Unlike most writers, I have never had a desire to write a novel. I was a screenwriter once-in a different lifetime, with a different name-with all that entails; little of it good: an agent that wanted to call me with crazy questions about a script as often as he passed gas; casting directors asking if, say, the part of my Harvard-trained physicist could be played by whatever twenty-five year old gold-tooth rap star was popular that week; and various other mad-cow moose droppings of the sort. Enough.

What I really am, in my own mind, is a short story writer: I like to get in, say what I have to say in a few pages, and get back out again-preferably, with my sanity still intact. A screenwriter cannot do that. Should you be fortunate enough to possess sanity in the first place, Hollywood will open up your skull, and-using corrosive acid and a very dull spoon-remove it from you surgically. Incidentally, the corrosive acid and dull spoon are also the main ingredients used in movies these days.

Law school was three years of my life I will not get back. The fact that I was not physically violated was, I believe, the only material difference between law school and Sing-Sing. Writing about high-end men's fashion, however, was three years of my life I actually enjoyed.

My literary influences growing up were, among others, Guy de Maupassant, Somerset Maugham, Daphne du Maurier, Dashiell Hammett, August Wilson, Walter Mosley, Lester del Ray, Ray Bradbury, Honore de Balzac, Marvel Comic Books, John Milton's immortal Paradise Lost, and, of course, my beloved Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. To name a few. My stories tend to be either fantasy or science-fiction, but not always.

Maugham, Maupassant, and Serling left me with a peculiar gift: I usually like to give readers a twist, or a surprise at the end of a story. So enjoy.