Flash-forward to February 1976. Ellison began a week-long stint literally in the front window of A Change of Hobbit, writing a complete story each day for six days as a fund-raiser. (This was the first in a long series of such stunts for other bookstores and in other locations, although Ellison had written short stories to order earlier, notably "O Ye of Little Faith" at the 1965 Westercon in Long Beach, California, to three words — "serape", "polyp", and "minotaur" — provided at an auction by the winning bidder, Larry Niven, whose last name is that of the story's protagonist.) On Monday, February 23, 1976, Ellison wrote the 3000-word story, "Strange Wine," subsequently reprinted (along with other stories written the same week) in his 1978 collection of the same name. On Tuesday, realizing that he could not write an eight-page story for the comic based on Todd's painting, he resolved to write 26 short-short stories, some as brief as one sentence, as a pastiche of Fredric Brown, the master of such brief stories. "From A to Z, in The Chocolate Alphabet" was begun that day and, after writing into the wee hours, was finished on Wednesday, February 25, 1976, at around 1:30 p.m.