First and foremost, thank you to my husband, Mike, for his tireless support through every stage of this book and all the others, and to the rest of my family for putting up with me while under deadline—especially Mr. O, who sometimes tried to help with the typing.
Many people offered editorial expertise, critique, commiseration, brainstorming, support, and dedicated hard work in shepherding Rules for Vanishing from an odd little concept to a polished final manuscript. So thank you to:
The truly sensational No Name Writing Group—Shanna Germain, Erin M. Evans, Rhiannon Held, Monte Cook, Corry L. Lee, and Susan Morris; my tireless agent, Lisa Rodgers, and her UK partner-in-crime, Louise Buckley; my fabulous editor at PYR, Maggie Rosenthal; my also fabulous UK editors at Walker, Annalie Grainger and Megan Middleton; and my meticulous copyeditors and proofreaders on both sides of the ocean: Marinda Valenti and Abigail Powers at PYR and Kirsty Ridge at Walker.
I am privileged to have Dana Li as my cover designer once again, and she continues to knock it out of the park. Simón Prades’s cover illustration is beautiful, spooky, and perfect. I am deeply grateful to both of them for lending their artistic skill and talent to creating a stunning cover. And Jim Hoover’s great work on the interior layout helped bring this peculiar book to life.
I have the great fortune of having not one but two wonderfully creepy covers to enjoy. So thanks to those who worked on the UK edition: Leo Nickolls, for the haunting illustration, Maria Soler Canton for the design, and Anna Robinette for the typesetting.
A special thank you to my expert readers/consultants, Meriah Hudson and Beth Bienvenu, for their insight. Any errors and missteps remaining are entirely my own. Thank you also for those who helped with thorny questions of all sorts at various stages, especially Mat Murakami, Day Al-Mohamed, and the Thrills & Chills crew.
Finally, thank you to Ms. Bean, who arrived just in time to have the final pass of the manuscript read aloud to her, and who will probably grow up a little weird as a result. If it’s any comfort, with parents like these, that was inevitable.