What Motivated Stephanie to Write Scarlet Begonias?

I asked Stephanie today through email what motivated her to write this book.  She gave me a very interesting answer.  Along with the interesting answer came one million other interesting answers.  Sorry Steph, I'm only giving out the first answer so far...so far...

What motivated you to write the book?

I was trying to design a time machine with you during a particularly manic period which I like to call Operation Zyzzybaluba….Then I got hung up on needing a prime directive and realized that it wouldn’t so much be a time machine as a perception machine…and then I read this:

Official Kilogram Losing Mass: Scientists Propose Redefining It As A Precise Number Of Carbon Atoms

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2007) — How much is a kilogram?

And I read this:

Time Machine - Atom Smasher (1st test yesterday in Switzerland)

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_sc/big_bang

 The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

The start of the collider came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

And then I started to wonder about this:

"If something exists, it exists in some amount.  If it exists in some amount, then it is capable of being measured."

Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, 1644