I write in coffee shops. Cliché, right? Not to mention easy pickins for chatty types who see a girl (even a middle-aged one) slouching over a notebook and want her attention for themselves.

The day after the babysitter left was the same day Janie found the prosthetic leg.

Research for me is generally a haphazard process of taking things in, filing them away and revisiting them years later.

Someone must have slandered K., for one Tuesday morning, without having done anything, he found himself deceased.

At the hat store, the clerks knew her name and reputation. She was Selena, the girl who liked hats.

You want him to say all of the obvious things, how here among the stars, the Earth shrinking like a lost balloon beneath him, it’s hard to believe what we all take so seriously…

Two of the stories are old enough for me to struggle to recall the seed of where they came from, or the research I did in writing them. But there are a few details that I can recall with certainty.

He wants his wife’s portrait painted. He knows nothing of art, doesn’t even have an interest, but a slew of recent police brutality lawsuits against the city, his firm’s biggest client, has accrued him the sort of money that’s got him thinking about lineage.

Either it’s supposed to be totally true or totally made up, but thinking too much about which it is will make your brain hurt and suck the joy out of a lovely story.