What Do Fish Have to Do with Anything?

Avi writes: Books come about for curi­ous rea­sons. The pub­lish­er and edi­tor with whom I had been work­ing hap­pi­ly for a num­ber of years sud­den­ly fell into dif­fi­cul­ties. It was no longer pos­si­ble for me to work with them. This cre­at­ed some­thing of a puz­zle for me—with whom should I work? As I was pon­der­ing that ques­tion, I met with an edi­tor from anoth­er pub­lish­er. I had once writ­ten a short sto­ry for an anthol­o­gy she put togeth­er. I spoke of my predica­ment and she asked me if I’d like to pub­lish a col­lec­tion of my short sto­ries with her. That seemed a good idea, the more so because I had a few sto­ries in my files. I set about to write a few more, and the col­lec­tion became What Do Fish Have to Do With Any­thing. Short sto­ries are hard to write, but fas­ci­nat­ing to work upon—so few words—so much to say.