Funny You Should Ask

"Funny You Should Ask was written during a month-long stay at a Rodanthe NC motel, on the Outer Banks. A long fishing pier extended into the Atlantic, and every day I fished from it, and every night I dined on what I'd hauled out of the water. I couldn't get anywhere on the book I was supposed to write, but I turned out a batch of short stories. "Funny You Should Ask" was one of them. "Sometimes They Bite" was another.

I sent them to my agent, who inquired of a mutual friend. Had he heard anything of me? Did he know how I was doing?

My friend hadn't, and wondered at the question.

"Well, I've been reading the stories he's been writing," my agent said, "and I get the feeling that maybe he's been alone too long."

I can't argue the point. But I've always liked the story. AHMM ran it some ten months after I wrote it, and Fred Dannay (who never met a title he didn't want to fix) changed this one to "A Pair of Recycled Jeans." Which wasn't terrible, but I'm as obdurate as Fred was, and when I had the chance I changed it back. It's been anthologized a bunch of times, and appears in my collection, "Sometimes They Bite," and my short fiction omnibus, "Enough Rope."

Enjoy!


Genre: Horror