It shouldn’t surprise you that I was frequently distracted by the research for this book. I’d go online to check a single detail and end up jumping from one link to another for the next two hours, before dragging myself back to my work. It’s fair to say space travel is my new fascination.
Admittedly, I take considerable poetic license with the practicality of a manned mission to Mars, but the vision is hardly science fiction. There are some in the space community who believe the technology for colonizing the Red Planet already exists; in fact, experiments are currently underway on Hawaii’s Big Island to determine optimal living conditions. While NASA has the first human touching down no sooner than 2035, private entrepreneurs at Mars One dream of getting there a full decade earlier. It will happen eventually. Why shouldn’t it be a pair of women in love?
Thanks very much to my editor, Katherine V. Forrest, who always advocates for you, the reader. And to my reading team of Jenny and Karen, who find the important words I’ve left out, and the not-so-important words I’ve left in. A special shout out to the last line of defense—Bella’s proofreaders, Ruth and Carla. They caught a few errors in this book that would have earned me a scolding from you.
I should probably add that this book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Except where it isn’t.