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“The Drowned Mermaid”, which originally appeared in the magazine, Realms of Fantasy. This story is one of the few that take place in southern California, where he lived for a short stint in the late 90s. Christopher Barzak wrote it after walking along a strip of beach one night, down below a short cliff where these amazingly beautiful houses were perched above with these decks that came out from the cliffside almost like small piers themselves. Down below the decks, though, he noticed groups of people huddle in sleeping bags along the breaker rocks, and asked the friend he was walking with who would be sleeping under a deck in sleeping bags like that. “They’re homeless,” was my friend's answer, and he realized he had had trouble placing what should have been easily perceived because he found himself in a different landscape from the one he was used to back in Ohio. He started to think about the people in the amazingly beautiful houses above the decks, and the people sleeping below those decks, in their torn-up sleeping bags, and thought he saw a large tail flip out in the moon-spangled ocean, which altogether was the elements that led to the creation of this story.