FIRST, I’D LIKE to thank my parents. They have been a constant, un-vanished presence in my life, have not in fact met a grim demise, are emotionally and practically and in all ways extremely supportive, and deserve none of the cruel things I do to their counterparts in fiction. The next parents I write will spend the book baking, happily far from danger, I promise. (This is a lie. I’m sorry.)
Thanks also to my wonderful mother-in-law, Rosemary, and her partner, Mike. Writing during a global pandemic has been challenging to say the least, and without sending the kids off to Grandma Camp there would be far fewer words in this book. And to my husband, Mike, who really should be at the top of the list every time, for splitting the workday with me, taking meetings with a toddler on his lap, and somehow, so far, getting through this with our sanity mostly intact. Special shout-out to Ms. Bean and Mr. O, along with coconspirators Vonnegut and Octavia Pupler, who tried their hardest to keep me from getting a lick of work done (sometimes through actual licking) but without whom my life would be very dull indeed.
As always, thanks to the usual suspects who helped in one way or another to get this book from lumpy little idea to workable draft: Shanna Germain, Erin M. Evans, Rhiannon Held, Monte Cook, Corry L. Lee, and Susan Morris; to Lisa Rodgers and Louise Buckley for their advocacy and expertise; to Maggie Rosenthal, with apologies for not fitting in that extra defiled corpse you asked for; to Marinda Valenti, Abigail Powers, Delia Davis, and Krista Ahlberg for their diligence; and to Dana Li, Kristin Boyle, and Jim Hoover for yet another a fantastic cover and interior design. Special thanks also to SB Divya for her work as an expert reader.
And of course thank you to all of my readers. Without you, none of this is possible.