Author’s Note:

Devil’s Food

Astute readers will note that “Devil’s Food” is, in fact, the second story I’ve had published centered around a stuttering evil sorcerer named Tristan. Back in my first (and only) fiction-writing class, my professor showed us a story about an amusement park that’d been published in The New Yorker—twice, several years apart, after the author had radically revised the original story into something completely new, yet equally compelling. That, I thought, would be the ultimate party trick of creative writing: to split one story into two, making the first cheerful and light, the other dark and brooding, like separating a person into their good and evil personas in a campy sci-fi movie from the 1980s with a bolt of purple lightning and wobbly camera effects. Or maybe it just appealed to me because I lacked originality. Either way, after “Spit It Out” was published, sure, I was proud that it’d found a home, but re-reading over the proof copy that the editors sent me before its publication, I saw so much wasted potential with the idea. So, I decided that I’d rewrite it—reshape Tristan, the cringey middle-schooler, into Tristan, the adorable yet slightly sinister kindergartener. As it turned out, I liked that Tristan much better. I hope that you will, too.