Okay, 2009 afterword: this story was obviously affected by obsessive reading of H.P Lovecraft and other "eldritch horrors" stuff, though at least I managed to successfully avoid actually using the phrase "eldritch horrors" in my story. I may also have been influenced by the riper stylings of Tanith Lee's stories about bisexual demons and the like. This story isn't as influenced by Andre Norton as some of my other stuff is. But I want to point something out -- you see that thing about the hand? That becomes a man? Well... I swear I did write this in 1999 sometime just before I moved out of Miami, Florida and into my boyfriend's house in Orlando (and while I was living with him, for about a year and a half, I didn't write anything of note -- I can apparently do a relationship or I can write, but not both at the same time, but that's a tale for another time). Anyway, though I had been a Doctor Who fan ages ago it had been off the air in the US for so long that I had forgotten all about it, even about the Hand of Fear serial, so this isn't an "Eldrad must live!" takeoff. And actually, I got the idea of the hand from Bram Stoker's story The Jewel of Seven Stars, which features a hand that actually does have a body elsewhere already that belongs to it. So anyway it's funny how the new Doctor Who ends up producing an extended Chekhov's Gun device of a hand that ends up growing into an entire man (however, not back from the dead). So that's my six degrees of separation from Doctor Who moment. Better that than Kevin Bacon. What would I improve in this story. Well -- as I was typing it in I found myself revising here and there and finally had to stop myself, because it could definitely do with an entire rewrite. I would try to do something about the cheesiness, first of all, and I've got plenty of awkward phrasings and so on that I'd eliminate. I have a lot of polishing to do before I'll be satisfied with it. But isn't that always the way.