INTRODUCTION

I closed out 1989 with the only politically correct story I've ever written. I realized "Pelts" was based on a trendy idea but I wrote it anyway. It springs from the same values that fueled the very incorrect "Buckets".

"Where do you get your ideas?" It's a question we're all asked. I can tell you the instant this story began. It was the day I opened a copy of Rolling Stone and saw an ad placed by one of the animal rights groups. It featured an animal (a fox, I think) caught in a leg-restraint trap. In a series of photos it showed a man approach the animal and crush its throat with his heel. The casual brutality of the act sickened and appalled me. I had to say something. And since I speak through my fiction, I began to write.

The working title was "Traps II" and I finished it at the tail end of December. I knew of a dozen anthologies that would take it, but I wanted something special for this story. Then I remembered a letter from Bill Munster (yes, that's his real name) seeking a story for his Footsteps Press chapbook series. I figured that would be a perfect showcase for "Pelts."

Bill did a beautiful job with the chapbook, aided by a wonderfully subtle cover illustration from Jill Bauman. All royalties "Pelts" earns—from the Footsteps edition, the reprint in Steve Jones and Ramsey Campbell's Best New Horror 2, Belgium's Phenix, and other anthologies, a pro rata share from this collection, and any future reprints—go to Friends of Animals. You might consider sending them a check yourself. They're not crazies—they're good people.