It was pretty much the first short story that I ever attempted, although between its beginning and its completion, I wrote another which was published first (Birthnight.) There is something utterly appropriate about the subject matter; I was writing about a Genie, and I was spending much of my free time on the then on-line GEnie service. (This was at a time when being on-line at all cost serious money, but the SFRT chat rooms were free for members of SFWA, which was one of the biggest advantages to being in SFWA, at the time.) It was on GEnie that I met Mike Resnick, and Mike Resnick was to teach me much of what I know about the publishing business. (Much of this has now changed in the past almost two decades, but it was invaluable at the time, if only to avoid the occasional unexpected surprise.) He was funny when I needed humour, and serious in that older statesman way (he’d deny this loudly if asked). It was also Mike Resnick who made me call Sheila Gilbert at DAW when I had a novel I wanted to submit to her, and he even gave me her phone number when I did the electronic version of stammer.
