A pet peeve of mine is the idea and the assumption that stories and narratives are inherently derived from memories or other personal experiences.

That can and does happen and certainly first-hand witnesses are useful in developing visceral descriptions, but they are not required. The limits of my imagination are not set in stone by any curriculum vitae.

However, I do sometimes dip into nostalgia and paint with dreamlike colors of what once may have been. I touch on the thought in the introductio...