The author offers an account of her growing awareness of the similarities between her novel "People in Trouble" and the smash Broadway hit "Rent". Giving her view on the behind-the-scenes New York theatre culture, she also describes how mainstream artists co-opt with the work of "marginal" artists to give an air of diversity to their own work. She uses these suspicions of copyright infringement as an opportunity to initiate a larger conversation on how AIDS and gay experience are represented in art and commerce.