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Alba Krystal arose from three factors. First I had just taken my kids to see Disney's SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS and thought that the plot could be easily converted to an SF theme. The second factor was my anger at the untimely death of my dog. Apparently, some of those emotions bled through in the death scene in the latter part of the story. Harlan Elison contends that the tropes come through in the language, even if the words aren't there and I guess that happened here. Finally, I wondered if it was realistic that seven dwarfs could really be celibate around a sexy young woman. Ben Bova bought Alba, which was then named LIZARD'S CHILD, and changed the title. Because of the pressures of grad school, and the need to support my family, I stopped writing for thirteen years after this piece saw print.