`` Gert Fram '' is a short story that was written by Orson Scott Card in 1977 . It is in his short story collection Maps in a Mirror . In his short story collection Maps in a Mirror Orson Scott Card said that Gert Fram was the childhood pen name of his sister-in-law , Nancy Allen Black , and that while the idea for the story was his own , the character Gert Fram and all the `` novels '' she wrote ( except Susan the Jerk ) were created by his sister-in-law as a child .