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I promised Juan a draft of the blasted preface tomorrow, and I think I've finally decided how to start the wretched thing. Apologies to Deb if I'm misquoting:

I can’t remember exactly when the conversation was, but it must have been over a year ago. I was with a few writer friends at a coffee shop and Debbie started talking about souls. During the conversation, she raised an interesting question, “In theory, there are only so many human souls, right? Yet, the human population keeps growing and the population of animals keeps going down. So it stands to reason that you’d have to find something to do with the animal souls. What would happen if a human body got an animal soul?” She paused, took a sip of her coffee, and added, “There’s a story in there somewhere.” Now, over a year later, I can say with confidence that there are, at the very least, nine stories in there.