Julia Blackshear Kosatka was in her 30s before she realized that everyone else didn’t have “daydreams” that ran for months with plots and subplots and several generations of characters. The year 2000 really was the end of things as we know them because that was the year she sold her first story (“Bones of the Dead,” Black Gate, Summer 2001). Her most recent fiction sale is “Ned and the Cookie Girls” (The Four Bubbas of the Apocalypse, Yard Dog Press). Julia works at the University of Houston, doing computerish things and counting down the months until her pension is ripe. She lives inside the Loop with her insanely bright 10-year-old daughter and two cats who hate each other with a passion. Life is never dull.