This piece was accepted back in December 2011, and A&A wasn't kidding when they said they were backlogged. Then I naively waited a year for a contract, as that was before I realized you need to get after editors, because they will let things slide. I can't emphasize that last part enough.
As for the story itself, it was inspired by a shirt--no joke. Threadless has lots of neat, artsy shirts; and when looking at this shirt, because I was looking for an idea for a flash story for the Earthbound flash contest, and thought a Japanese Medusa-esque woman would be pretty cool.
A big thanks to Rez for smoothing out the tense in this story. Present-tense is inherently choppy--and you can disagree, but that might speak of your tin-ears--so I don't recommend it, especially with 3rd-person narrative. With 1st-person, it can sound pretty natural, so that works; but I have rarely encountered present-tense sounding natural in 3rd-person. That's not saying you can't do it, it's just a lot more work if you do.
And why yes, I did draw that picture (click on it for full size), with some crappy Crayola colored-pencils. Did you know that they got rid of red-violet? Haven't drawn in ages, but feels nice, if not obsessive (I was up till 3am erasing smudges in mspaint).
