I started writing The Strange more years ago than I like to think about. I wrote the opening scene, abandoned it, came back to it and wrote the next 20,000 words, abandoned it again. I was intimidated by the prospect of writing a novel. More than that, I was unsure of how to write this novel. I’d made what small reputation I had as a writer of contemporary horror stories focusing, for the most part, on working class men. What business did I have writing Anabelle’s story?
Three people convinced me it was my business. The most constant voice of support is and has always been my friend Dale Bailey, who has endured countless hours of fretting, moping, whining, and Homeric monologues of self-doubt. This book exists in no small measure due to his unflagging friendship. Then there is Ann VanderMeer, who heard me read an early portion of this in the long-ago, and dropped me a line years later expressing hope that I would finish it. That tiny message was like the glimpse of a lighthouse on a stormy sea, and did much to bolster my flagging faith. Finally, and most importantly, there’s my daughter, Mia. She was a young teenager—Anabelle’s age—when I wrote the first words of this novel, and will be twenty-two when it sees print. She is Anabelle’s backbone. Though they do not share temperament or personality—Mia is far more patient and generous of spirit than Anabelle, far less prickly and not at all pugilistic—she is every bit the inspiration for Anabelle’s grit and endurance. She and others of her generation are growing up in a strange, turbulent world, in which everything we once took for granted has been thrown into doubt. I believe in her ability to endure.
Thank you, Dad, for reading the rough early chapters and pushing me along. I wish you could have seen it come to fruition.
Thanks are due to the writers of the Sycamore Hill workshop in NC who read and critiqued the early chapters of this novel, most especially to Karen Joy Fowler who used the line “The Martian Chronicles meets True Grit,” which delighted my agent, Renée Zuckerbrot. (“I can sell that!” Renée said.)
Thanks to Maureen F. McHugh who, in the early days, told me about including dairy goats on Mars in her excellent novel China Mountain Zhang, and assured me I was worrying too much about realism.
Enormous gratitude to my agent, Renee, and her associate, Anne Horowitz, for their tireless work and rigorous attention to detail. What you see here would be unreadable without them.
Abundant thanks as well to Joe Monti and his team at Saga Press. When I turned in the first draft of the novel, Joe’s response was, “Well, Nathan, I think you’ve got your work cut out for you here,” and proceeded to hand over copious edits which pierced my heart at the time, but saved the book. I’m forever grateful.
Thank you to Davi Lancett and his team at Titan Books in the UK. I’m thrilled to be part of the family.
Thank you to Sean Daily for his enthusiasm, encouragement, and support.
Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the writers whose influence is all over these pages. The Strange is a love letter to Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Frank Herbert. When I was a teenager, fantasy and science fiction provided life-saving doses of wonder and possibility as the world seemed to shrink and grow tight around me. When I returned to the genre as an adult, the work of Lucius Shepard, Maureen F. McHugh, and James P. Blaylock did the same thing, guiding me back to a place I thought I’d lost. This book is also a love letter to Westerns, a genre which has only become richer as it grapples with historical realities instead of indulging in mythology. Charles Portis is here, certainly, but so are Larry McMurtry, Molly Gloss, and Paulette Jiles.
And thank you, reader, for trusting me with your money and your time. I will never take that for granted.