Can I ask the first question? CAN I CAN I CAN I? Or does my gratuitous alacrity make me a complete dube?

OK, question: Clearly there are autobiographical influences to the story. What challenges did you face deciding where to draw the line - to diverge from events you drew on or to hew more closely to them?

Excuse me while I hit my lawyer over the head. Now, what was the question?

I didn't worry too much about this because whatever autobiographical elements there were became so scrambled in the process of revision, so alloyed with invention, so distorted for artistic purposes, so composited and filtered and reconstituted in new settings, that what I hope remains is a highly accurate picture of my world but a horrible picture of my life. This sounds a little fancier than I meant, but it is actually what happened.

P.S. We are pro-gratuitious alacrity around here.