I thought I was to going to be a poet. First publication: sixth grade, a poem about peregrine falcons and Pavlova, of all things, neither of which I’d ever seen. By the time I was in college, however, “All the President’s Men” had turned my fancy toward journalism, along with the promise of a steady if modest paycheck. I wrote, off and on, and had some poems published and took part in a poetry group. But I also wanted to write novels – insane, surely, because by then I was homesteading a West Virginia hill farm along with covering city hall. So I began writing a science fiction novel – and short stories too, why not, and the poems were still coming, and long poems that were stories in verse. My muse, it seemed, had ADD. Then I ran into Fred Chappell, a writer of magnificent talent generously applied to fiction long and short, poetry epic and lyric. He lured me into accepting the writing as the words came, and eventually out of West Virginia and into Carolina. By that