Now and Again is the third novel I've published, but it's the first one I ever wrote. I put it aside for several years until now, pulling it out to rewrite, revise, and edit it.
It's been almost five years since that first draft, but I remember very well the encouragement that my friends gave me as I attempted to write it during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) 2010. My first thanks for this book definitely go to them.
Thank you also to one of my fiction writing professors at the University of Central Florida. Now and Again was inspired by a short story I wrote about Nikki in a workshop, and the story grew from there.
Next, thank you to the creators and operators of NaNoWriMo. I don't know if I would have sat down to write Em and Cole's story without you.
Thank you to my roommates at the time (and still some of my best friends), Kristin Clarke and Allison Perry, who asked me often how it was going, and even pressured me to lock myself in my room to get work done.
To the guys who wanted to be "in the book," sorry! But thank you for cheering me on and know that you were at least in a few of the drafts. And Nick Perez—as promised, you can't unring that bell.
Lindsey Young, thank you, thank you, thank you, for reading everything I send to you for critique. Thank you for "needing to know what happens" between Em and Cole.
Thank you to the reviewers. To my family. And to my friends—the bevy, the U_M girls, the bloggers, and writers.
To my previous readers, thank you for picking up Now and Again and taking a chance on a new genre from me. I hope you enjoyed it.
And new readers, I hope that you did too.