INTRODUCTION

I'd planned on writing three ten-thousand word novelettes for Night Visions 6. I wound up doing four.

It was sometime in November when I sent Paul Mikol the thirty thousand words of new fiction I'd promised. He called back a few weeks later to say that the third story, "Ethics," was a little too light-hearted and too much like "Feelings." Could I do another in its place? My immediate reaction was, He's nuts. But I said I'd think about it.

I went back to the two stories in question and reread them back-to-back. He was right. I'd written "Feelings" and the other piece months apart and hadn't seen the similarities.

So here it was almost December and I needed ten thousand words of new fiction. I'd been perking a story about a serial killer (this was 1987, before The Silence of the Lambs and the serial killer glut) but one with a difference. This one would be female (they're almost always male), hideously deformed, and sympathetic. I felt if I could tell you about the forces driving Carly to these murderous acts—her childhood, her needs, her emotional hungers—you might understand her. You might even find some sort of love for her.

The result was "Faces" (yes, another plural noun).

Paul Mikol loved it.