“Biscuits of Glory,” an even lighter fantasy (in more ways than one), was also written at the request of a high-powered editor, Jane Yolen, who has been responsible for wringing more stories out of me than anyone else. This was for a collection of ghost stories she was putting together, where the gimmick was that each story would take place in a specific room in the house. Those of us who were going to write for the book were asked to claim our rooms in advance, and I opted for the kitchen, not having any idea what I was going to do there. As it worked out, I wrote most of the story one Thanksgiving morning while I was up to my elbows in some baking of my own (though in my case, I was making pies, not biscuits).

Those were the stories that came together quickly. Most of them took much longer to find their final form. “The Japanese Mirror,” for example, was something I originally drafted in 1987 but that didn’t find its final form until 1995—and then only because a gifted editor guided me through a number of revisions.

The slowest gestation period of all was for “The Golden Sail,” the opening lines of which I wrote in the late 1970s, when I was teaching elementary school. I had my kids do daily journal writing, and I used to write with them, by way of example. One morning I started to write a story about a boy waiting for his father, who years before had climbed aboard a ship with a golden sail and never returned.

It took only twenty years for me to find an ending for the story.

That I found an ending at all is largely due to Dick Decker, manager of the Syracuse Symphony. Dick is actually responsible for two of the stories in this book—“The Golden Sail” and “The Metamorphosis of Justin Jones,” since he commissioned them for me to perform with the orchestra.

These two stories were fascinating writing experiences. After I had concocted the basic idea for the story I wanted to write, Dick and I would discuss what kind of music best suited the tale. Later, Dick would bring me stacks of compact discs that he felt might offer the right sound for what I was going to attempt. I would listen to these numerous times over a period of weeks as I tried to find the story, letting the music soak into my skin.

Once the tale was written, Dick would go through the music and find sections he felt matched the text. He would then give these suggestions to the conductor (Peter Rubardt for “Justin Jones”; Grant Cooper for “The Golden Sail”), and we’d continue the process of refining both the text and the exact length of the musical selections, trying to knit them ever more closely together.