It couldn’t have happened otherwise, and it couldn’t have happened without these people:
Early readers, who provided the encouragement and perspective every writer desires and needs. You were my rocket fuel: Sue Brooks, Charity Kilbourn, Paul Loukides, Karen Moore, Beth Raese, Peter Sobanski, Scott Taylor, Mary Vanderploeg, Emily Vietor, Martin Vietor, Brad Willis, Walter Wolf, Hal Wyss, the entire WPBT, and most especially the artist and musician Juanito Moore, the most frequent reader, who crafted the comics page featuring cats you’ll find between these covers.
Family: my wonderful wife, Linda, and my three wonderful daughters, who are the reason (along with coffee) that I get up early each morning, and who give me the support and love and joy that makes the writing I do (and everything else I do) worth it; my parents, Ruth and Roger—I love you.
Kind friends; professionals in the publishing world who offered their valuable time to guide and advise me well before there was ever a book deal: Kerry Cullen, Benjamin Dreyer, John Hartness, Brooks Sherman, and Suz Brockmann.
My excellent agent, Sam Morgan, who shepherded a trembly-legged new writer (that’d be me) through a strange and wonderful and occasionally disorienting process. Sam rules. Thank you for ruling, Sam.
All the good people at Melville House who brought their formidable skills to this project, including but by no means limited to: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians, who decided to give my book a home; my editor, Michael Barron, who took a first-timer’s ambitious and weirdly shaped sword swing, and gave the blade an edge and a direction even while it was in motion (Michael, you’re a magician and I thank you); Melville’s extraordinarily patient and encouraging production director Susan Rella; also: Stuart Calderwood, Stephanie DeLuca, Marina Drukman, Archie Ferguson, Beste Miray Doğan, Alex Primiani, Michael Seidlinger, Amelia Stymacks, Tim McCall, and Simon Reichley. You made my book real. I’m forever in your debt.
Finally, my very good friend, Ben Colmery, who 20 years ago took a writing prompt I’d given him, about a man who was surprised to learn he was a pair of sandals, and returned a weird little story about a meeting of friends in a grocery that moves to a donut shop—but only after avoiding the interruptions of an annoying fellow who won’t stop talking about all the reasons he will never return to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. For years, we expanded the idea further and further, and made it weirder, and weirder, and weirder, and wondered what it all might mean. Well Ben, it sure has changed since those years, but this is what I think we meant. Hope you like it.