I bought a Macintosh 512K during my freshman year of college. It was my first real computer. As kids we’d had an Atari 400 but had mostly used it for games. I did all my high school papers on a typewriter.
When the 512k was first introduced in 1984 it retailed for $3,195. I think it had been discounted significantly by 1986 when I bought it, and then I got a further student discount, so I think I paid closer to $1,500. Still, adjusted for inflation, that is around $4,500 today!
I had this Mac til my mid-twenties–through the mid-1990s–and wrote most of the short stories in Stories on this computer. Then it disappeared. Or so I thought.
Then last year my brother was clearing some of his junk out of my parents’ garage and it appeared. It still has a Tracker sticker on the mouse (I actually hated Tracker trucks–have always used Independent Trucks, but I thought it was a cool and appropriate sticker for the mouse).
The stories in the collection are about adolescents and young adults. I was still very close to those experiences when I wrote those stories and I’m glad I got them down on the page when I did.