me for a story for an anthology she was editing about gender. I have always loved SF as a medium, and when I was young, I was certain that I would grow up to be a science fiction writer. I never really did. When I first had the idea for this story almost a decade ago, it was a set of linked short stories that would have formed a novel exploring the world of gender reflection. But I never wrote any of those stories. When Lisa called, it occurred to me that I could take the world I'd imagined and tell its story in the same way that Eduardo Galeano told the history of the Americas in his Memory of Fire trilogy.

Once I'd finished the story I showed it to a friend, who said it read like an outline for a novel. All I could do was congratulate her on her perspicacity. But Lisa Turtle liked it, and so do I.