In the beginning was the snow; there was just too much of it. It began on December 3, 2007 and by next April, over twelve feet of the stuff had fallen on Montreal. I shoveled like a demon for four months. Often I shoveled our car out of its spot (so the plows could clear the road), and then shoveled a second spot for the car to go in. I was so traumatized by the winter that in August 2008, I began to look for holiday accommodation in Italy for the Christmas holidays. We wound up staying in Rome and Florence for a month. And the second place we rented in Rome was on the Piazza Adriana, right down by the Tiber, just behind the Castel Sant'Angelo. And one morning I took a walk, and the entire plot of The Death Fairy arrived in my head, like a train arriving at a station.