PERSONAL

The Author to His Readers

In 1979, with publication of Overload, I announced my retirement. I was tired. My life had been full. I was, and still am, grateful to those millions of readers worldwide who have enriched my life in many ways, including making retirement possible.

In whatever years remained I wanted to spend more time—and travel—with my dear wife Sheila, go fishing, read more books, relax with music, do other things a working writer can’t.

What I did not know was that I was near death from six blockages in the coronary arteries—a condition diagnosed soon afterward by my friend and physician, Dr. Edward Robbins of San Francisco, who urged immediate surgery. This was done—a quadruple bypass—by Dr. Denton Cooley and his associates at the Texas Heart Institute, to where my gratitude flows strong.

Sheila was supportive, as she has been through our long and loving marriage. It is more than coincidence in this novel that the names Celia and Sheila come similarly off the tongue.

The aftermath of everything was my revived good health and an abundance of energy—so much of the latter that Sheila said one day, “I think you should write another book.”

I took her advice. Strong Medicine is the result.

April 5, 1984 A.H.