it's too easy to just write the whole thing off as sensationalism, opportunism

That's not what I'm doing. And anyone is free to find value in the fiction. I thought I did, long ago. I now consider I was deluded. Not because, I hasten to add, another story took that one's place. Like Christian religion, the whole thing just fell away from me like a reptile's sloughing.

(Right, I'm a snake ;))