Daniel J. Pinney is currently a graduate student in creative writing and a Freshman Comp instructor at Northern Arizona University. He smokes like a fish and drinks like a chimney, has an awful lot of cats, and genuinely believes that the next Great American Novel may well wind up filed in the "sci-fi/fantasy" section at your local bookstore. He has lived and studied in the Middle East, makes a mean cup of Turkish coffee, and plays a mean game of Egyptian backgammon. If you care to email him, he would love to hear from you and will probably write you back. This is his first published story.