About "The Birds of Isla Mujeres"

The Birds of Isla Mujeres goes up today over at Book View Cafe.

The story is another take on the Frankenstein mythos-- the results of humans creating life. But it was the first story where I started playing with a loose connection between the technology of the story and the story itself.

I was involved with a woman at the time and we were going through a bad time. Things were going to get much worse before we split apart entirely but at the time I didn't know that. To try and patch things up we took a short vacation. To Mexico.

We stared at Cancun. Went on to Merida-- which is a very cool place by the way-- and whiled away the last few days before the return on Isla Mujeres.

At the time, Isla Mujeres was a cross between native Mexicans and ex-pat Americans. Several of the homes had walls around them studded with broken glass at the time. I'd seen that elsewhere in Mexico. It was open to the sea on the east side and the mainland was visible to the east. At night the lights of Cancun were visible but the island was mostly dark.

The ferry brought us to the piers of the island and the first thing I saw were the frigatebirds, flying high above us, like black swatches cut from the sky.

In those days I always carried a typewriter with me and worked on this while we were working, unsuccessfully, to salvage something from each other.

An end to romance, I thought. And the story was off and running.