I like to write stories on the edge—almost absurd, but then you realize that life can really get this nutty, as a reviewer of my novel False Alarm put it. It’s a fine line. While researching my just-completed novel, The Incompatibles, a black comedy about family dysfunction and infertility, I saw a Newsweek article “You Got Your Sperm Where?” about men who call themselves donorsexual—a guy who gives his sperm away for free, motivated by “a desire to spawn as many children as possible,” handing off his specimen cups to women in places like Starbucks bathrooms. The FDA tried to put a stop to this, calling one individual “a one-man sperm bank,” but he argues that it’s legal to pick up random people in bars with all the risks of communicable diseases so what’s the difference? I have to admit I was tempted to use a donorsexual as part of The Incompatibles’ landscape, but I dismissed it as too far out there even for this novel. I remember so many times in writing workshops when people complained that a story was unbelievable. But it’s true! (The author will often defend herself even though that’s forbidden in formal workshops.) Truth is never a defense. Another cliché that is true—truth is stranger than fiction.