Acknowledgments

Eloyne and Bradley Erickson own Grand Central Stained Glass & Graphics, the business that continues to inspire this series. I am grateful to you in so many ways for loving the books and opening your hearts to an extremely curious student with a significant number of unusual questions.

I appreciate the wide variety of hobbies my friends enjoy and their willingness to share when I need a subject matter expert. Thank you, Sarah Weist and Gregg Bonert, for information about diving. If any details are wrong, the errors are mine alone.

Big hugs to my Gainesville support group. You provided encouragement at precisely the right time, laced with generous amounts of wine and book talk. I needed those retreat days at Joye’s woodland cottage to buckle down and put billions of words on the page.

Thanks to one of my strongest cheerleaders in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio, my sister Sheila Collins. She managed to round up a motley collection of friends and relations, which impressed the Books & Company event manager at the Greene Town Center. Also in Dayton, Cheryl Whitmore and I met at a writing conference, and we, the two Cheryls, reigned supreme in our corner of the room. For years we have exchanged weekly status e-mails, which have helped me persevere in getting reluctant words into my manuscript day after day after day.

I offer my thanks to editor and inspirational writing champion Ramona DeFelice Long, who has a gentle way of telling you that your wonderful prose just might need some tiny, drastic adjustments. I check in with her sprint group on Facebook every morning for companionship and focus. What a great group with which to share the grit required to stay the course.

At Kensington, I am eternally grateful to my extraordinary editor, Mercedes Fernandez, who took a big chance on this series and who pushes me to the edge of creative sanity but doesn’t let me fall. Thanks to my publicity guru, Morgan Elwell, for encouraging me to try more and more social media interactions.

Fabulous Beth Campbell and the wonderful team at BookEnds Literary Agency are a dream team to work with. They have been informative, supportive, and unfailingly encouraging in answering my approximately ten thousand questions about publishing. I’m trying to schedule a trip to meet the entire team—especially Buford.

A thank-you goes to my parents, Wendell and Marcella, for bragging about my book to every person they meet. It’s embarrassing and completely adorable. Also, I offer a big sister hug to my big little brother, Mark Hollon, who has been cheering me on from the start. Thanks go, as well, to his wife, Deana, and his daughters, Alex and Ella, for an added chorus of cheers.

I am grateful to my husband, George, for putting on the mantle of writer’s spouse with cheerful grace and endless humor. He is my voice of reason and plays the challenging part of devil’s advocate when my monkey brain tries to take on too many tasks. For you, a hug around the neck.