As a child, Karen suffered frequent bouts of insomnia. The only way she could settle into sleep many nights was to imagine stories that played out like movies on the dark ceiling over her bed. Since her mean parents refused to replace the TV after the cat blew it up by peeing on the cord, all Karen had left to entertain herself in the lone wilds of the Minnesota wilderness were books and her own stories. As Karen grew, the stories grew with her. One day when she was fourteen, she told her mother one of these stories for probably the hundredth time. Her mother, who knew Karen very well, turned