Someone said that all fiction is autobiographical however well disguised. Certainly this is psychologically true. Stephen King (I presume) never slashed anyone and perhaps never feared the knife, but he knew somehow to the tips of his toes what such experiences were like. And Shakespeare never ruled a kingdom nor advanced an army but he knew the burden. So maybe the autobiographical life of writers comes from both their personal experience and from their acute imaginings of events never lived. And in such imaginings comes the power and significance of fiction. It is a sharing of the reality of experience seen in the mind's eye that is the collaboration between writer and reader. One more thing. Ask yourself the question, as I used to ask my students: "What could be truer than fiction?" In fiction one can tell a truth--a psychological truth--that cannot otherwise be told. These stories were written, rewritten and polished over several decades beginning when I was a young man.