In 2015 I started a book about a girl with the weight of divinity on her shoulders, a prince traumatized by war, and a monster who makes all the wrong choices. It is completely unfathomable to me that I’ve managed to pull this off not once but three times. Reaching the end of a trilogy is truly incredible and I wouldn’t have made it here without the help and support of so many wonderful people.
Absolute first and foremost, thank you so much to Vicki Lame, for taking all my weird ideas and making them weirder and so much better, for embracing my odd cast of monster kids and my desire to throw genre conventions into a blender and see what happens.
Thank you to Thao Le, for suggesting this book that I never thought I would get to write in the first place, at the start of it all.
Thank you to the rest of the SDLA team, Andrea Cavallaro, and Jennifer Kim.
Thank you to DJ DeSmyter—every day I feel so lucky to get to work with you! Thank you as well to Alexis Neuville and Brant Janeway. Thank you to Meghan Harrington, publicist rock star (sorry about all the eye clusters).
Thank you so much to the Wednesday Books team: Sara Goodman, Eileen Rothschild, Melanie Sanders, Anna Gorovoy, Janna Dokos, and Olga Grlic. And thank you to Mark McCoy for all the deeply black metal cover art.
And to everyone behind the scenes who worked on these weird books: Creative Services (and Michael Criscitelli who so totally understands what it means for something to be Extremely Metal), School and Library Marketing, Sales, and Audio.
Thank you to everyone who listened to me and provided such needed help as I agonized over this book, specifically Jessica Cooper, R. J. Anderson, and Hannah Whitten.
Thank you to one specific frog-themed discord, Marina & Hannah, and the literal all-hours encouragement. Also Hannah, please, write your book. And A. Clarke, who suffered my unhinged descent during the last stages of this book.
And to another, knife-themed group chat, you all remain the best. Claire, please, your book.
This trilogy was embraced by so many incredible artists that I can’t even name them all here, but I am so extremely grateful for the exchange of art that has happened with this series. I treasure every single piece of fan art that I see.
It would be remiss of me to not mention all the truly wonderful Reylos I met online in the wake of the last Star Wars movie who turned to my books as a balm. Sorry we had to meet under those circumstances, but I’m glad my weird villain romance brought some joy, and you all have been so wonderful!
Thank you to the team at Owlcrate for all the support; you guys rock!
Thank you to all the incredible booksellers who supported these books, but especially my local indie, The Learned Owl. And thank you to my coworkers at the library and all the rad librarians I’ve met through this avenue of the book world.
The past year was a rough one for me, and so inevitably I’ll have forgotten someone in this list, so if it was you, I do apologize, but know that your support has been so extremely appreciated. To all the readers, everywhere, who embraced my eldritch horror fantasy kids, thank you so so much; I couldn’t do this without you all. And thank you, as ever, to my family for their support. Again, as ever and even more important now, let’s keep making weird art.