For Daylight and Dark: The story behind the story

As with many of my stories, this one came from two places -- something going on in my life combined with the inspiration from another work of art.

One of my favorite authors is the late Angela Carter. At one time, I couldn't read her work without wanting to cut off my hands, so I would never do anything so presumptuous as pick up a pen again. The Bloody Chamber is a collection of her re-imaginings of many traditional fairy tales like Puss in Boots and Bluebeard. A film was made of the werewolf stories in this collection, called The Company of Wolves. It's a series of vignettes, including one about a man who went out to take a leak on his wedding night and didn't come back for many years. Well, the woman had remarried by the time he returned, and this made him angry enough to turn into a wolf. Of course she screamed and recoiled in approved fashion. "How boring," I thought. "Just for once, couldn't she scream and jump forward with delight? Heeeey...!"

This was in the early days of my marriage. In many ways, the treaty negotiations between a werewolf tailor and a shepherd's daughter were less complex than the machinations involved in forging an alliance between an Egyptian deli guy and a bluestocking librarian. (See under Rants: "A Marriage of Inconvenience.") Hopefully, I learned a thing or two.