First I must thank Alexandra Sokoloff, Franz Metcalf, and Elaine Sokoloff for helping to nurture this story at every step from conception to completion. Only they know how much of their light illuminates my pages, and I am eternally and humbly grateful.
I am among the luckiest writers alive to have an agent as exemplary as the delightful Ellen Levine, an editor as smart and dedicated as Cary Goldstein, and a publisher as fresh and focused as Jonathan Karp and Twelve Books. I fancy myself a man of letters, but so many letters herein would have been wrong without the editorial prowess of Mari Okuda and Christine Valentine. I also fancy myself a man of Photoshop; for that, I hope Anne Twomey and Twelve’s art department will forgive me.
The list of those kind or foolish enough to read parts or all of the early drafts is too long to list here, but some gave advice and / or encouragement above and beyond the call of friendship. For this I especially thank John Wray, as well as Kent Elofson, Dawn Rose, David Rose, Danica Lisiewicz, Nicole Roberts, Claire Martin, Rover, Shannon Wade, Nick Revell, Laura McLean, Douglas Pease, Thomas Scoville, Karen Dionne and backspace.org, Jeff Kleinman, Douglas Purgason, the Weissman family, Ob Askin, Jim Kelly, Nancy Gunn, and Erin Wallen. I’m indebted to my Reduced Shakespeare Company mates Adam Long and Daniel Singer for the spirit if not the details of the fictional Short Sharp Shakespeare; to Claire Asquith for the tantalizing explication of Sonnet 23 in her book Shadowplay; to Dr. Charles Mitchell of Loyola University for information about Elizabethan hangings; to Don Ashman for his assistance with my rusty Latin; and to Roxanne Hamilton, Jennifer Nickerson, Susi Nicholson, and the housing offices and graduate students of the University of California, Santa Cruz, for not having me arrested as I prowled their campus researching locations. Also thanks to Kevin Patterson, Mark Sellin, Dan McLaughlin, and Jon DeCles for their assistance and contributions regarding various things Renaissance Faire.
Finally, I thank my wife, Sa. Everything they say about novelists and their obsessive late-night sneakings to the computer, scribblings in bed, and story-problem-related mood swings is true. Enduring them requires almost superhuman resources of love and patience, which she has in spades. Not only that, she read the book, and liked it.